Education & Scientific literacy

Education is viewed as an essential to good citizenship. With education, persons (citizens) can make good decisions and deal with exploiters/manipulators that would mislead them. Education leads persons (citizens) to forget unsustainable practices that would leave them poorer – and hungrier. Good citizenship is sometimes viewed as requiring both intellectual skills (such as critical thinking) and participatory skills (such as deliberating civilly, monitoring the government, building coalitions, managing conflict peacefully and fairly, and petitioning, speaking or testifying before public bodies).

Scientific literacy is also frequently touted as a key to good citizenship.

Scientific literacy is the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes in which a person can ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about daily experiences. It means that a person has the ability to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena.

Scientific literacy has different degrees and forms; it expands and deepens over a lifetime, not just during the years in school. But the attitudes and values established toward science in the early years will shape a person’s development of scientific literacy as an adult. The key indicators of person science literacy could be represented in a personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity. It could also include specific types of abilities.