Call for both ethics and facts in science

A report commissioned by the UK's largest medical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, says that science teaching in schools and colleges is failing children as it contains no ethical or moral content. The report says that issues raised by contemporary science need more and more to be considered to equip children with the skills needed. Scientific advances such as the sequencing of the human genome, cloning and stem cell research raise many ethical issues, and cannot be taught in a vacuum, the report says.

The Institute of Education, which compiled the report, surveyed teachers from 305 institutions across England and Wales. Sixty per cent of the teachers in those schools or colleges felt that too little attention was paid to ethical or moral issues in science.

The Wellcome Trust report suggests that a change in teaching of these issues involving both science and humanities teachers is required. Science teachers tend to present information in a factual way whereas humanities teachers are more accustomed to dealing with the social issues of topics. The Trust also recommended that science teachers be trained in the basic principles of moral philosophy, and brought up to date with new scientific developments, such as stem cell technology.

Dr Mike Dexter, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said 'today's young people will be the first to benefit from developments such as the Human Genome Project, but they will also be the first to face the challenging social and ethical questions arising from these advances'. Because of this, he said, the way science is taught in schools should be 'shaken up'.