Astronomy to Understand a Human Environment

Summary

Astronomy is an important science in understanding a human environment. However, it is thought by most politicians, economists, and members of the public that astronomy is a pure science having no contribution to daily human activities except a few matters relating to time. The Japanese government is studying a reorganisation of our school system to have 5 school days per week, instead of 6 days per week, and this July its committee made a recommendation to reduce school hours for science and set up new courses for practical computers and environmental science. I currently made a proposal. It is very difficult for most of the school pupils, who will have non-scientific jobs, to understand science courses currently taught in school, because each science is taught independently from the other sciences. Therefore, their knowledge of sciences obtained during their school period does not greatly help their understanding of global environmental problems. We should present several stories to connect all the related sciences in order to give those pupils ideas in the understanding of global environmental problems. I believe that astronomy is able to play an important role in this context.

Expansion of scientific items to be taught.

Items which should be taught at school increase depending on time. Although items in language courses, mathematics courses, art courses and gymnastic courses increase little, those of social science courses increase gradually, but those in science courses do so drastically in recent decades. Therefore, it becomes much more difficult to teach all the necessary pupils. Pupils at the lower level of an elementary school have an interest in science, especially in astronomy.