As a result, people's expectations are unrealistic. Secondly, as funding becomes more difficult to obtain for scientific endeavors, it is critical to the future of research that the general public develops educated, realistic expectations of the outcomes from research and development projects. Only an informed, well-educated public will continue to support the expensive scientific projects of the future. We, at the college level can provide leadership by improving the methods of teaching science. We must make our general science courses interesting, understandable, and pertinent.
Students are inquisitive.
If we make the course challenging and limit and reorganize the content, students will take additional courses in the scientific curriculum. We also must work with elementary and junior high teachers, sharing our enthusiasm with them and their students. The challenge, then, is to build a consensus among science educators that identifies the most important concepts and principles that should be taught in science or mathematics courses at different curriculum levels, to incorporate practical demonstrations of these essential concepts, and to communicate our enthusiasm for science to all students.