For thousands of years, the Chinese nation has been ahead of the world, but for hundreds of years, due to the emphasis on literature and over science and other reasons, China has lagged behind in the world, and the root cause of backwardness lies in science. Economic competition and comprehensive national strength around the world are actually competition in science and technology and competition in national quality. Technology is the core competitiveness of a country and the driving force for social progress. This has become a consensus around the world. The backwardness of technology directly causes the entire country to decline. The level of scientific and technological development in a country depends on the people's understanding of science. On the basis of a high level of cognition, an atmosphere in which the people love and respect science, as well as an atmosphere in which they all participate in scientific research and discussions, in which they continuously promote the development of science. The main problem that hinders China's scientific discovery at present is the public's understanding of science. There is a question: Who is the smartest person in the world? If you ask a Westerner, you will probably say it is Einstein ; if you ask a Chinese, you will probably say it is Zhuge Liang . We all know that Einstein is engaged in science, Zhuge Liang is engaged in strategy, and his low level of understanding of science has been deposited in the national consciousness. If this awareness is not changed, it will be difficult to fundamentally change the current situation of China's science and technology lag behind the United States, Japan and Europe. How to change it? The solution is to improve the scientific literacy of the people, enhance the level of scientific knowledge among all citizens, and let the public truly realize that it is science and technology that promotes social progress, and it is also science and technology that improves people's living standards. The scientific literacy of the public can reflect the national cognition level of science. The proportion of citizens with scientific literacy in Swedish in 2005 reached 28%, and the proportion of scientific literacy of the American public reached 17% in 2000, and 31% in 2019. In 2020, the proportion of citizens with scientific literacy in my country just exceeded 10%. This number means that only 10 out of every 100 people have basic scientific literacy, which is more than 20 years behind Europe and the United States. In 2014, the number of RD researchers in my country ranked second from the bottom among countries with a total RD personnel exceeding 100,000, with only 19.7 people. This indicator value in developed countries is generally more than four times that of China, including 134.9 in South Korea, 104.7 in Japan, and 87.4 in the United States. Currently, the total number of scientific researchers in China ranks first in the world, but it seems to be large but not strong compared with the United States, Japan and Europe, that is, there are fewer top scientists in the world. This can be seen from the fact that our country has not won the Nobel Prize in the field of natural sciences so far.
The public's low scientific literacy is an important reason for the emergence of "Qian Xuesen's Question", because there is a causal relationship between the few top international scientists and the low scientific literacy of citizens. If scientific masters are compared to towering trees, then the public's scientific literacy is the soil. The low scientific literacy of the public has caused the soil for cultivating scientists to be poor. Only when the soil for public scientific literacy is fertile can world-class scientists be cultivated. The principle is very simple. There are many people with the talent of scientists or scientific research potential among the people, but low public scientific literacy causes these people to have a lower chance of access to science. Perhaps some people with excellent talent or potential will not be able to access the scientific field they are good at in their lifetime, and cannot use their expertise to contribute to this society. How to improve the scientific literacy of all citizens? It depends on science education in primary and secondary schools, that is, science classes. In 2008, 14-year-old Wilson, a teenager in the United States, built a nuclear fusion reactor and became the youngest person in the world to complete the nuclear fusion device. 14 years old, a second-year junior high school student, still memorizing English in the classroom in China, but in the United States, he has been exposed to the most cutting-edge scientific knowledge.In 2015, two elementary school students in Seattle, Washington, USA sent their homemade aircraft to the edge of space of 23,774 meters, and were invited to visit White House for this... In fact, there is no shortage of scientific geniuses in China, but they lost their opportunities for development because they did not receive scientific enlightenment education when they were young. In Mawu Village, Qiangxian Town, Tongzhou District, Beijing, there is a farmer named Wu Yulu . This person can be said to be one of the few robot geniuses in the world. He has only been to elementary school, and has made many amazing robots alone, and was even invited to give lectures at a university. If he had been exposed to the principles of robots and automation when he was a child, and had been exposed to the fields he was good at a long time, and continued to develop along this line, then he would never stay in his simple laboratory and make robots that seem rough to professionals, but would become the backbone of China's robot production field that surpassed Japan and the United States. There are many geniuses in all aspects like Wu Yulu, but they have not been discovered since childhood. They have not had the opportunity to come into contact with the fields they are good at since childhood, nor have they received systematic training, nor have they had the opportunity to contribute to the country's science and technology. This is undoubtedly a huge waste for a country like China, which has the most human resources, because a large population means that there are many people with various talents.
In the early days of human science and technology development, China was the world of science and technology. The Ming Dynasty was like this for thousands of years. The four great inventions belonged to that period. At that time, countries around the world did not realize the importance of science and technology. Scientific research generally belonged to the people; and when scientific research became government behavior and national will, China lagged behind. To this day, none of the four great inventions belonged to China, which is a tragedy. Has the IQ of the descendants of the four major inventions decreased? No, it is caused by the inability to keep up with science, because the scientific literacy and interest in science of the people are mainly formed in the basic education stage, and science education lags behind the world in China's basic education. You can make a comparison. Which is important to a country, science or English? The answer is certainly science. But the reality is that science courses in basic education are still in the "deputy subject" status, foreign language courses are "inappropriately emphasized and strengthened" from top to bottom, science courses are neglected, and class hours cannot be guaranteed. In sharp contrast, since the 1980s, dozens of countries including the United States, Canada, France, etc. have strengthened the backbone position of this course because it is related to a country's future competitiveness. Science courses have been one of the main courses of American education since kindergarten, and they occupy the same class hours together with mathematics and English. As early as 20 years ago, science classes became one of the three core courses in primary schools in the UK, and industrial design classes were available in primary schools in Japan and the UK. Since 2014, programming has been included in every school’s compulsory course. In 2018, Finland took programming as the core of its curriculum, allowing primary school students across the country to get exposed to this new common language earlier.
What should primary and secondary schools teach science classes, especially primary schools? Is it to let students memorize a lot of scientific theoretical knowledge since childhood? No matter how much you memorize, if the student is not interested, it is a burden and will play the opposite effect. Science courses should place students' "interest" at the most core, but in reality, they focus on learning "knowledge". What's more, some places should also take exams for science courses, and students should also memorize some scientific principles behind natural phenomena. Originally, children were very interested in sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology, but under the joint effects of long-term study and constant examinations, the "interest" disappeared and they were even bored. This is why China has learned a lot of things in the West since the reform and opening up, but the most core "love of science" has not been learned. Science is ultimately an inquiry activity. Why an American elementary school student can write a scientific paper of tens of thousands of words? Its interests play a core role. It is driven by interest that he will take the initiative to search for information through various channels such as books and networks to complete the paper.Interest in science is very important for children. Once students lose their interest in science, it will be useless to learn more knowledge in primary and secondary schools. A child is born interested in science. Even a child with poor academic performance or a "double poor student" in the eyes of a teacher, he remains interested in various natural phenomena and science; even a child who dropped out of school in junior high school is still interested in the big explosion and atomic bomb . Interest in science is negatively correlated with people's age. The younger you are, the higher your interest in science. When a person gets older and has more family and career, it will be difficult to let him pay attention to the principles of science. In other words, if a person loses interest in science when he is young, then the person who is interested in science may be very small when he grows up. We know that interest is the best teacher, and those great scientists' interest in science has all started since childhood. Therefore, the primary task of science classes is to stimulate students' interest in science, and should be guided by "interest", which is what I said earlier: the student's mind is "not a container waiting to be filled, but a torch that needs to be ignited." The second unit of the first volume of the sixth grade science volume is "Biology and the Environment". In this unit, students "compare the drought tolerance of cactus and Monstera through experiments". Such teaching content that allows students to master the theoretical teaching content through experiments is not very attractive to children. Learning knowledge such as mathematics should be in an order from easy to difficult to difficult to complex, but science is an exception and cannot be followed in this order, because the more profound the science is, the more it can arouse students' interest. Elementary school students, especially those in the fifth and sixth grades, are not interested in which cactus or monstera, nor are they the most drought-resistant, nor are they the green community surveys, the improvements in raising small goldfish and rain gear, but what are black holes? How did the universe form? How was the atomic bomb made? What is relativity? ...These are what students are interested in. In the United States, junior high school students began to come into contact with Einstein's theory of relativity and cutting-edge technologies such as DNA and RNA; matter is composed of fundamental particles, and the working process of nuclear power plants is interesting to primary school students; how the atomic bomb explodes and what is Artificial intelligence are also interested. Among the three types of scientific research, basic research, applied research and development research, the most important one is basic research. The one with the biggest gap between China and the United States in science and technology is also basic research. Basic research is not utilitarian, and children's interest in science is not utilitarian. This is the same. If an adult conducts scientific research, the proportion of utilitarianism will increase a lot, so the most important stage for basic science enlightenment education in primary and secondary schools. 
In addition to taking "interest" as the core, science education in primary and secondary schools should also be "comprehensive" and should involve as many aspects of science as possible. Because each student's interests are different, talented students should be able to access the fields they are good at, and try to make every "Wu Yulu" accessible to their own interests. Of course, this "comprehensive" is based on understanding, rather than learning or memorizing theorems and rules in it by rote.Some people say that elementary school students learn advanced scientific knowledge. Those learned by college students. Can they understand it? The answer is that they can understand! Hilberton, a former professor at the University of Göttingen, said that any schoolchild on the street of Göttingen, can understand Special Relativity ; "Hyper History of Time " junior high school students can also understand it. They can understand it and are interested in understanding a lot of advanced scientific knowledge: the formation process of black holes, that is, the internal pressure formed by large stars after explosions, they can understand it; Chandrasekha limit , that is, not all stars can form black holes, only stars with a volume of 1.44 times the sun will form black holes. They can understand it; for example, a pile of sand turns into silicon ingots, made into wafer for photosensitive, then etched, deposited, interconnected, and finally made into the product with the highest technological content - the production process of chips can be fully understood by students; for example, the second of the three laws of Kepler (which belongs to high school knowledge): For any planet, the area that the connection with the sun swept through is equal in time. If students want to prove this law, it requires advanced knowledge, but primary school students can fully understand it... In short, hundreds of scientific theorems can be understood by most primary and secondary school students. Among the three aspects of understanding, reciting and proofing of scientific theorems, the most difficult is "proof", the most needed is "understanding", and the least needed is "recitation". In basic education, due to examination reasons, the most important thing is reciting. Newtonian mechanics law requires reciting, and the periodic table of elements requires reciting... But when a scientist conducts scientific research, no one restricts him from turning the book. Modern natural sciences include six categories: physics, chemistry, astronomy, earth science, life sciences, and psychology. Each category includes many categories. For example, physics is divided into mechanics, optics, Thermal , acoustics, Electromagnetics, , relativity, particle physics, Nuclear Physics, , Atom and Molecular Physics, Solid Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, , Condensed Matter Physics, plasma physics , geophysics, biophysics , astrophysics , etc. The mechanics are divided into statics , dynamics, fluid mechanics , analytical mechanics, kinematics, solid mechanics , material mechanics , composite material mechanics , rheology , structural mechanics, elastic mechanics, plastic mechanics, explosive mechanics , magnetofluid mechanics, aerodynamics, rational mechanics, astronomy, and astronomy... There are thousands of disciplines in chemistry, astronomy, earth science, life sciences, etc., among which most primary and secondary school students can understand. The current primary school science textbooks and junior high school physics, chemistry, biology and other courses only grasp a very small part of them for in-depth study, and they mainly focus on memorizing "knowledge". It is like a well, with a small and deep surface. The result is that science education is seriously lagging behind developed countries, and there will be no case that a 14-year-old child will build a nuclear fusion reactor. The narrow knowledge area seriously inhibits students' interest in science, which will affect the development of science and technology in the entire country. The second volume of the sixth grade science textbook compiled by Henan Education Press is divided into four units, namely "The Footprints of Human Ancestors", "Green Community Survey", "Harvest Little Goldfish" and "Improvement of Rain Gear". This is the entire content of the science course a sixth grade student has learned in half a year. Not to mention whether these shallow scientific knowledge students are interested, just saying that a 13-year-old student has only learned such a little bit of science knowledge in one semester. This forms a huge contrast to primary school students' curiosity and desire for the unknown world. At this rate, how much scientific knowledge can they learn in the entire primary school or even junior high school in nine years? How helpful will it be for the formation of students' scientific literacy? A "comprehensive" understanding of science is also in line with the laws of children's physical and mental development, because children like novel things, and even if they are interested in things for a long time, they will lose interest. Only when new things appear constantly can they satisfy their curiosity.When these scientific knowledge continues to appear in front of students in the form of pictures and texts or dynamics, it will greatly stimulate students' interest in science. When students see the Hubble Deep Field, they will be shocked by the colorfulness of the universe; when they see the process of high-end CNC machine tools processing giant propeller , they will feel the beauty of modern industry; when they see the dynamic process of various machinery such as AK47 continuously firing bullets and jet engine , they will know that technology is so clever; when they see the inside of the chip as big as a nail, there is a high inside. When the structure is as complex as a building, they will be amazed at the omnipotence of modern technology; when they see the third Lagrangian point, they will strongly arouse their curiosity; when they understand the mass-energy equation of and Schrödinger Cat, they will know that the way of science is so concise...
The third element of science course is to keep pace with the times. The world today is not only a large number of science types, but also develops rapidly, and new disciplines are constantly emerging, while primary school science textbooks cannot keep up with the development of the times, and some textbooks have not even changed for ten years. Even if a primary school student learns the most cutting-edge scientific knowledge at that time, the knowledge after graduating from university is outdated, let alone unable to access it? Graphene, artificial intelligence, bioengineering , quantum technology, etc., primary and secondary school students are not only interested in these cutting-edge science and technology, but also broaden their horizons, laying a solid foundation for their future scientific literacy.
The fourth element of science class is to get close to nature and practice, because the initial science of human beings comes from nature, from the social practice in production labor , and then step by step into the laboratory and finally enter society from the laboratory. The science education of primary school students should also follow this process. To give a simple example, the initial scientific knowledge of human beings comes from observation of the sky, and most children's interest in science also begins in the starry sky, but how many Chinese primary and secondary school students have observed the starry sky with the astronomical telescope ? Letting students learn scientific knowledge constantly in the classroom is not in line with the laws of physical and mental development of children and is not conducive to cultivating students' interests. It is better to let students observe Jupiter's halo with an astronomical telescope. Primary school students in developed countries such as the United States and Japan often go out to the wild to get close to nature. In nature, students can observe insects, rocks... and experience the scientific knowledge contained in nature. In school, all students have to participate in a large number of small scientific productions, rather than the "patent" of individual students; they should enter society to observe various mechanical equipment, explore the principles, and design something to solve practical problems in society and stimulate their scientific interest.
