my own rant about why science has to be, well, so sciency.

When I saw the statistic from Shamos and the one Heather quoted “5-10 % will be into science 90-95% will not”, I was reminded that that is probably true, but why?  Of course there are a lot of other interests in this world, which probably explains for much of the stats, but I wonder how much true science turns off youth.  In schools, we try to promote science literacy through the scientific methods and by having students modeling scientists.  I absolutely believe that this type of science education is the way to go, but showing students “real” science can be a turn off.  The scientific report about the herbivores and plant growth is “real” science.  Being science literate (self-proclaimed), I had a hard time understanding the report.  To my benefit, I am able to critically think about the report and dissect meaning from pretty much everything in it.  Not being verse the language of biology, I would have to spend hours to fully understand everything in it.  So, my question is, why does science literacy have to be so difficult?”  I believe that this article could be reworded to have the same meaning, but a lot more people could understand it.  I think that a niche market exists in differing forms of science where they each want to demonstrate their intelligence, its not needed.  In my current job at an environmental engineering job, I have an easy time creating intelligent science reports for some of our clients who are not scientists.  So why can’t reports like the one we just read on herbivores be presented in a less sciency language?  Or is science so beyond anyone’s comprehension unless you have studied it for years that it needs to be portrayed in a manner that only fellow specific science colleagues can understand it?  I don’t know, but this seems to push people away rather than draw them to it.

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