Publishers play a big role in science woes

In light of the recent study panning middle school science textbooks, maybe all those surveys showing American students lagging behind the rest of the developed world in the subject aren’t so hard to understand.

Some of the errors found in those books go beyond embarrassing and reach the level of humiliating for the publishers.

There is no good explanation for having the equator running through the southern United States, getting the definition of absolute zero wrong or incorrectly stating Newton’s laws.

Putting aside those factual errors and lesser errors such as poor editing, there are much larger problems in that the books contain material inappropriate for the grade level and have the students perform experiments that cannot possibly yield the desired result.

Science is about observing, and through that observation gaining increased understanding.

Having students attempt the impossible experiments and inevitably fail to get the desired results undoubtedly leads some of them to decide that they "don’t get science" and abandon it.

For most students middle school is the first time they will seriously study scientific material. By making that first step a misstep the book publishers are doing them a tremendous disservice.

The full report of the study does more than point up embarrassing errors, it makes many worthwhile suggestions book publishers can follow including using appropriate vocabulary; including activities that can be successfully performed in a short amount of time and that require measuring and reporting the results; and striving to reduce errors to prevent embarrassing reports such as the one just issued.