When the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for strengthening science education in the U.S., saying the nation needed more scientists. But it’s not quite accurate to say Sputnik’s launch led the U.S. to change its science curriculum, according to John Rudolph of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an expert on the history of science education in the U.S. “When Sputnik came along, that’s what got the public’s attention,” Rudolph says, “but the science [education] reforms were already well underway in response to what [the United States] thought was going on in the Soviet Union.”
Regardless of what triggered the reforms, science education saw dramatic changes during this time. Before the mid-1950s, high school science education in the U.S. was focused on everyday applications like nutrition and what Rudolph calls “refrigerator physics” — the science you need to understand how appliances work. But scientists were calling for the American public to learn about what they actually do, like experimentation and data analysis.
The purpose of these educational reforms after the mid-1950s was to help the general public understand the research funded by their taxes and to garner support for scientific research as a whole, not necessarily to create more scientists and engineers, says Rudolph.
“If we just start focusing on trying to get people to do science,” Rudolph says, “we lose trying to understand what science is as a larger enterprise and as an institution in society.”
Scientific research doesn’t always have clear applications or result in economic gain right away. Societies must decide whether investing in science should always be a means to an end or whether it is a worthwhile goal in its own right.
“Should we, as a society, be having another space race . . . as a way to create jobs in the future?” Whalley asks. “Or is the space race more about getting people to the Moon?”
Erika K. Carlson is a Moon-gazing science writer who dreamed of being an astronaut when she was 5.