Today I’m off to Portland, OR for the 2010 American Physical Society’s March meeting to participate in this panel:

Science Literacy, the Nature of Science and Religion

Jon Miller: The Development of Civic Scientific Literacy in the United States

Sheril Kirshenbaum: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future

Murray Peshkin: Addressing the Public About Science and Religion

Judith Scotchmoor: Increasing our understanding of how science really works

Art Hobson: Physics Literacy for All Students

Our session will be moderated by Lawrence Woolf and you can read the abstracts online. I’m really looking forward to what I’m certain will be a very interesting discussion.

Art Hobson, an Emeritus physicist at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, has reviewed our book for the American Physical Society’s educational forum, and it seems he liked it. A quote:

Summarizing its prescription, the book’s final chapter states “We must fundamentally change the way we think and talk about science education,” and this means rethinking the education of scientists as well as the public school and college education of non-scientists. “We don’t simply need a bigger scientific workforce: We need a more cultured one, capable of bridging the divides that have led to science’s declining influence. …We must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America’s citizenry.” I couldn’t agree more.

You can read Hobson’s full review here.