This should not surprise us, however, because US culture is deeply paradoxical, most centrally in the value it places on both individualism and competition and the common good. Accordingly, reforms in science education make ambiguous and often contradictory demands for greater excellence and equity in school science. However, they provide woefully inadequate material and intellectual support for meeting these ambitious demands. Without support, teachers haphazardly mix elements of the initiatives with more established practices. The result is a hodgepodge curriculum that presents different versions of school science, any one of which may contradict and cancel out the others.
Students see the contradictions.
They respond by rejecting school science and remaining content with the science they already know. Reporting ethnography to informants. Cambridge, MA Harvard Educational Review. The uncertain value of school knowledge Biology at Westridge High. A curricular and cultural perspective.