WASHINGTON –The marriage of design and science will help bridge “the innovation gap” in U.S. schools, speakers said at a conference Thursday. Frustrated teachers agreed but asked how to apply the concept in the classroom with such limited funding.
In a time of strict federal curriculum guidelines and budgetary constraints, art programs are often the first to go. But the Art of Science Learning conference touted the necessity of teaching art in schools if America wants to stay competitive on the global playing field.
Paola Antonelli, a well-known curator from the Museum of Modern Art, and SEED Media CEO Adam Bly said they realized the constraints teachers today face,.
“They’re the ones out in the trenches everyday,” Bly said. “We’re just acknowledging the problem and then discussing the merits of a holistic approach to teaching art alongside science.”
Top American business leaders have recently expressed concerns that the U.S. workforce is lagging in creativity, which they consider a crucial component in driving innovation.
Sometimes referred to as “bio-art,” the combination of art and science could once again foster a generation of creative thinkers to fuel the workforce, the pair said.
Science fairs, Bly pointed out, were one example of how design can successfully be used to visualize dense scientific concepts.
“I did science fairs my whole childhood,” Bly said, “and as a model it works. So we should just keep pushing it.” But science fairs, too, have recently been a part of education spending cuts.
David Green, an organizer of the conference, said teaching science by breaking it down into separate subjects is the way of the past, and that a more integral and interactive approach must be taken today.
That everyone was once a scientist as a child was a common theme during Bly’s and Antonelli’s discussion, a point Green found particularly compelling.
“We were once all scientists,” Green said. “But so much of the formal education system washes that out of kids.”
Antonelli said she and Bly work to amplify the frustrations expressed by the teachers in the need for more creative learning.
One audience member said it upset her to hear second-graders saying they hate science due to a lack of engaging teaching methods.
“But it’s not possible that they hate science in second grade,” Bly said. “They don’t even know what science is yet. They just hate whatever it was that was put in front of them and called science.”
Requiring students to learn 40 random vocabulary words, Antonelli said, is not science. There is a silver lining, though.
“There are a number of people on [President Barack] Obama’s counsel who are quite visionary when it comes to thinking like this,” Antonelli said. “I think there’s a general receptivity to it, or at least discussion of it.”
Whether the legislation and funding to back this alternative style of teaching will follow all the talk, though, remains to be seen.
The Art of Science Learning conferences is a three-part series. The next conference will be in Chicago on May 16 and 17, and the final one will be held in San Diego on June 14 and 15.