The importance of cultural and scientific literacy

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.