Curriculum changes in US public schools are a step in the wrong direction for new geoscience recruits.

It is, by now, no secret that one of the key concerns around the oil patch is the overabundance of gray heads. The chart showing the demographic distribution of employees has become so common at panel discussions that it's probably available as clip art on the Web by now. Yet something of such huge concern within the industry apparently is of virtually no consequence outside it, at least in a couple of states.
We all moan and gnash our teeth over the paucity of new recruits emerging from the world's universities. But before students will graduate with a degree in geology or geophysics, they have to decide to enter the field in the first place, meaning they have to have some early interest sparked in the study of the Earth's subsurface. Some may have parents or trusted mentors in the industry in whose footsteps they decide to follow. But for others, that spark of interest happens at the secondary or even primary level of school. Many industry societies recognize this and have active programs to involve younger students and engage their interest.
Too bad the school boards can't follow suit. The education boards of Texas and California have decided to lessen their states' curriculum focus on earth sciences. At a recent International Association of Geophysical Contractors meeting in Houston, Texas, keynote speaker Victor Yannacone, an attorney, ridiculed the California decision.
"Excuse me," he asked the audience, "but isn't California one of our more seismically challenged states?"
And Texas is one of the more geologically prolific when it comes to the production of oil and gas. The state is not eliminating the study of earth science from its curriculum, but it's certainly making it more difficult for students to gain exposure to it.
In 1998 Texas implemented the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards, outlining a list of content for high school students to know upon graduation. Under these standards, the only required science courses are biology, physics and chemistry. Students must take one elective science course as well, but high schools are not required to offer anything not outlined in the TEKS standards.
The state also dropped earth science from the list of topics to be included on the eighth-grade science test. Earth science is not a required course in Texas past the fifth grade.
These decisions fly in the face of national recommendations. The National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy suggest giving earth science equal footing with biology, chemistry and physics at the high school level. In 37 states, students can count their secondary earth science credit toward graduation, and most of the states that have high school exit exams and assessments either include or plan to include earth science content.
Earth scientists in Texas were slow to respond but have begun to address the issue. Several geologists testified at a hearing in Austin, Texas, in January, and efforts are under way to establish a task force comprising members of the Texas Education Agency and members of the delegation that attended the January hearing.
The situation in California is equally puzzling. I sent a request for information to their education programs consultant and was informed earth science has not been removed from the public school science curriculum. Rather, admission requirements for lab science have changed at two of the state's universities, and the state's board of education is attempting to more closely align high school graduation requirements to these changes.
The American Geological Institute (AGI) happens to disagree with this statement. Earlier this year, California geoscientists sent letters, faxes and e-mails to the board asking it to delay a February decision on a new science curriculum framework that they felt would dilute the state's emphasis on the teaching of earth science. The board of education voted in favor of the framework, and according to the AGI Web site, a consultant for the California Department of Education "(chided) our organizations for issuing an erroneous alert, arguing that no policy change had been made and that earth science had not been downgraded...That response was not only dismissive but also highly misleading. Our concerns have only been amplified with closer inspection."
The prime concern is an article in the Draft Science Framework for K-12 Public Schools that reads, "All students take, at a minimum, 2 years of laboratory science providing fundamental knowledge in at least two of the following content strands: biology/life sciences, chemistry and physics. Laboratory courses in earth sciences are acceptable if they have as prerequisites (or provide basic knowledge in) biology, chemistry or physics."
Marcus Milling, AGI executive director, and Dr. Franklin M. Orr Jr., dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, wrote to the school board explaining that this language runs counter to National Science Education Standards, which identify earth science as "a core curriculum area that integrates chemistry, physics and biology in an applied context at all grade levels. Earth science is the discipline that best facilitates an integrated working knowledge of science by all students."
The California Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is in the process of forming a statewide collaborative to be called the California Alliance for Earth and Space Science Education (CAESE). "The alliance will include all representative stakeholders in California that support the idea that California's future citizens need to be well educated in all of the sciences, including earth science, chemistry, physics and life science," said Richard Filson, CSTA president. "CAESE will promote the teaching of the new standards for science in grades K-12, especially those of earth science, which have traditionally been underemphasized."
I would have to agree that the sentence quoted in the draft science framework implies earth sciences are somehow secondary in importance. And school districts in the United States are under constant pressure to trim their budgets. Whether or not the intention of the California and Texas decisions is to remove the study of earth science from the school curriculum, that will most likely be the long-term outcome. And that will compound the current situation in terrible ways.
For more information about these curriculum battles, visit www.agiweb.org.

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