The big bang and all that - science rare bird in bestseller lists

[dArKeR]

Bill Bryson takes on the whole universe — remember, you read it here first! John Waller discovers the deeper meanings of life according to Bill Bryson.

A short history of Everything
by Bill Bryson
(Doubleday)

Unremitting effort over the past 300 years has yielded an astonishing amount of information about the world we inhabit. By rights we ought to be very impressed and extremely interested. Unfortunately many of us simply aren’t.

Far from attracting the best candidates, science is proving a less and less popular subject in schools. And, with a few notable exceptions, popular books on scientific topics are a rare bird in the bestseller lists. Bill Bryson, the travel-writing phenomenon, thinks he knows what has gone wrong.

The anaemic, lifeless prose of standard science textbooks, he argues, smothers at birth our innate curiosity about the natural world. Reading them is a chore rather than a voyage of discovery. Even books written by leading scientists, he complains, are too often clogged up with impenetrable jargon.

http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2003/2003aug/030808-bigbang.html

I disagree with the 'lifeless prose...' In Junior High and High School we read some really great science stories.

I think there's another bigger problem than this.

http://darker0darker.tripod.com/

[wtmusic]

1. That your website dark?

great pix (BTW you can align an import with the alignment panel in FLASH).

This deemphasis on science begins very early on. My kids don't have nearly the emphasis on science and math that I did in the early sixties. The problem is that both take work to understand and comtemp culture insists fun things are easy to learn (Nintendo etc.). Takes serious parenting to overcome this tendency.

[dArKeR]

2. I'll try the align, thanks.