Sally Ride, UTPA and Science Education For All

Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space, died on Monday of pancreatic cancer.  She was 61 years old.  The woman was a class act from the word, “go” and deserves her place in history.  She is the kind of woman that I want my granddaughters—and grandsons—to use as a role model. 

            Ride, who at age 32 was also the youngest astronaut to go into space, had a PhD in Physics from Stanford University.  She was the complete package: smart, pretty, a nationally ranked tennis player, with a work ethic that compelled her to succeed at every level.  She was also the child of Presbyterians who lived their faith.  All of these things helped create a woman who had her eyes on the stars and her feet on the ground.  It also, evidently, gave her the grace to work past the stupid, sexist, pandering questions that accompanied her unique position as a female astronaut in the ‘80’s. 

There are some reporters out there who should, if they are not already, be hanging their heads and returning part of their ill deserved salary for asking her questions like, “Do you wear a bra in outer space?” or, “Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?”  Did these same reporters question any male astronaut about their underwear or tendency to tear up?  No, but Ride kept her composure and did her job.  

            After retiring from NASA, Ride started an organization, “Sally Ride Science.”  The company is tasked to encourage high quality and effective science, technology, engineering and math education among elementary and middle school students.  Ride’s goal was to bring inspiring science instruction to all students, which certainly includes the girls and minorities who have been given short shrift in these fields.  This country needs what Ms. Ride wanted:  first class science instruction for all of its students. 

            That brings me to an article I clipped from the McAllen newspaper, The Monitor, in May of this year.  What first struck me about the article was that the word, “scholarships” was misspelled in the headline.   But once I had gotten past the need to blue pencil that bit of foolishness, I settled into the meat of the article.  The National Science Foundation awarded $600,000 to University of Texas, Pan-American in McAllen, Texas to recruit and retain more chemistry and physics majors over the next five years.  If you know the Rio Grande Valley, you know that this goal automatically embraces the Latino community.  Good!  Right now, there is a paucity of women and minorities in the physical sciences.  Since talent and genius are equally present throughout all of mankind, to leave out large numbers of people based on sex or ethnicity is a waste of talent. 

            The person in charge of this project, Mr. Edgar Corpuz, is wisely hoping to create more good science teachers, in order to produce more good scientists.  I would add that we also need an entire generation of people who simply know more science, period.  The fact is that whether or not you work in the sciences, we are all consumers of science every day of our lives. 

If you watch the Big Bang Theory on television you know that smart is the new sexy.  Good.  Personally I have grown weary of vacuous, self-serving, spoiled brats being proud of how little they study and how much they don’t know.  As a retired science teacher and author of a science textbook, I will tell you that a bumper crop of Sally Rides sounds like a grand idea to me. 

Study science and keep the faith.  Yup, they fit well together.