Scientific disciplines: only source of scientific content for basic education in Mexico?

Abstract

For over 40 years criteria to select science contents for basic education in Mexico focus on structure, fundamental ideas and methodology of scientific disciplines. The science curriculum declares that science education should be useful to students to prepare them as citizens who could use scientific knowledge and process to solve problems of their everyday living. These ideas were justified with the argument that citizens who knew science would be able to understand their social and natural environments and therefore they could act on it. The objective of this article is to promote the debate about the disadvantages of designing the science curriculum from this perspective. Author’s work in rural and indigenous communities shows that educational needs of the students are not in agreement with the science contents in the curriculum: a) The knowledge that students need for understanding a specific problem of their everyday living and make decisions to solve it bears no relation to the science content in the curriculum. b) The levels of generality and abstraction of the science content do not correspond with those that students require to understand their reality. c) The organization and distribution of the science contents in the different educational levels do not correspond with student’s needs or wishes to know them at specific moments of their lives. d) Science curriculum is not useful for satisfying the educational necessities of the rural and indigenous communities. They need scientific and technological knowledge but schools are unable to offer it to them properly.