In my last post, I gave a few reasons why I think we need to provide more education in Psychology throughout the early school years. How can we bring that idea closer to reality?
I think there is a three-pronged approach to making this happen.
1) The Psychology community needs to take this idea seriously and to create a curriculum that can be added to the existing science curriculum. One way to make this happen would be to have this idea addressed by the National Academy of Sciences. The members of the National Academy are scientists who have made significant contributions to their respective disciplines. Psychology is one of the sciences represented in the National Academy of Sciences. A group like this would have the necessary credentials to make clear that adding more content about Psychology is a natural evolution of our science education.
A standardized set of curriculum recommendations would allow specific proposals to be made to school districts to encourage them to adopt standards that included Psychological research. In addition, these recommendations would provide guidelines for textbook publishers interested in getting involved in this market.
2) There needs to be an organized groundswell of support for teaching more Psychology. On the one hand, schools are generally quite slow to make radical changes. Any change requires new teacher training and teachers with new areas of expertise. Thus, schools need to be driven to make changes.
On the other hand, it is also clear that popular support can strongly influence the schools. The debates over the last 10 years about incorporating "intelligent design" and other euphemisms for creationism into the science curriculum make it clear that parents and non-scientists can strongly influence the shape of science education. It is about time for us to use the power of grassroots support to make positive changes in our school curriculum.
An easy way to start is to find out the email address of the superintendent of schools in your district. A simple note that says that you support including more work on the science of Psychology in our school curriculum is a way to bring this issue to the attention of administrators.
3) Point interested people toward educational resources in Psychology such as the blogs at Psychology Today. Most people are not aware of the interesting and relevant work that is out there. The more that we can do to educate everyone about how their lives can be made better by learning some Psychology, the more natural it will seem that we should incorporate more Psychology into our science curriculum.
Finally, I should make clear that Psychology as a discipline fits quite well into the existing science curriculum. One component of science education is to teach the content of sciences like Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. A very important component, however, is teaching the methods of science. Studies in Psychology are firmly committed to the use of scientific methods to address issues of behavior and the relationship between mind and body. These methodological issues are true across the sciences. Thus, adding more content about Psychology into the school curriculum will reinforce lessons from other aspects of science education rather than diluting it.
Get involved!
