Declining Number of Blacks Seen in Math in Science

“White men make up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population. We’re drawing (future scientists) from less than 50 percent of the talent we have available,” says Mae Jemison, the first black woman astronaut, who has a medical degree and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering.

“The more people you have in STEM,” she says, “the more innovations you’ll get.”

Jemison says the problem begins for children of all backgrounds in grade school, where they are usually asked to memorize facts out of a book instead of satisfying their natural curiosity through experiments and exploring. She also says many primary school science teachers took little science in college. 

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