With tales of cannibalistic giant squids and endangered leatherback turtles that travel thousands of miles to lay eggs on the beaches where they were born, Philippe Cousteau, grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, tried to capture the imaginations of children at a North Side school Friday.
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“It’s not about textbooks anymore,” said Cousteau, TV’s Animal Planet chief ocean correspondent. “If you want to be relevant in education, you need to use technology for kids to understand, to bring it alive.”
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The U.S. ranked 29th in a 2006 international survey looking at literacy in science and math among 15-year-olds. President Barack Obama has pushed for improvement and greater interest in those subjects, hosting a White House Science Fair and appearing on the Discovery Channel’s “MythBusters” program in October.
John Loehr, Chicago Public Schools’ science director, said the city needs to try new things to boost science education, noting that, according to their ACT scores, only 9 percent of 2010 graduates showed post-secondary readiness in science.
So the entire country is failing, ranking 29th in math and science performance. The city is even worse! Nine percent of of students were ready to move on in science? At this rate the Republic cannot sustain itself.
We have to admit that our schools are a failure in order to make them better. A problem well defined is half solved.