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The Life Sciences Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs The World of Biological Research Requirements for the Future (1970) / Chapter Skim
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Elementary and Secondary Education
Pages 360-363

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From page 360...
... The overwhelming majority of secondary school students study biology in the tenth grade; a small but increasing fraction are exposed to an advanced-level course later. Two aspects of the secondary school experience are of special interest: it provides the only formal exposure to a science for many of the large number of citizens who will not become professional scientists; and it must supply the background and the motivating force for those students who will undertake work in the life sciences at the university level.
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From page 361...
... The new insights of molecular biology and genetics were missing; so were up-to-date treatments of the biology of populations, of animal behavior, and of physiology. Secondary school curriculum revision in the life sciences has been principally effected by one group, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Studyan organization staffed largely by professional biologists, with its policies established by a steering committee drawn from the scientific community.
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From page 362...
... These decisions are thus especially sensitive to the wishes of immediately concerned local constituencies, and it is in the nation's interest that these decision-makers have the greatest possible awareness of the scientific issues and complexities underlying their decisions. It seems likely that a course so structured could be maximally useful to future citizens, while including a sufficient presentation of cellular and genetic biology to afford a tempting glimpse of the elegance and intellectual attraction of current frontiers of biological progress.
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From page 363...
... In some areas of the United States, only three semester units of college biology is considered adequate preparation to teach on the secondary level. Over 50 percent of the nation's high school teachers in the life sciences have had less than an undergraduate college minor in biology.
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