teaching - Earth Science Teachers' Association

TEACHING EARTH SCIENCES ● Volume 26 ● Number 3, 2001
Further Thoughts – Where Next for ESTA?
IAN THOMAS
This brief article continues with the theme I started
in my item “From the ESTA Chair” (page 87).
Can we learn lessons from others? What potential
partnerships might be developed? As I write the
anticyclonic gloom is all pervasive. However, if we are
to address one of the issues in Roger Trend’s last Editorial
(TES 26/2) regretting the lack of interest (indeed
outright avoidance) of meteorology in schools, few of
those now leaving school will have the slightest idea
what the label “meteorology” means, let alone its scientific
basis. This is quite astounding when we live on a
series of islands where changing weather is a national
obsession. This is even more staggering when we are
bombarded hourly by programmes, acres of newsprint
and newsflashes on meteorological disasters, global
warming, el Nino, the warmest October on record and
so forth. Yet again, conditioned by the constraints of
Exam Board specifications and the National Curriculum,
many schools appear to be lagging behind developments
(some of them longstanding) in the ‘real’
World. This is perhaps even more remarkable still when
one considers the emphasis for at least a decade on the
environment – the main gap appears to be the unwillingness,
inability or possibly fear of many involved to
make the fundamental links between events and scientific
explanations.
Clearly ESTA cannot bite off more than it can chew
– members are already stretched as they continue to
make good progress in a wide range of fields. Just are we
are improving Earth science teaching through an evergrowing
network of partnerships, there may even be
members willing to take this aspect further, for example
by linking up with the Met. Office as it moves into its
new home in Exeter.
Broadening the theme a little further still, we might
consider media coverage of the most popular, current,
non-news issues of the day. In no particular order, these
are likely to include: environmental matters; food and
drink; art and design; and history/archaeology. ‘The
environment’ can in turn embrace wildlife, major Earth
events, astronomy and at a stretch – dinosaurs. ESTA
can rightly claim an interest in most of these. However,
when set against the memberships of, for example, the
National Trust, RSPB or county Wildlife Trusts, the
number signing up for Earth science pales into insignificance.
I may have missed a critical slot but David
Attenborough’s recent highly-acclaimed Blue Planet
series appeared to have little, if any, coverage of the
most fundamental question of why the oceans are located
where they are! Apart from the odd five minutes on
black smokers, there was more on polar bears alone,
although the piece on corals was instructive.
Turning to another field, and bearing in mind that
Sc4 ‘Earth and Beyond’ is virtually 100% ‘beyond’, it
might be instructive to consider astronomy in a little
more depth, or, as we should now term it, cosmology.
On a recent cold Saturday night I joined about 200 others
(some of whom had made an 80-mile round trip
and including at least two school groups) outside, staring
at a large video screen. For an hour nothing
appeared to happen, but very few people left. It was too
cloudy. Apparently it was equally cloudy at the two linkup
stations in Portugal and Poland. Then, minutes
before 9 pm, the clouds here began to break up as if to
order, and we began to see on screen an eight-foot
image of part of the Moon with a small but growing
detached blob to the left – this was Saturn emerging
from behind the Moon. With time, the image became a
little clearer so that you just about pick out the planet’s
rings. We were watching the ‘Occultation of Saturn by
the Moon’. I would guess that 99.9% of the population
have never heard of the term ‘occultation’ – yet this was
how it was advertised and the press release (with the
same title!) generated numerous calls for interviews
with my colleague Rod Tippett (he has just been
appointed honorary education officer for the Federation
of Astronomical Societies).
I want to mention two more examples. First, think of
the room set in almost any American movie – a telescope
is a prerequisite prop. Even more remarkable was
news we received recently of people signing up for a
luxury flight across southern Africa next year to watch
the next major eclipse – at £10,000 each! There is not
the slightest doubt that in the media, ‘astronomy’ is a
magic world, yet you cannot even touch it.
So what is it about Earth science in Britain which
induces a Cinderella syndrome? Perhaps if we had
more effective ways of predicting earthquakes or volcanic
eruptions it might gain a little more popular
appeal – not that we would witness too many of these
events here. The British Geological Survey has made a
step in the right direction in respect of the recent
Melton Mowbray earthquake, by using a questionnaire
in the press to solicit accounts of experiences of local
people. Perhaps a selection of the results could be used
in some new teaching materials?
But this is hardly the real answer. I am sure that
skilled and up-to-date presentation are critical factors –
possibly one or two embryo Patrick Moores, David
Attenboroughs and Tony Robinsons are now beginning
to emerge but it is a very slow process – there is no
magic bullet.
However, considering its size, for many years ESTA
has achieved much and continues to do so. With so
much ground still to cover we can only do this, as I have
always emphasised, through partnerships - with other
institutions in the scientific community including universities,
the other scientific institutions, the BGS, both
www.esta-uk.org
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