Seftel science for all

When Harry Seftel talks about a bladder infection on television, you wish you had one.

What this former Wits medical science professor has achieved in his discipline is to communicate a medical problem to ordinary citizens in a way that makes sense and that even generates excitement about the condition. Most scientists lack this important skill - to communicate the elegance, beauty and inspiration of their science to non-experts in ways that convey insight and fire the imagination.

Scientists are trained to communicate with their peers at high-browed conferences and in atmospheric journals. The language is necessarily complex and arcane, but that is acceptable for the normally small community of scientists working in that narrow field. But scientists increasingly have a broader responsibility: to educate and inform the public about science, scientific discovery and the meanings of scientific wisdom in everyday life.

The same applies to professionals. We still have too many doctors in this country who treat patients as "things". I have often had to interrupt a doctor to ask what exactly is wrong with me. Why are you giving me this kind of medicine? What side-effects, if any, could I expect to have?

When the mildly irritated doctor begins to answer, it is with words that, had I not had some elementary training in human biology, I would have no idea what he was trying to say. In part this reticence to communicate about your body is a habit of history; doctors were all-knowing demi-gods who simply had to prescribe a medicine and you, the patient, were only to grateful to be granted an audience with His Worship.

But scientists also have a broader responsibility to educate because the immediate problems of climate change or mad cow disease or cholera or HIV/Aids demand that we communicate clearly and simply with ordinary citizens, who are all affected by these potentially harmful conditions. Rather than treat the public as passive subjects to be informed on a need-to-know basis, we need to shift our training of scientists to make public understanding and communication of science a curricular requirement and a professional habit.

The catastrophic consequences of a previous government policy casting doubt on the link between HIV and Aids could have been mitigated by scientists courageous and competent to communicate a simple health message to millions of the most vulnerable South Africans at the time.

There is another reason why such simple communication is critical in a nation that on paper assigns high importance to science and technology as important areas of investment and development. One major obstacle in the way of such ambition is the low levels of scientific literacy in the school population.

The foundations of science learning in South African primary schools are weak, even if measured narrowly in terms of both national and international tests of achievement; that we already know. The small numbers of students taking physical science at high school, and the low levels of achievement in Grade 12, are widely known.

One reason for this state of affairs is the way in which science is taught in most of our schools. Science is taught formally, often outside the world of application. Physics equations are memorised without meaning. Student misconceptions are corrected as errors rather than as inevitable even among scientists as insight develops. Science as an examination subject has meant that teachers often trawl through old examination papers, having long given up on the notion of science learning as fun or science as foundational to many inspiring careers.

This could change if the public communication of science was much more pervasive in urban and rural schools throughout South Africa. There are, of course, some state-sponsored science events held once a year and even some science magazines distributed to schools. But for science to become part of our everyday experience, it has to be much more commonplace in all kinds of media; in inter-school competitions, in radio call-in quiz games, in popular magazines and the like.

The biggest challenge for teachers is learning how to turn formal science into everyday science. Few training institutions offer this kind of insight. It requires teachers who not only know a lot of formal science but can "see" such science in everyday operations. For example, ask a science teacher why a commercial airline travelling from Johannesburg to New York has to stop for fuel along the way, but a plane coming from the Big Apple back to Joey's does not, and you will find out how uncommon is everyday knowledge of science.

We need to clone Harry Seftel.