clipped from: www.uh.edu   
Engines of Our Ingenuity
How do we measure scientific illiteracy? How serious a problem is it? And what can we, or should we, do about it?

We have many measures of scientific literacy. You might question any one, but together they show a steady decline from about 12% literacy in 1957 to only about 5% today.

The media reply by inventing ways to catch a child's interest. But does a man dancing in a DNA-molecule costume say enough about the beauty of science to children? Is that a rich enough food for their imaginations? Do we really let them know that science will feed their natural hunger for unanswered questions?

Observer Watson Laetsch points out two kinds of argument that favor scientific literacy. One is utilitarian.
We tell them that technical literacy will help them compete with the Japanese.
The other argument is frankly hedonistic. Bright eighth-graders don't care a fig about competing with the Japanese. Nor do they fear difficulty. But they are determined to find stimulation and pleasure.