SO SORRY I missed the Annual National S&T Conference, sponsored by the Scientific Research Council, last week. Where duty calls... This was the first total miss in 17 years of conferences.
Last year a number of conference papers were converted into newspaper articles which this paper was good enough to carry. The SRC and The Gleaner should keep up the practice. Proceedings take a long time to turn up and few people read them. Over 400,000 people daily read the paper version of The Gleaner. And how many more on-line?
Today we take a little tour of Science and Technology in and around my immediate neighbourhood of media and education. Responding to the need for more and better Science teachers and the poor CXC passes, the University of Technology has this academic year launched a Bachelor of Science degree in Science Education. The Faculties of Education and Liberal Studies and Health and Applied Sciences have combined their strengths to train Science teachers.
The demand is there. Graduates from the technical/vocational programmes of the Education Faculty in areas related to S&T have found themselves pressed into service as Science and Mathematics teachers with less than adequate preparation.
EXTREME GENDER IMBALANCE
While UTech as a whole does not exhibit the sort of extreme gender imbalance of females to males in favour of female numbers which the UWI has, of the 19 guinea pigs in the first batch of Science and Education students, 16 are women. You can be sure many will be migrants. There is a worldwide shortage of Science and Mathematics teachers.
The Programme announces that "the curriculum will equip graduates with in-depth knowledge of two pure science subjects [selected from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics] as well as provide the specific techniques, skills and teaching experience necessary for them to become effective educators." Graduates are expected to "be more analytical in their approach to the teaching of mathematics and science."
The universities are up on international trends in teaching all students a general education course in Science, Technology and Society. The UWI has its Foundation Course, FD12A, "Science, Medicine and Technology in Society", which all undergraduates are now required to take.
The idea is that S&T is such an integral part of modern society that basic scientific literacy is as important as language and computational literacy and cultural and information technology literacy.
UTech has brought on stream and is expanding its own general education course, "Science, Technology and Society". These courses have developed their own internal texts which could be very useful to a wider readership.
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY
The Gen Ed S&T courses explore the history and philosophy of science, scientific methodology, the interaction and impact of science and technology on society, and issues coming out of the growth and application of S&T, issues such as the ethical, the economic, the political and the social.
It has been remarkable how reluctant non-science students come to see the practical relevance to this exposure to what S&T is how it functions and how it influences our lives on a moment by moment basis. The "Ah! Ah!" experience.
FAIR TREATMENT
For a few years now, CARIMAC has been running a course in Science Journalism, "Science, Society and Media" and its earliest graduates have now hit the media landscape as practising journalists. That course wants graduates to understand S&T well enough as an integral part of the society whose events they report that S&T can get the fair treatment it deserves in news and features coverage.
I know the Science faculty and CARIMAC have dreams of collaborating on a full-fledged S&T Journalism degree. What's holding up the movement?
And there is more and more science and technology in media. For a little while now, I have noticed, RJR Supreme 94 often closes its News Line Five news broadcast with an S&T item. Unfortunately not too often local. Reported on Monday in some depth, Cuban scientists develop anti-hepatitis vaccine for use in children. The S&T items slide right into regular news and are not tagged "S&T News". Why should they? The station has also moved its "The World Around Us" programme from the weaker time slot of Sundays at 5:00 P.M. to an embedded position in News Line Five on Thursdays.
The Gleaner has expanded its Medicine and Health page. Well it has now pages carrying excellent S&T coverage in a particularly popular area and with a stable of local writers. There are a number of Jamaican S&T websites. Top5Jamaica.com, which I discovered in a business article, is a portal to several of these sites. Everything's connected. One big problem with this portal is the narrow range of the technology listings as almost purely Information Technology.
MAKING THE RADIO ROUNDS
After a decade of making the radio rounds, the S&T popularisation programme "Science Serving Us" is now carried by Radio Mona, 93 FM on Fridays at 2:00 PM. Time for a new series. Its light-hearted banter around S&T themes of daily importance has done a lot to win the hearts of listeners.
The list of books on local S&T themes for popular audiences is growing. A few months ago I had the privilege of reviewing Dennis Irvine's "Profiles of some Eminent Jamaican Scientists" on the request of this newspaper. Senator Anthony Johnson has published under his own Teejay label a booklet, "Great Jamaican Scientists". There is Lowe, Brown and Magnus' now famous survey of Jamaican S&T, past, present and future called "Discovering the Future". Science teacher Viviene Ward, whose husband Paul runs the UTech Gen Ed S&T programme, has put out a booklet on Black Scientists, including Jamaican scientists, for the primary level of the education
system.
Like I said, this is just a little tour of a personally familiar neighbourhood. Lots of other things are happening for S&T in Education and Media. One of the problems in this neighbourhood is the production of material by those in the know for those who need to know.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
