In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite and called it an achievement “of the new socialist society.” Americans called Sputnik one high-flying reason to polish up the science and math skills of the nation’s youth.
“It got America pretty shook up that the Soviets were winning,” said George DeBoer, a deputy director at D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science and the author of “A History of Ideas in Science Education.”
And even before Sputnik, DeBoer said, concern had been mounting over a perceived “softening” of American education.
So by May 1961, when President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and called for the United States to win the race to the moon, changes in many math and science classrooms were already under way.
“In 1950, you’d have characterized the education as a little out of date,” DeBoer said, citing topics like “chemistry for cooking, or understanding how blast furnaces or locomotives work.”
Fifteen years later, in the heat of the Space Race against the Soviets, educators drilled down on the concepts behind math and science, DeBoer said, resulting in more challenging material.
But by the early 1990s, old competitions had given way to new ones from places like Japan and Germany, and a new era of reforms was at work.
“We’ve got a long way to go yet,” DeBoer said. “For the most part the ideas we had in the late ’80s and early ’90s about what we want students to know in science are not being fulfilled.”
