Learning science in the community 1 Learning Science in the Community1

We live in a time when tremendous technological extension of human abilities and lifeworlds2 is having a profound effect on our culture, neighborhoods and environment. Even with all this power available to them, many people remain on the outside of the technological riptide surging through society. Some science educators claim that this is evidence of a severe problem of technological and scientific illiteracy (Hazen & Trefil, 1991). Unless our students become scientifically literate, these educators say, they will have great obstacles to becoming empowered participatory citizens integrated meaningfully into society. Although we may agree that there is a societal problem of scientific and technological illiteracy, we take a different view of both the problem and potential solutions. For us, common examples used to “demonstrate ” illiteracy fail to be convincing. For example, the film “A Private Universe ” showed Harvard Ph.D. graduates who explained summer heat and winter cold in terms of the sun-earth distance rather than the inclination of the sun’s rays. In response to claims that this shows illiteracy, we reply that the inference is quite reasonable (it is valid for asteroids), and the fact that this interpretation is wrong i