Saving Science Class: Why We Need Hands-on Science to Engage Kids, Inspire Curiosity, and Improve Education

In Saving Science Class: Why We Need Hands-On Science to Engage Kids, Inspire Curiosity, and Improve Education, veteran educator and scientist Chris McGowan seeks to understand the new system of teaching science, to realize why it’s not appealing to young people, and begs us to return to the basics of what caused him and so many others to fall in love with science class.

What this book does well is offer an understanding of what isn’t working in science class. It delves a great deal into curriculum issues and examines why students are bored by their often test-driven science education. McGowan’s enthusiasm for science is infectious, which unfortunately also causes the book to derail somewhat and examine how a wind turbine works, for example, and lose the thrust of the argument for why science is so important. This lack of readability hurts the book, as does its lack of practical solutions for fixing the broken system of teaching science. All in all, the value of this book is more in terms of understanding the problem rather than remedying it.