Category Archives: politics

Planetarium, Planetarium-related, politics

The Role of Planetariums in Education

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IPS Statement

I am a member of the International Planetarium Society, a world-wide group of professionals who work with, in, and for planetariums and science centers. I’ve been a member for 30 years, was elected as a Fellow in 1996, and served on IPS council for a number of years.  The group serves the interests of planetarium professionals and advances science education goals at every level in every country where members exist.

As an international group IPS cannot endorse any specific candidate in any country’s elections, but it can comment on the importance of such facilities in science education.

IPS has come out with an official statement following the untrue criticisms leveled by Senator McCain in recent weeks.  Here’s the whole statement, which has been mailed to the U.S. candidates for president:

Since planetariums have been described critically in the current US presidential campaign, the International Planetarium Society welcomes the opportunity to clarify the role of planetariums in the American and worldwide educational systems.

Planetariums are domed theaters that project images of the starry sky and countless spectacular objects we find in our universe, creating educational experiences that teach astronomy and related sciences. The star projectors that show the night sky itself are among the most durable, versatile, and cost-effective of educational tools.

Planetariums are the world’s astronomy classrooms and theaters of public science education that have served perhaps a billion people during the past century. The world’s 3000 planetariums are found in schools, colleges and universities, and museums and science centers in all 50 US states and in over 100 countries around the world.

In a time when quality science education is more important than ever, a scientifically literate public is an essential part of the progress of any country. Planetariums around the world both inspire and educate people of all ages about our surroundings-the Earth itself and our place in the Universe-and they are often a place in which young people become enthused to follow a scientific career.  Many of today’s leading scientists chose their careers because they were captivated by the experience of a planetarium visit.

Planetariums also were used to train early astronauts in celestial navigation techniques. By showing the fascinating discoveries in astronomy and space exploration, planetariums are a major tool in increasing science literacy. This dissemination of knowledge distinguishes our time from the Middle Ages, when knowledge was restricted to an elite few.

The planetarium referred to in the campaign debates is Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. IPS endorses the Adler’s responding statement, which can be found in

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/pressroom/pr/2008_10_08_AdlerStatement_aboutdebate.pdf

[Adler Press releases]

The International Planetarium Society (IPS) is the world body of professionals in the planetarium field and does not endorse candidates in any election campaign.

politics, politics and science

Science and Politics

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Why Whine about Discussing Science and Politics?

Why, when I (or any blogger) writes a science blog and we comment on political issues (like the recent and incendiary Planetarium Overhead Projector Gambit), do commenters show up whining about how we should be talking about science ONLY and forget this political stuff?

I am puzzled. To take a simple action that people do every day to illustrate how everything can be political, you can’t spit in some places without it being political. You do so and you have the anti-spit faction complaining that such things should be made illegal because they affect the march of progress and mess up the sidewalks. You have the pro-spit faction complaining that barring spitting in public would ruin the rural character of the town (or village or hamlet or big city or whatever place they call home).  For all I know, you could have the Holy Spit faction whining about how spitting should only be done between one man and one woman or in church or behind closed doors or after six hours of prayer or in conjunction with a donation to the church or whatever it is that helps them think that they are the spiritual arbiters of spitting.  And so it goes.  Everybody has an opinion about how everybody else should spit. And it’s all political. All that from something as simple as getting rid of saliva.

When it comes to science, it’s a whole lot more complex. And, science gets political because it’s part of our culture and society.  Science is a way of understanding the natural world. To do science, you have to ask questions about cause and effect, the physics of an event, the processes that cause things to happen in the natural world.  If you’re asking questions about physics, nobody gets too excited because, let’s face it, to paraphrase Barbie Dolls, “physics is haaarddd…”  But, let physics (or any other science) intersect some belief system or political viewpoint, and suddenly science is evil or good or out of touch or elitist or useful or anti-this or anti-that or pro-this or pro-that, or whatever else that our increasingly pluralistic societies want to say about it.

So, to those who bring their fine whines to the science blogs when it comes to politics, I say the following:  deal with it. Science and politics often cannot be separated, and in fact, at times should not be. If you don’t like to talk about politics and science together, talking about science alone is going to limit the conversations quite a bit.  So, stop complaining about how “politics” is sullying science and look at how the two co-exist and accept that sometimes you have to talk about both when it comes to issues of science and society.