http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/23/obama-kicks-off-massive-science-education-effort/

President Obama wants to show the kids that science is cool!  New education effort, with money to back it, underway.

Let's encourage kids to think critically and explore our world with scientific thought.

I gotta agree with you all.  I guess now we're not just trying to dumb things down, we want to "cool" them down too. 

As soon as kids start to feel it's "not" cool, which is as soon as the going gets tough, it'll be game over.  There are always these grand media announcements about this and that, but talking about inititating something, actually initiating it, and seeing it successfully through are incredibly different things.

I also have to just love all the poltical potshots taken at republicans on that board by various posters.  How is that even relevant? I guess some people have nothing else to say if it isn't pigeonholing and railing against the party they love to hate, regardless of whether it has any actual relevence to the article.  Funny how Ghost Lab got nailed in that though.   They sorta have a point:  GL is not really the proper program for a dedicated science channel, they're getting too fringe in an effort to be "cool".

Yeah Rev, but that would mean actually fixing the economy first.  I think maybe they're putting the cart before the horse -they think by making science "cool", more kids will get into it, and then invent stuff that will give the economy a shot in the arm, much how the IT revolution did in the '90s with the advent of personal computers and the Internet.

I don't know that the problem is getting kids into science so much as keeping their interest maintained. 

It's true that we should break that stigma of science oriented kids being nerdy dorks w/ pocket protectors and white adhesive taped thick black rim glasses, but it's gonna take more than that.  Science is the pursuit of knowledge and thus it's own reward, ultimately.  If kids don't have the mindset to appreciate that, then.. it'll probably be a huge expenditure of money, a lot of the kids'll lose interest and start bombing out, then they'll have to grade everything with a huge curve to cover it up and so that the kids who can't cut it don't suffer from "self esteem" issues.. and the actual smart ones will be crapped on as usual, or bored to tears.  My wife was a teacher for years. She knows the drill.

I guess it should be not so much about trying to make science cool, but it wouldn't hurt to remove the stigma of "uncool" maybe.  I always liked science.  The best class I had in high school was "individualized" chemistry, where everyone learned basically at their own rate, and no permanent test score was "allowed" below a "C".  The teacher's philosphy was, tests are to show if you've learned, not just to get a grade, and if you do poorly on the test, then you haven't learned, so you stay put and keep working on learning the material until you can pass the test with a C or better. Only then do you move on to the next section. I'm not sure how he kept it all together but it worked. There was also that motivation not to fall behind and look stupid compared to everyone else. (These days that would be considered nearly criminal, I take it)  I learned a lot in that class, and it was neither nerdy nor cool, just really good.