“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”—the Declaration of Independence
Post-Labor Day (more recently, the last week of August) signals the return of young people to school. For most LOTRW readers, school days are in the rearview mirror. Nevertheless, the annual rhythm combines with current funding challenges for science to provide AMS members some food for thought.
Education is about equipping kids for life. Two big pieces? (1) Preparing today’s youth to enter —indeed, build—tomorrow’s workforce. (2) Preparing kids for an adult lifetime of contributing to the purposes and functioning of society as a whole.
Start with (1). In every nation, workforce needs are evolving in response to technology advance and social change. In the twentieth century, many of the work opportunities lay in manufacturing. Complexity was reduced by compartmentalizing tasks on assembly lines. Tasks were repetitive. In schools, most learning was by rote. By contrast, today’s career opportunities lie in knowledge work. Much of that requires a solid education in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). But it also requires creativity. Knowledge workers contribute best to the degree that they don’t merely keep pace with technology advance and social change, but actively innovate.
Turning to point (2). Here the educational goals of totalitarian societies and democracies diverge. In totalitarian societies, the secondary goal of public education is to indoctrinate kids, so that as adults they will be compliant and toe the government’s line.
In a democracy, the secondary goal is markedly different and dramatically more demanding. At a minimum, schooling in a democracy must prepare kids to follow a broad range of issues on the national agenda, and to vote on these thoughtfully and responsibly throughout their adult lives. But that’s only the start. To ensure that government serves the people rather than vice versa requires that those kids arrive at adulthood equipped not just with critical thinking skills but also versed in values and virtues. The latter include but are not limited to ideals such as self-reliance, responsibility, and a desire for fairness and justice.
Why is that? Digging a bit deeper, STEM education requires students to develop and practice critical thinking: to analyze, break problems down to individual elements, to synthesize, build elements into a coherent whole, to assess the reliability and accuracy of evidence, to be self-aware of shortcomings and bias in their own thought processes, to be open to new ideas of others.
But STEM education and critical thinking by themselves can be misused—a student who can analyze and evaluate evidence, and identify false logic, can use that same set of skills to articulate false beliefs and create misinformation.
A person can know how to spot a logical fallacy or analyze data yet use those exact skills to rationalize prejudice or defend false beliefs (motivated reasoning).
(Bottom line? That’s because democratic peoples seek to achieve two seemingly contradictory goals: living free, all the while accomplishing this in community.)
When it comes to STEM, U.S. education has fallen short. The problem dates back some 70 years, with the Russian launch of Sputnik in 1957, at the height of the Cold War. A brutal wakeup call. The United States realized it risked falling behind in science and technology. One policy result was passage of the National Defense Education Act. It provided a billion dollars for public school infrastructure, scholarships, and fellowships. (DARPA and NASA were also established about this time.) But, as numerous studies have documented, the implementation fell short of the vision. A 1990 Los Angeles Times article noted:
While the U.S. today surely has some of the world’s best scientists and mathematicians, its citizenry is now among the most undereducated and least sophisticated in science anywhere in the industrialized world, lagging behind not only the Soviet Union, but also Japan, Germany, France, England, Ireland and Spain, to name a few…
… most of the reforms were for the benefit of only a select few. While the new curricula may have worked for the smartest students in the best schools in New York City, they befuddled not only most of the students but many of the teachers in the rest of the country…
… The vast majority of American students were simply left behind, turned off to science and math altogether…
In this same article, one expert was quoted as saying “U.S. educators assumed an attitude that was—and still is—largely unique to American education… that only some people could learn science and math…namely, Asian immigrants and a handful of white males with extraordinary IQs…”
…and went on to lament: “This is an interesting contrast with the attitude in Japan, where such children who excel are viewed as those who work harder than other children.”
Matters haven’t improved much since 1990. OECD/PISA 2025 scores put U.S. 15-year-olds in 13th place among their global peers in science and 27th place in math. We’re only in the middle of the pack, and this has been the case for more than a generation. Over 40% of the Forbes 500 companies and over half of U.S. billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants or first/second-generation citizens. We’ve been importing much of our STEM talent, and this source is drying up. At 4% of the world’s population, if the United States wants to lead in innovation throughout the twenty-first century, we must play catch-up.
Meteorologists and scientists in related fields should see both challenge and opportunity here. U.S. STEM education is behind in the basics—mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The need for improvement would seem to leave little margin for teaching fields like the geosciences, which are multidisciplinary, and broad in application. What’s more, many teachers are untrained in meteorology and related fields and are therefore reluctant to teach these subjects.
But evidence also shows that young people are extremely interested in the weather. Kids notice early that weather dictates what they wear to school, their daily activities outside of school, and on occasion, whether they even have school at all or their personal safety. Sometimes they’re thrilled by the weather, sometimes terrified. They are eager to learn how weather works. Later on? Teenagers are concerned about climate change. They know climate change is real and want more school time devoted to it. Meteorologists have a great story to tell, and every reason to believe that if today’s kids are given more exposure to these subjects they’ll grow up to comprise a public more supportive of meteorology and the other natural sciences, minimizing the future risk of the negative politics that today surround these fields.
Some good news in closing. Meteorologists not only have an incentive to promote greater emphasis on meteorology and related sciences in K-12 education; through the American Meteorological Society they have the means to accomplish just that.
AMS offers both a tested approach and useful resources. Decades ago, AMS established an Education Program (now Education and Careers—a felicitous intersection given the current funding challenges that have been the focus of this current LOTRW mini-series). At the time, many science societies were focused on the idea that scientists should occasionally parachute into K-12 classrooms and give the students an inspiring talk. Turns out (gasp!) that not all research scientists are gifted communicators or especially skilled at reaching lay audiences, let alone those of elementary and high school age. (I know this from unfortunate personal experience, having accepted one or two invitations from my daughter to meet with her sons’ grade school classes, and an unrelated high school venture or two.)
The AMS Education Program set about instead equipping school teachers (trained and comfortable in the mysterious arts of engaging young people) with the education and resources they needed to bring meteorology into their classrooms.
To do this at scale, they developed a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. Pyramid scheme? Ponzi? I know! Bad, right? No, this is a benevolent one! Instead of training teachers one by one, they trained teachers to train other teachers who then engaged the students. They’ve also trained and equipped undergraduate faculty to teach college education majors—the public school science teachers of the future. The Education Program provided tools like Datastreme for the K-12 teachers and AMS textbooks and curriculum for educators. In this way, over time, they’ve engaged some 200,000 teachers and millions of kids.
Those numbers may sound large, but this is out of a U.S. population of four million teachers and more than fifty million school children. The AMS Education Program is one of the great treasures hidden in the Society (there are more).
Remember this LOTRW mini-series topic: What steps can meteorologists take to ensure against repeated future political challenges to meteorology like those we face today? In addition to political pushback, in addition to expanding our circle of political friends, in addition to hitching our wagon to AI’s star, there’s this one—improving U.S. STEM education. Building on and strengthening the existing AMS Education Program. The payoff is only long-term, but requires we take steps now.
Where and how can overburdened meteorologists find the time? Well, those who are parents of school-age children know the answer—it’s using some of their volunteer/parenting time to engage in a local PTA. And another merits consideration—perhaps a little more participation in an AMS Local Chapter.
