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Big Think extends a warm thank you to Cogito and the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University for facilitating this interview. Steven Castellano is a senior at High[…]
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Science teaching jobs should keep pace with advances in technology, according to the scientist.

Question: How can we increase scientific literacy in America?

Steven Castellano: All right. So when it comes to technological literacy I kind of think that it's just a matter of getting expose to being aware of it. I mean I really have likened the classroom at least in my class is being able to like see how torque is related to like a car and building like a mouse trap race car or different projects that you may do. So just with regard to that I think bringing projects to the classroom is definitely cool. Being able to make discoveries for yourself, see a different areas of science are connected, how frictions really related to intermolecular relationships and chemistry so just more interaction in the classroom, more projects in the classroom, I definitely think that maybe there are technology courses at many schools and maybe increasing that requirement might be productive in terms of increasing technological literacy. I know it is predicted that the jobs for technology teachers there is less and less teachers and demand is increasing greatly so. Looks like a very stable job but there's also not a lot interest in it. So I know, like the way of a technology student association in New Jersey, we were trying to increase funding for that and definitely increase funding for more technology teachers and I feel like it's part of the education spending, that we're looking into definitely put some of that spending into increasing the teachers and technology because that's definitely something that kind of concerns me for the future that what I found to be some of the most interesting classes and the most enlightening in terms of making discoveries that they might not be as successful in the future when I feel like they should be more success in the future as technology continues to grow exponentially each day.

Recorded on: May 8, 2009

 


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