The lost moral purpose of science education

Since the rise of mass schooling in the 19th century, Americans have advocated for the teaching of science at nearly every level of the educational system. The reasons for its inclusion in the school curriculum, though, have varied over the years. The argument in the mid 1800s, for example, centered on the utilitarian value of scientific knowledge for industry and everyday affairs, while in the 1950s the study of science was viewed as important for building public support for research in the United States. Towards the end of the 19th century there was a period of time when the predominant argument for science instruction rested on a moral purpose-the building of character and personal virtue. For early proponents of science education, moral uplift came from student engagement in the process of science-in coming to face the facts of the natural world that were the basis for the discovery of truth. This essay explores whether such goals for teaching science might once again have a place at a time when scientific expertize and knowledge are increasingly being minimized or dismissed.