William Sanford Nye

“ Then I just want to emphasize also that science is a human endeavor. Science is not something that people were given. Science is not something written down exactly in a book. Science is a human endeavor. ”

“ How do we know that the Earth goes around the Sun? How do we know that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is a result of a virus? These are fundamental things, that the facts are very important, but the way that you come to know the facts is much more important. And this is what is currently called critical thinking, and I think it's the most critical thing that we can teach. And I hope that we can all work together to improve education in this Nation so that the United States is once again the preeminent science and technology community in the world. ”

“ So if we have a workforce, for example, that's half women, in my opinion, we have a scientific community that's half women. If we have a workforce that's what used to be called minorities, now sometimes called People of Color and so on, then we have to a scientific community that's a third People of Color. And this gets into something that is sort of a fundamental, at the base of science, that it's made up of people, so the people that conduct it have to represent our society.
And another thing that's very near and dear to me is the metric system. ”

“ Then the last thing, I guess, is the most important thing we can teach, I think now—the knowledge is expanding so fast. There's so much going on in the world, everyday, with the electronic communication and libraries accessible to so many people, human knowledge is expanding faster than anyone could absorb it all. So what we need to teach is the process of science. ”

“ Now, in a classroom, you wouldn't necessarily want to make every moment be entertaining and exciting, but I certainly hope that you have the idea when you show up as a teacher, you've got to have some material, you have something to say, you have something to show the kids, show to your students, that's interesting and exciting.
So, to me, in science education, we have a tremendous advantage over many other disciplines, with all due respect to people who for some reason didn't choose science for a profession, is that we have props. ”

“ To have this country to be actually the last nation on Earth—the Azores, which is a string of islands, they're converted to the metric system also. We're the last nation in the world, and we're expecting to do business, expecting to carry on commerce with everybody else. It's hard to imagine, really. So, science class is where the metric system can start. ”

“ The way humans have come to understand the world is by doing experiments, by observing things—making observations in particular. And to this end, I look around the end, look at every single thing in this room, and you'll see that it's wooden, those are all shaped by people. The flag, the metal, the little engraved name tags that everybody has, are all shaped by humans who understood the world. Humans who took the time to figure out the way things work. So we have to provide, in my opinion, we have to provide means for every teacher to do these demonstrations for her or his students. ”

“ And another thing along the classroom venue, the classroom environment, where I don't work full-time, just now and then. The classroom, in my opinion, should be a beautiful place. It should be a gleaming place. It should be a place that everyone wants to be. The schools, in my opinion, should be the most striking architecture, the most handsome buildings, in the community. And that is the way, in my view, to attract good people to become teachers. ”

“ There's no one in a corporation in the United States who would go to work—really in a big time corporation, expecting to make an executive salary—where the roofs leak. It's inconceivable. There's no one that would go to work where there isn't enough electrical power to run computers, which are, you know, 40 watt devices, barely a light bulb. ”