African and African-American Contributions to Science and Technology

African and African-American Contributions to Science and Technology

A recent National Science Foundation report, Science and Engineering
Education for the 1980’s and Beyond, warned that important national
decisions involving science and technology will be made increasingly
on the basis of ignorance and misunderstanding because of a trend
toward virtual scientific and technological illiteracy in the population at
large.

To meet this challenge, the report outlined strategies to help the educational
system. The most critical need is the development of curricula to
engage the interests of students of average ability and less and also
those who are alienated from science and mathematics, particularly
minorities.
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Deanna Banks Beane of American University in Washington, D.C. and the
National Urban Coalition, points out in Mathematics and Science:
Critical Filters for the Future3 that while many major efforts are now being
made to generate and heighten interest in mathematics and science
among all pre-college students, encouraging, even requiring them to take
more mathematics and science courses, a significant number of minority
students, for a host of reasons, are still losing out.