The problem of recruitment?
At the Swedish universities, the departments of geology complains about the trouble of recruiting students. The need and the supply don’t match and you can read about it in the papers some times. And it was also one of the first things our geology teacher spoke about.
The reason is said to be that in general, most teachers at a pre-academical level don’t know enough about geology to boost sufficient interests in the kids. Most teachers in natural sciences have knowledge in math, chemistry and physics only. Meaning that the chapters on geology (if they even exist in the books – since many books are written by teachers) are only briefly explained for most students. My experiences of geology from school are very limited. Mostly I learned a lot of things that I now know were false because of poorly educated science teachers. They knew their physics and maths, but they knew very little about the processes of how the lime stone floor of the school hallways where formed (and yes, they called the lime stone floors "marble floors" or "granite floors" of course if they ever mentioned them at all).
I know that there are of course alternative explanations to this. For instance, the wages of geologists in Sweden are quite limited to those that engineers make. So people looking for an education in the natural sciences are drawn to other fields than geology for economical reasons also.
Is there a similar recruitment problem in your parts of the world connected with poor understanding of geology among teachers in highschool?
May 10, 2008 + Posted in Geoscience +
Unfortunately I can confirm that this is a problem here in the USA, as well. In most US states students will have an earth science class in eighth grade and no other geology courses in the college prep years (grades 9-12), unless the course is an elective. Very few high school science teachers have had anything more than an introductory geology class at the college level, if that.
Comment by Ron Schott — May 10, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
The situation has started to change in the last few years in Germany. Due to more outreach activities by universities and the activity of private organisations the interest and student numbers starting an Earth Science course at University have risen significantly. Another reason for that may be the recent end of the traditional German Diplom system and the introduction of the Anglo-American Bachelor and Master system in German, and European, Universities. Dispite the fact that the number of students is going up and slowly reaching a balance with free positions on the market, investment in Earth Science Education at Universities is going down especially in the field of Economic Geology and more focused on Engineering Geology, Hydrogeology, etc. What’s even more worrying though in my opinion is that here the quality of the new Bachelor and Master students is horrible in parts. The old tradition for universities to be a place of general education for oneself is basicly being replaced by and extension of school life. There are no more freedoms to dig into topics one likes but that are not mandatory parts of the curriculum. I am one of the last Diplom students at my university and I am often shocked that the Bachelors and Masters have more classes and hours than I had but a much worse knowledge and experience of geology. It is a paradox in a way but partially explainable I think by the reduction of practical field work exercises, less excursions, less mapping work outside in the field and a heavier reliance on theory. Also semester plans are so full that Bachelors especially and Masters are burried in a workload that replaced understanding with memorising. It’s really a pitty that a 6th semester Bachelor student has never even heard of a Cu-Porphyry or cannot recognise a textbook like sandstone in the field. Well, they are experts with ArcGIS though I wonder where they willbe getting the high quality data from to feed the computer with.
So…we are getting a lot more geos but a lot less quality here.
Comment by Lost Geologist — May 10, 2008 @ 4:45 pm
When I was in high school, I had Earth Science, taught by one of the math teachers. She was pretty clueless about Earth Science. In college and at University, the non-geology majors that took Introductory Geology generally seemed poorly prepared in math and general science. Most of them probably would not have taken any science courses if there was not a requirement.
Comment by mark — May 10, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
All: There seems to be a drop in students general knowledge of basic facts. I think thats the case all over the industrialized world.
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Comment by The Stoned Dane — May 12, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
In my corner of the U.S., we have a very ethnically diverse population, but very few non-white geology undergrads. I’ve participated in outreach programs to high schools with large minority populations, and it appears that none of these kids even realized there was such a thing as geology before we took half an hour of their science class to tell them about our program. Too weird for them to even think about once we were out the door.
Also, nearly half of our grad students didn’t study geology as undergrads. They studied engineering, math, business, communications, art; a small minority come from a related field like biology or chemistry. Typically 1/3 of the students in our undergrad majors classes are grad students, playing catch-up.
Comment by Karen — May 14, 2008 @ 9:56 pm