Carl Sagan’s “Why We Need To Understand Science”

Carl Sagan was one of the world’s best known scientists in the late twentieth century. He is known for his famous science books and the award winning television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He had an extreme passion for teaching and his career, rarely making time for other activities. Sagan always reached out to the public about his scientific discoveries and provide any advice or assistance to anyone who asked. He wanted to be able to communicate with other people and help further the growth of science.

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/carl_sagans_life_and_legacy_as_scientist_teacher_and_skeptic (provides more info on Carl Sagan)

Carl Sagan claims that barely anyone in society knows about science and technology. He concedes that science and technology can be harmful to the world such as producing deadly weapons, but says that “advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.” According to Sagan, science helps grow new ideas and establish wisdom by making humans think.  He provides different examples of situations in everyday life where science and technology come in such as U.S. manufacturing, global warming, abortion, high-res television, and computers and says we must not ignore these issues. Even though many people are skeptical about science and technology, Sagan says that it is science and technology that has transformed the world for the better.

Sagan goes on to provide various statistics on how Americans are far less educated than other students in other countries. He says that in a test of 17 year olds around the world, the United States performed the worst in algebra. In addition,  only two of thirteen nations did worse than the United States in a chemistry test. All the statistics he provides show how Americans are doing much more poorly than the rest of the world. Part of the reason why Americans do this poor is because teaching has become become “too often incompetently or uninspiringly done..” Sagan expresses that more money is need for teachers’ training and salaries and establishing laboratories so that students will have a much more interactive experience rather than studying from a textbook. More financial initiatives need to be provided such as scholarships and fellowships. Sagan wants laboratory science courses to be mandatory in order to graduate as well.

Sagan also makes a big point on young people asking adults scientific questions. He says that “too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule..” And because of this children are steered away from science because it seems annoying to other people. Rather, he wants people to come up with better responses and actually be helpful to these young students because of the influence adults have on them.

Carl Sagan has definitely persuaded me with his argument and how the world needs to understand science. His statistics clearly show how behind us Americans are in terms of education even though America is known as the “land of dreams”. He is able to express how science and technology is a vital aspect to society and in addition, “a way of thinking.” He addresses the problem of high school students memorizing facts which I can connect to because I have done so before for different classes.

Carl Sagan published his article in an American newspaper magazine, Parade which is the most widely read magazine in the U.S. By doing so,  he is able appeal to a good amount of people and hopefully influence many different kinds of people. And he concludes the article by depicting the performance of Americans and ignorance of science and technology as an “urgent alarm” to people in perhaps to give everyone a wake up call.