WHAT CAN SCIENCE DO TO IMPROVE LITERACY AND EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP?

The problem of personal and student qualification for scientific activities that we have just introduced in the preceding paragraphs shows the top of the iceberg of the real problem: people are not literate to read nature directly by themselves, and they are not literate to receive and read disperse midia information on science either. They end up not being able to judge by themselves what is bad or good, what is right or wrong regarding science. When a soccer team wins or looses, people feel able to interpret the game and find out the reasons why those results were achieved (soccer is a good example in Brazil). However, when it comes to scientific matters, people feel completely incompetent to deem or judge. Is the genome project relevant? Is transgenic food good or bad? Should we stop research using animals? Those are questions that are open to social intervention at multiple levels and for which most people fell absolutely unprepared to answer. Common people are unable even to appreciate beauty on science work, differently from their capability to appreciate artwork, a piece of good music or the beauty of a poem. It is as if art were composed by culture (in its multiple aspects), but not by science. This problematic view of science outside of culture is spreading so rapidly on society that scientists (especially those from "hard" science) are frequently not included in the list of "intellectual" people, that commonly group artists working on literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, theater, movies or, a big concession would be the case of social scientists such as anthropologists, for example. This illiteracy of the general public on scientific subjects (even - or specially - politicians and decision-makers) reflects a poor activity of science popularization, a mystification of scientific work and data, which influence young students against the ways that lead to a living science. In spite of all this, people are still fascinated with complex scientific problems such as how large is the universe, what is life and death, and so on.

Given this context, what can scientists do? This is an absolute pertinent and timely question, since "What can science do for education?" will be the mote of a symposium organized by the Brazilian Academy of Science, coming up next June. In our opinion, scientists have three main fronts to work on to face the challenge of promoting scientific education for the general public, specially the younger ones.

First, to push forward the awareness of this problem within the scientific community itself, mainly among young post-graduating students that will make up the future generations of scientists. Discussions should frequently be held during the PhD training, thus engaging young scientists on concrete projects and actions to promote scientific education. In the last six years about 50 students in the Institute engaged on and developed 20 projects, of their own and exclusive choice, to popularize science.

A second front would be to develop real activities and movements of scientific education, geared to teachers, journalists, lawyers or to a more general public, conceived to popularize scientific information and to allow particular experiences on the scientific method, leading to personal discoveries or re-discoveries of views or concepts. A recent effort of the IOC in this direction has been the creation of a new post-graduation lato sensu course on "Science Education in Biology and Health". Based on the present gap between the accumulated academic knowledge, on the one hand, and the quantity and quality of what the public knows, and on the other hand, many of our researchers agreed to contribute for a new educational proposal. The first edition of this course will take place on the second semester of this year with the goal of putting scientists into direct contact with some of the main science mediators or those who are responsible for the deliberations that use biotechnological knowledge. By recognizing science influence in everyday life and the different partners involved in science popularization, this course extends the idea that scientific education must be understood as a fundamental premise for the exercise of citizenship, a sine qua non condition for re-insertion in culture.

A third front to engage scientists on is the active production of tools for science popularization. They should contribute to general publications for the public, magazines, books, text-books for school children and adolescents, exhibits for museums and galleries, informative web sites, videos, theater plays, and whatever other means could be thought of to disseminate information associated to emotion and discovery, the essence of science. At his centenary, the IOC is actively working on these three fronts. Here we will hear from our invited speakers why and how to move forward along this way.

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