Reading Notes: Science Teaching: Towards an Alternative by Boston SESPA Teaching Group

"general critique of science teaching was distributed at the April [1972] meeting of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) in New York"

"The elitism emerges for example when scientists attribute social problems to incompetence and irrationality—with the implication that a few intelligent people who really understand technology could solve all the problems (technocracy)."

"the end product of this training is a narrow specialist-one taught to perform scientific miracles without considering their political implications—a reliable tool of the power structure"

"the PSSC physics curriculum was designed for a narrow segment of high school students for the purpose of getting them to think like scientists and thus instill in them the values of working physicists. It was designed largely at MIT by a  group of physicists with long experience in designing nuclear weaponry, whose familiarity with science education was almost exclusively in training professional research scientists." 

"The chemistry student does not learn how to harden a steel tool, and the shop student does not learn about crystal structure... the future scientist is denied freedom as well as the mechanic... dependent on the existence of a class of workers to perform such tasks for her, and she learns quite early in school that this is the way things should be."

"in many of the materials available there is a “hidden curriculum” which conveys the social myths that perpetuate the control of people through technology. For example, in “educational” films provided by oil companies, the telephone company, or NASA, scientists are portrayed as infallible experts"

"Faced with the political character of science, the least we can do as science teachers is to help clarify these social relationships. To accomplish this task "requires not only that we make available to students information on how science is used, but that we also foster and help students develop what critical attitude which characterizes real science"

"To a large extent people’s feelings of powerlessness stern from the fact that they don’t know how to do things for themselves... The importance of self-reliance has been brought home to us by the legendary resourcefulness and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people in the fact of American aggression" 

"Resource material other than the textbooks currently in use is essential to teach the social and political implications of science. Such alternative teaching materials are presently available in the form of pamphlets such asThe Earth Belongs to the People, which analyzes the ecological problem in a  socio-economic context, magazines, audio-visual aides, and paperback books."

"We hope that people will continue to send ideas and materials here, so that we can eventually compile a  more complete booklet on all aspects of radical science teaching."