Culture is defined as a society’s system of values, ideology and social codes of behavior; its productive technologies and modes of consumption; its religious dogmas, myths, and taboos; and its social structure, political system and decision-making process (Coombes, 1985). The cultural environment in which an individual is raised is thus fundamental to the life view with which he perceives his world. Since his world view encompasses ideas of space and time, it is therefore not surprising that his understanding of astronomical concepts is inextricably bound to his cultural envelope.

This paper sets out to examine some of the ways cultural complexities affect the understanding of astronomical concepts and thus to make the case for a more realistic approach to the teaching of astronomy in a multicultural society, recognizing the importance of culture and the way students learn (Burger, 1973; Teynolds and Skilbeck, 1976).

Recently in the United States, a small but vocal group of citizens has been promoting a view known as “creationism,” the assertion that the universe and everything in it was created in six days by divine fiat as suggested by a literalist interpretation of the Christian Bible. In a now common variant, “scientific creationism” or “creation-science,” they assert further that this version of creation is proven true on “scientific” evidence alone, independent of any religious underpinnings. Legislation requiring the teaching of creation-science alongside of evolution in the public schools has been proposed in over twenty states; in Louisiana and Arkansas such legislation was passed, although it was later struck down by federal courts as a violation of the separation of church and state.

As several previous speakers have noted, astronomers are a rare breed. Even though we represent the oldest science, we are as rare as poets. The fact that our discipline is so distinct suggests that it should also have its peculiar pedagogical problems. I have been attempting to understand a pervasive element of all astronomical thinking — the use of spatial imagination to link celestial phenomena to terrestrial analogs. My work has two components — a theoretical explication of astronomical thinking and some practical use of these ideas in teaching situations.

If one looks at some of the fundamental “facts” discovered by astronomers, we will find that we often do not, in fact, directly verify our discoveries as scientists supposedly do. Primary astronomical “truths” such as the sphericity of the Earth, the heliocentric orbit of the Earth, the identification of the stars as distant suns, and the recognition that galaxies are enormous collections of stars, were not discovered by direct verification. Thus, we note that the Greeks discovered the Earth’s sphericity nearly two millennia before its circumnavigation and that only a few thousand very bright stars in nearby galaxies have been resolved in our largest telescopes. Some of the primary objects of astronomical discourse, then, are not perceptible objects, but objects created by the spatial imagination.

Early American colonists had a deep interest in astronomy. Between 1725 and 1764, Nathaniel Ames published the Astronomical Diary and Almanac at Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was a brief, widely-circulated source of astronomical information. It averaged an amazing 60,000 sales per year, while the better known Poor Richard’s Almanac distributed only about 10,000 per year (Noble, 1970).

Practical skills were the dominant theme in early colonial schools. The astronomy that was taught dealt with natural phenomena such as phases of the moon, eclipses, and, for practical purposes, navigation and time-keeping. Astronomy was also frequently taught as a part of what we today would call physical geography courses. This practical nature of our culture dominated American schools until about the middle of the 1800’s. Astronomy, as a separate subject, did appear in the curriculum of academies — forerunners of the modern American high school. A popular textbook of this period, An Easy Introduction to Astronomy For Young Gentlemen and Ladies, by James Ferguson, dated 1817, illustrates this point. It is almost completely devoted to the explanation of natural phenomena (Ferguson, 1817). It is a charming book, taught in classic dialogue form between the teacher and his students.

The college-educated populations of colonial 18th- and 19th-century United States were reasonably well-versed in principles of elementary astronomy — perhaps not fully in spatial concepts of seasons and lunar phases, though they certainly had some correct ideas about their causes. Astronomy had found a niche in academies and in the public high schools that succeeded them. In 1838 an observatory was installed in a Philadelphia high school. The states turned to the academies and early high schools for the majority of their elementary teachers, so the teachers who completed high school in the 19th century had been taught the reasons for common astronomical phenomena and conveyed these reasons to children. Parental teaching reinforced what was taught in primary schools. Until the late 19th century, colleges continued to offer astronomy or natural philosophy as part of the general curriculum. It therefore seems that a cycle of astronomy teaching and learning rudimentary astronomy was in effect until the late 1900’s.

Project STAR (Science Teaching through its Astronomical Roots) emerged from growing concern about the decreasing enrollment in science classes, and lack of understanding of science and math concepts (Figure 1). Using astronomy as a focus, Project STAR is trying not simply to increase the enrollment in high school science courses, but also to improve the students’ understanding of science and its role in making sense of the world.

The educational approach of Project STAR is based on three principles:

• Mastery of a few ideas is more important for students than cursory exposure to many concepts.

• Students learn best through hands-on activities.

• Students enter the classroom with certain preconceptions, or “naive theories,” about how physical systems work, without a sense of whether their understandings are accurate (often they are not).

The school system in the Federal Republic of Germany is generally of the classical European type as defined by D. Wentzel in his paper for this colloquium. Children enter school at age 6. After 4 years of primary school they enter secondary schools. The gymnasium type lasts for 9 or 7 years, depending on the state. The final exam (Abitur) entitles the students to go to university.

The interest of pupils in learning about astronomy is generally very high. But the usual science or physics teacher’s education in most of our federal states does not include any thorough knowledge of astronomy; physics curricula are overcrowded with traditional matter and more and more modern technical applications, without reducing the time allotted to old topics. Practically speaking, there are very few lessons left that might be used for astronomy teaching.

The major problem in teaching astronomy in our senior high schools has to do with the nature of the Japanese educational system. The typical science curriculum consists of physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and general science I & II. The Japanese Ministry of Education allows General Science I to fulfill the minimum high-school graduation requirement in science. General Science I covers the basics of earth science. Astronomy has been taught as a part of General Science I and Earth Science.

Many Japanese high schools do not offer earth science because it is not covered in the college entrance exams (Table l). Moreover, teachers usually spend many hours with the students memorizing the basics of earth science rather than allowing some time in the laboratory.

At present, astronomical teaching in the Bulgarian secondary schools is incorporated in the subject of physics. This situation dates from about 10 years ago. Before that, astronomy was a separate school subject with 15 to 30 hours in the last (10th) year of school. Now a new reform aroused by the rapid social and economic progress is in operation. During the course of the reform, one not very definitive decision was taken by the Ministry of Education to again separate astronomy, with about 30 hours in the 11th year of a school system which now has 12 years. In connection with this reform, the Ministry asked the Department of Astronomy at Sofia University to work out a project for developing a didactic system for teaching astronomy in the secondary schools. The elements of the system are: alternative variants for the curriculum and the respective textbooks; advisable teaching methods with the appropriate didactic means (diagrams, models, slides, films, etc.);computer programs to demonstrate astronomical objects and phenomena and for pupil computer dialogues, including means for controlling the knowledge level.

The Liaison Committee between School-Teachers and Astronomers (in French, “Comité de Liaison Enseignants Astronomes” or CLEA) was officially created about ten years ago under its present form, but its story began in 1970. In that time, there was no astronomy at all in French school programs, neither in elementary nor in secondary schools.

A discussion was beginning about introducing physics earlier in the curriculum, with a specific purpose, the main ideas being (i) to avoid too much formalism (and formalism is a strong general characteristic of French science teaching) and (ii) to concentrate on experimentation and on the various representations of natural phenomena.

Various simple activities are being developed by the French Comité de Liaison Enseignants Astronomes (CLEA) in the training of school teachers. We give in the following one example of a very simple instrument which we call “Alphonse’s box,” after Alphonse Delavergne who invented it. It is also called a heliograph. This very simple and inexpensive instrument enables (1) the plotting of the daily apparent path of the sun, (2) the determination of the duration of sunlight, and (3) the determination of the declination of the sun. The following description is due to Maryse Jonas:

1. photosensitive paper (used by architects) that can be handled in semi-darkness; its sensitive face is yellow and it is developed by the vapor of an ordinary ammonia solution in about ten minutes;

2. a simple can, with a cover that will shut tight; approximate dimensions: diameter 10 cm, height 15 cm, with a hole about 0.5 mm in diameter on one side;

3. two pieces of wood, 15 x 15 cm and 15 x 20 cm; one butt hinge; one threaded rod with two nuts and two washers.

In September 1976, at the end of the IAU General Assembly held at Grenoble (France), a one-day meeting concerning the teaching of astronomy was organized by Commission 46. It was decided during this symposium, which brought together 150 French school teachers and 50 astronomers, among other things, to organize a summer school of astronomy the following summer. Since then, such a school has been organized every summer. These astronomy Summer Universities are one of the activities developed by the non-profit organization CLEA (Comité de Liaison Enseignants Astronomes) whose activities are discussed elsewhere in these proceedings. In astronomy, children are always very curious. Because of this interest, in the 1970’s some French astronomers applied pressure on the Education Ministry to introduce the subject in schools, and they were successful. However, astronomy was not introduced as a new separate subject, but rather as a part of another subject, mainly mathematics or physics.

Since 1984, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) has sponsored a quarterly newsletter on teaching astronomy in grades 3-12. Cosponsored by the American Astronomical Society, the Canadian Astronomical Society, and the International Planetarium Society, the project now reaches over 20,000 teachers and schools in the US and Canada.

We would like colleagues overseas to examine the newsletter, and, if they find it useful, to consider translating and distributing it. We will be glad to make it available without charge to anyone who is interested.

Since 1978, the summer meetings of the ASP — held in a different city each year — have featured one to three days set aside for workshops on astronomy for teachers. In recent years, between 150 and 200 teachers have come each summer— at their own expense — to take these credit workshops and learn more about astronomical topics, activities, and resources.

It is widely known that a crisis in science and mathematics teaching exists in the United States. This crisis has reached all levels of education, from elementary to secondary to colleges and universities. The problem, which is easy to define but difficult to resolve, is trifold: there are not enough high-quality science and mathematics teachers; present teachers are teaching out-of field or are out-of-date and in need of subject updating; and the average education graduate is only minimally qualified to teach science and math. These factors have caused national and state “alarms” to be published that point out the increasing mediocrity and an overall lack of science education in our nation’s schools.

Central Michigan University, long among the nation’s leaders in the training of teachers at all levels, is taking steps to remedy this alarming situation. A Science and Mathematics Teaching Center, designed to confront the problem head-on, has been founded. The Center’s major purpose is to improve the quality of science and math teaching. This goal is being accomplished through a series of workshops, seminars, in-service programs, conferences, and teacher outreach programs.

Astronomy is an integral part of many high-school science programs. Project STAR and the Science Assessment and Research Project at the University of Minnesota have recently recognized this. In addition, astronomy is a part of most elementary and middle-school science programs. In the Platteville, Wisconsin, school system, the solar system is a unit of study for all third grade students and a study of the stars is a part of the eighth grade science program. This is also true for other school systems in this area, in the Chicago area, and I would suspect, across the nation.

However, most elementary school teachers have had little science course work and none in astronomy. Middle-school and high-school teachers have better backgrounds for teaching science but little or no astronomy course work. Some of those who teach astronomy are active in local astronomy groups and read Astronomy or Sky and Telescope magazines, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Most pre-college teachers in the United States have not been trained in astronomy. In Texas, astronomical concepts enter the pre-college science curriculum at all levels.

During the last six years, I have presented two different types of workshops: intensive three-week summer institutes for rather small numbers of teachers, and shorter 6- to 18-hour workshops for larger groups.

The University of Texas Astronomy Department and McDonald Observatory have hosted five of the intensive institutes. The institutes were established to offer an opportunity to learn astronomy through hands-on activities (Texas education regulations mandate that 40 per cent of all pre-college science classes should be laboratory oriented), and to introduce the teachers to modern astronomical research and facilities.

In 1985, the National University of Mexico (UNAM) created a series of updating courses for high-school level teachers, both as an answer to an explicit demand of the teachers themselves, who asked for “fresh” information in their fields, and as an effort to improve the general level of undergraduate students, whose grades in the entrance examinations to the University had been secularly decreasing for years. To date, three “packages” of intensive 50-hour courses have been offered (during the three summer vacation periods) and Astronomy has been present in all of them. However, it should be mentioned that this presence was due only to the personal interest of the director of the project, since the subject “Astronomy” is not included in the official programs. In the following, we present a brief description of the courses and some interesting results.

The Italian Astronomical Society is one of the oldest Italian scientific associations: founded in Rome in 1871 as the Society for Italian Spectroscopists, it includes professional as well as amateur astronomers and teachers among its 800 members.

In the last 10 years, the Society has been concerned with the problems of teaching, as a result of the enormous demand from schools where astronomy is often not well taught at any level because of a lack of suitable qualified teachers.

To meet this need, the Society publishes a quarterly journal entitled Il Giornale di Astronomia, which includes news of astronomical events, informative articles and accounts of didactic experiences as well as other information that may be helpful to teachers of astronomy.

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) was founded in 1930 by members of the American Physical Society whose main interest was the teaching of physics. Since then its primary goal has remained the improvement of physics teaching at all levels. The Association publishes two journals (American Journal of Physics and The Physics Teacher) and a bulletin (The Announcer). The American Journal of Physics is intended for papers concerning physics teaching at the level of colleges and universities in the United States while The Physics Teacher is concerned primarily with introductory physics, including high-school courses. Two national meetings are held annually as well as numerous regional meetings.

I suppose it is inevitable that astronomy should be one of the easier sciences to “popularize.” The sky is all around us; even our remote cave-dwelling ancestors must have looked up into the sky and wondered at what they saw there, even though they could have no idea of the nature or scale of the universe. Naturally, they believed the Earth to be supreme, and to have everything else arranged around it for our special convenience. Believe it or not, this point of view is not quite dead even now — and this brings me on to my first point.

Some time ago I attended a meeting of the International Flat Earth Society, held in London. Its members believe that the world is shaped like a pancake, with the North Pole in the middle and a wall of ice all around. The meeting was quite remarkable, and participants were totally sincere. Later, I rather ill-naturedly put them in touch with a German society whose members maintain that we live on the inside of a hollow sphere, and I understand that they are still fighting it out; but of course this is quite harmless — and as I have often said, the world would be poorer without its “Independent Thinkers.” But other aspects of eccentric thought are less laudable, and of course I am thinking of astrology, which has experienced a curious revival in recent times.