These questions and others are considered in Nat. Sci. 26. Students usually undertake an independent field or library project of interest to them. Several guest lectures are presented, in addition to topics ranging from the effects of smoking to the use of science in penal institutions. The overlay of the specific with the general made the course even more rewarding. Some students who took the course last year were therefore disturbed by these comments in the Confi Guide:
"Nat. Sci. 26 can be a pleasant and relaxed way to get out of your Nat. Sci. requirement or to spend the spring of your senior year...you really don't have to go to lectures or do much reading, and it is nice to get some idea where science and humanism intersect."
Whoever wrote these words completely missed the sentiment of the course. This statement is at the very center of what is wrong with much of our educational experience; we often see our classes as a perverse form of entertainment. Quality education should be exciting as a mutual process of interaction, not only between student and teacher, but between student and student especially. If a teaching mechanism is unsatisfactory, let us criticize it openly, and not mutter under our breath way back in the 22nd row, We've got to get on to deal with the issues.
Most students who have taken the course have not done so to find an easy way to get past their Nat. Sci. Gen. Ed. requirement. As evidenced by informal student comments, and from questionnaires returned at the end of last year, most people found the course to be intensely rewarding not for the intellectual stimulation alone, but also because they had the opportunity to interact with problems in health care, food additive safety, energy production, government control of industrial pollution, and other areas, by first-hand experience in the wider community. Those who wished to do library projects did them--and they too had a hell of a lot to contribute to the discussion.
Natural Sciences 26 touches upon science as it affects us now and will affect us even more in the future. These social matters are of concern to non-science concentrators also. Many myths in and about the world of "pure science" need to be debunked, though we must be careful not to reject science as a method for improving the quality of human existence. Science and human values can, indeed, work in symbiosis. Putting social responsibility in science is an immense reform and cannot be accomplished by mere administrative fiat at the professional level. We must start now by making some changes in our educational system. Students of science should never be separated from consciousness of the social consequences their work entails.
This course is a small beginning and can only accomodate a little more than a hundred students. The Departments need to be approached about further course offerings, perhaps at a more advanced level. Each of us must, as a member of the human community, begin to look beyond individual courses, take a hard look at our education, and start asking some very serious questions. An unhappy junior once remarked that he couldn't solve all the world's problems by himself (true), and besides, what with his math and chem courses he had scarcely enough time to keep his social life in order, much less get involved with any kind of health care or water pollution project. For him--and us--there is only one conscientious reply: Seize the time.
(The Author is a member of the Student Advisory Group to Nat. Sci. 26)