The importance of cultural and scientific literacy

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Physics professor James Trefil once said that scientific literacy is a subset of cultural literacy.

To those who view culture and science as two unrelated matters, this is both a shocking and revealing statement.

Are science and culture really unrelated? According to Ben Davis of the Getty Information Institute in Santa Monica in California, the United States, "science and art are parallel aspects of the same basic creative impulse rather than unrelated pursuits". That is if we define culture in a broad way.

He came to this conclusion after trying to learn the difference between digital satellite image archives and abstract art. He cannot always tell the difference. He said that "the line between art and scientific artifact has become blurred as cultural and scientific institutions move onto the Internet, suddenly sharing the same on-line formats and virtual architectures."

What is cultural literacy?

Trefil defined it as "that body of knowledge that educated people, in a given society, at a given time, assume that other educated [people] possess." In other words, cultural literacy is what we call the general knowledge of the educated class.

And what is scientific literacy?

"A scientifically literate person," Trefil wrote, "is one who has enough of a background in science to deal with the scientific component of issues that confront him or her daily."

To these two definitions Trefil added that in real life there are only a small number of social issues that deal with science in the narrow sense. Most of the issues we find in our society deal with science in the broad sense, and in our daily lives we are continuously confronted with issues that require knowledge of a number of subjects: economics, politics, law, social guidelines, security measures, etc., and science.

On the basis of this understanding, Trefil argues that cultural literacy represents "the groundwork, the basis, the floor beneath which no one should be allowed to fall". He believes that no one should actually be allowed to leave the education system until "their matrix of cultural literacy has been filled in".

Discussing the meaning of scientific literacy, Trefil wrote that a scientifically literate person is one who "knows some of the basic facts about the way the universe operates, and has some sense of how scientists came to that knowledge". Such a person deals with "those aspects of science and technology that come across his or her horizon as easily as he or she deals with aspects of economics, law, or government".

In essence, scientific literacy enables the average citizen to deal with nature as it exists, and as it is presented to him or her. "Science presents itself to the average person in the context of a problem or issue, and without the kind of academic boundaries that come as second nature to people in universities," Trefil wrote.

Significantly he added that the "ability to do science" is not a part of scientific literacy.

Within the context of present American culture and society, Trefil suggested that education towards scientific literacy includes 17 items. The five easiest topics on this list include causality/order, energy/entropy, electricity/magnetism, the atom, and chemical bonds/reactions. The five most advanced topics are properties of materials, earth cycles, ecosystems, relativity, and quantum mechanics. And in the middle there are, among others, topics about genetic code/molecular medicine, plate tectonics, stars and galaxies, and Mendelian genetics.

Should this standard for scientific literacy in American society become the model for Indonesian programs toward scientific literacy?

It is hard to say. On one hand, the universality of science demands that scientific literacy everywhere include certain common elements. On the other hand, if we want to inculcate scientific literacy which connects to cultural literacy, then we must take into account the idiosyncrasies of the Indonesian culture in viewing life and the universe.

Several ideas come to mind in this connection. One is that programs toward cultural and scientific literacy should not be made available only to the young generation. I think there are enough people in the older generations who are genuinely eager to improve their cultural and scientific literacy. Separate programs must be developed for these people. Who or which institutions should develop and carry out these programs?

Second, there is a difference between developing programs for cultural literacy and for scientific literacy. Generally speaking, programs for scientific literacy have more common universal elements than programs for cultural literacy. Thus while programs for scientific literacy for any society can be developed on the basis of an existing model, the task of developing programs for cultural literacy is not that simple.

Developing a good program for cultural literacy requires a deep understanding of a society's present stage of development, and its inherent inclination to react to external stimuli. Only on the basis of such knowledge would it be possible to develop a program of cultural literacy which would enable students to really understanding their cultural environment, its present status and its probable future.

Third, I think that both cultural and scientific literacy are not an all-or-nothing matter. It is always a matter of degree. How much should a person know about his or her cultural environment? And how deep should this knowledge be to make one culturally literate? And how much does one need to know about science to make one scientifically literate in his or her cultural environment? This is a question that will soon need to be answered.

If we sincerely consider both cultural and scientific literacy important for enhancing public participation in the nation's life, educating the young generation to acquire the required degree of these two literacies becomes a very important issue. Failure to bring the young generation to this required degree of understanding will create among them the inability to participate intelligently in the affairs of the nation.

How should these two literacies be taught, both within the formal education setting for the young generation and within the nonformal education setting for adults eager to improve their understanding of problems they encounter in their lives?

Until we have a clear idea about what should in both instances be taught, and how these materials should be taught, we will not improve the literacy of our citizens, either in regard to their cultural and scientific literacy, or in regard to any other literacy.

The writer is an observer in social and cultural affairs.