Non Sequiteur: Overcoming Space Malaise By Cutting Space Education
Can Commercial Space Rescue NASA From Deadly Public Indifference?, Forbes
“Sustainable public advocacy will depend upon around bold goals and clear plans that warrant substantial investments. Writing in Reason magazine, Gregory Benford correlated public interest in space exploration with a natural desire for vicarious adventure. Benford observed that: “Much of the passion in science fiction springs from a deep-rooted human need: to reach out, to prefer movement to stasis, to understand.” Accordingly, he concludes that NASA has a choice: “swing for the bleachers or die.”
For D.C. shelter’s 600 homeless children, a crucial source of fun and escape
“On Thursday, the children arrived in the big recreation room and found a spacesuit waiting for them. “There’s no one inside. That’s fake!” one girl insisted. “I”m right here,” said Leland Melvin, standing behind her, delighted at her defiant challenge. Melvin is an astronaut. “What do you think I do in this blue suit?” he asked, pointing to his flight suit. “Nothing,” a bunch of kids wisecracked. It’s a tough crowd. Every year, Melvin brings a NASA spacesuit and a slide show of his adventures in space. It doesn’t hurt that he also tells the kids about his time in the NFL, getting drafted to play with the Detroit Lions. And then getting injured.”
Keith’s note: If you ask NASA for their plan – i.e. their strategy – guidance – goals – for engaging the public in education and public outreach activities they cannot provide you with one. Yet they always tell you (they think) that some one is working on one – but it doesn’t cover everything that NASA does because NASA is incapable of adopting an agency-wide strategy or plan. And even if something resembling a plan starts to emerge, it never goes beyond draft stage due to infighting and turf disputes. After 4 years the NASA Advisory Council Committee on Education and Public Outreach has done absolutely nothing to address this situation. They are meeting in Washington in a week or so. Not sure why they even bother.
All this being said, you still see poignant attempts to go beyond the normal audiences such as Leland Melvin did at this homeless shelter. Alas, these activities go unnoticed since NASA is clueless as to how to inform others that they even take place. Oh yes – OMB is going to significantly cut NASA’s Education budget for FY 2014 – again. And yet they will tell you with a straight face that the White House supports education blah blah blah. I guess its hard to totally blame NASA when the White House won’t even stand behind its own rhetoric.
“swing for the bleachers or die.”
Yep
Let’s be careful. Sending an astronaut to interact with homeless kids, showing them a space suit and talking about adventures is perhaps exciting and entertaining, but not clearly educational in S, T, E or M. In any case, it’s not a cost effective way to reach a lot of kids. We don’t have enough astronauts to do that (or probably enough space suits!)
Also, the NASA budget has some twenty pages of goals for education, some of which are for teacher training, which is highly cost effective way to educate kids. Maybe NASA doesn’t have a strategic plan printed up on glossy paper with lots of pretty pictures, but that wouldn’t be a particularly useful document.
That said, I do agree that there is no overarching agency strategy that would allow NASA Education to really speak with one voice and brand itself with societal value. That’s at least partly because a lot of educational activities are driven by missions, with different staff and different motives. That’s a stovepipe approach to space education. One of the real disappointments is that those activities from different missions often aren’t well coordinated.
Not all education is “STEM” related.
I’m happy to believe that, but I don’t think NASA is chartered to do “education” that isn’t STEM related. By that token, we can call just about anything “education” and expect NASA to do it.
I look forward to seeing references, in federal legislation, or in stated NASA goals, to any such “education” NASA is responsible for that is not STEM related.
Huh? You post some wacky unsubstantiated stuff Helen, but I have to call you on this. Please find the legislation, “charter”, guidance, whatever that specifically calls out what NASA’s education responsibilities are – especially WRT “STEM”.
At the George Abbey ‘Lost in Space’ session a couple weeks ago several of the panel members commented that if NASA and industry wanted to turn on public support one of the first things they need to do is to make sure students in all grades start getting educated about the program. I think Logsdon said something like “think about it, you’ve got a captive audience, they are anxious to learn, and by putting together some rather simple information kits all those 85 million students can be turned into space supporters rather easily”.
Like in the case of the missed opportunity for NASA to talk about the significance of missions to asteroids last week, that NASA is taking no positive action towards education tells me that some NASA leaders are asleep at the wheel.
I don’t think they know where they are going.
Its not all or nothing. Yes we need to encourage immigrants though China is where the money seems to be, and the Japanese, Russians and Europeans all seem to be building spaceships in addition to Space X, Sierra Nevada and Boeing as long as US govument money lasts-which might not be too much longer. But there are still millions of US kids that seem some learning too.
As I’ve mentioned before there are more than 1,200 planetariums (almost half in the US) serving over 50 million people per year. Yet this network is still virtually untapped by NASA. Yeah every once in a while they throw us a bone, but many planetariums are being closed down due to lack of funding and resources.
I remember the US response to Sputnik as I was in elementary school at the time. NASA was not tasked to teach American kids. Rather additional funding was made available directly to schools to improve not only STEM education but also physical fitness for all students, not just athletes. There was a focus on science but not specifically on space. The program was quite successful.
NASA does reasonably well with specialized internships and co-op programs for the relatively small group of students interested in space-related research, with supporting robotics competitions and similar incentive activities for a somewhat larger students in a wider range of technologies, and with materials and resources to help primary and high school teachers who want to teach about space. But NASA simply does not have the resources to directly provide or even affect STEM education for the majority of American students. By focusing more on supporting US industry in developing new science and technology and manufacturing NASA can better provide American students interested in these areas with the opportunity for rewarding careers.
Considering the decrease in the effectiveness of K-12 education over the last few decades, I would think that ANY educational subject matter (not just STEM) that engages the attention of kids should be supported by NASA and anybody else. What I find curious is that people are still looking for the “hook” to capture kids’ attention. It’s been my experience (I’m Canadian, but I don’t think that affects this issue) that kids will get interested in almost anything that’s science and technology related if it’s presented to them on their level and if they’re allowed to interact with the “teacher,” whether that teacher be a person, a computer, a good library, or whatever. Anything that departs from the age-old “I talk, you listen” presentation tends to encourage kids to listen and contribute, and even follow up on their own.
“If you ask NASA for their plan – i.e. their strategy – guidance – goals – for engaging the public in education and public outreach activities they cannot provide you with one. Yet they always tell you (they think) that some one is working on one”
I think this is a large part of the problem. Each project does their own thing. Some of the science projects do a pretty good job but even then it becomes very confusing for people on the outside because you really do not know whats available or where to go for the info.
Some really big projects, like International Space Station with their $3 billion operating budget-I’d be interested in seeing their plan. I really have not seen much educational content geared to specific grades or ages about ISS. Was there a plan for Shuttle? Who is running this show?
You can do a videocon with an astronaut talking to a class or two every week and at the end of a year, who have you reached, a few hundred kids? Out of tens of millions? Doesn’t seem too effective a use of resources.
You can put info on the internet but counting on people to search for and find something they might be interested in seems like a long shot. You are counting on them knowing enough to look in the first place. Most classrooms don’t have computers for their students. They might have a computer lab that a class gets to visit once every several weeks. Most likely they won’t be looking for your information when they get on the internet for their allotted 20 minutes.
A few years ago when Shuttle was flying at least there was a TV broadcast of a Shuttle launch a few times a year. But ISS is invisible. To most people, including kids, it simply is nonexistent.
I attended an annual state teacher conference recently. Not even anyone from NASA. There are only 50 states. Only 50 of these events a year. There are a dozen NASA centers in different parts of the country. This was one of the biggest states with tens of thousands of teachers attending, within driving distance of a space center, and yet no NASA presence?
The only big NASA space event in the last 18 months was the Curiosity Mars landing which explains why Bobek the Mohawk Man was at the State of the Union.
The other big events in the last year were the Shuttle flyovers and museum placements, which told the American public that the space program is over-exactly the message that you’d think NASA would be trying not to communicate. Everyone I talk to says, “too bad the program is over, but I guess thats what happens when the budget gets zeroed out”-but fact is the budget is still about the same as its been for the last several years.
NASA seems to be doing less than ever in this realm.
Do you think NASA has anyone with the right kind of education to create educational programs, or are they all engineers?