why should the solar system be taught in secondary schools?
436921
It is part of your education as a citizen to know something about the "island" we inhabit and the "ocean" that surrounds it. So you can make informed and rational decisions as an adult. \n\nAre you suggesting we should not learn geography either?\n\nIt is part of a deep-felt need of the human psyche to explain and understand how we came to be where we are, and what it means that we are here. Why would you wish to withhold such information?\n\nApart from anything else, space exploration will fill the newspapers and TV programmes and young people will want to be able to make sense of these headlines.\n\nAnd are old Star Trek programmes and Star Wars films just going to disappear? Young people will be bound to come across them. The speculation about what lies out there, via the human imagination, is another deep-felt human need too.\n\nSurely we should be equipping young people to be able to distinguish science fact from science fiction?\n\nAnd in any case, how are we going to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers to develop space exploration, unless the subject is part of general education and can inspire young people to choose a career in it? There are plenty of other frontiers of science, (robotics, AI, genetics, eg) competing for their intellectual interest and commitment.
46929
I don't think science is taught in schools as having "created" the earth, but it does attempt to explain how the earth came to exist in the first place, and I believe the same can be said of religion as well.  \n\nHuman beings have tremendous capacities for learning and thought, and we are constantly engaged in trying to figure out "why things are the way they are."  This often breaks itself up into two schools of thought: one religious, believing God is responsible for everything, and science, which tries to explain why things happen the way they do.  But I am one person who does not believe that the two need to be separated entirely.  \n\nFor instance: many scientists believe in God, and they use science to help them understand what role God played (if any) in the creation of the universe.  Likewise, many religious believers also believe in such scientific ideas as Darwinian evolution, which they believe help them to understand how God created the universe.  \n\nIn fact, if you read the two creation stories in Genesis carefully, you may find many similarities to what modern science tells us about the creation of the universe.  The first creation story in Genesis says that first was the void, which gradually broke itself into light and dark.  This is very similar to what science tells us about stars forming in the "celestial soup" following the Big Bang.  Then Genesis says that the earth was formed, but was covered entirely by water, and was eventually divided up into oceans and dry land.  Science tells us that this is exactly what happened. \n\nNow switching over to the second creation story in Genesis, God is described as creating the simplest plants and animals first over a period of time, finally creating Man (human beings) as his crowning achievement.  This is very similar to what science teaches us occurred under the direction of Darwinian evolution.  \n\nIn a way, Religion's notion of God may simply be another way of saying "How things came to be."  Where science says that evolution "created" the world as we know it today, slowly over a length of time, religious believers say God created the world, slowly over a length of time.  \n\nI certainly don't mean to strip God of his divinity for religious believers, nor to inject God into science inappropriately.  But I would say that with an open mind, you may find that neither science nor religion is "right" or "wrong" when explaining the origination of the earth, but may be two different ways of expressing similar ideas.
1126540
I like this one,\nhttp://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/
608831
Don't want to cut and paste it all, but you can find that information on Wikipedia in the third section down "Age and origin of the solar system"\n\nLink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system\n\n(Or you can just wait a few minutes until someone else cuts & pastes the whole thing.\n\nSome other good sources:\nhttp://www.nineplanets.org/origin.html\nhttp://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/solarsystem/origins.shtml\nhttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article-27552
840546
Solar System/Space\n\nResearch/Informational Sites\n\nhttp://edtech.kennesaw.edu/web/solar.html\n\nhttp://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/flash/index.html\n\nhttp://www.ala.org/gwstemplate.cfm?section=greatwebsites&template=/cfapps/gws/displaysection.cfm&sec=27\n\nhttp://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/\n\nhttp://www.multcolib.org/homework/astrohc.html\n\nhttp://library.thinkquest.org/28327/?tqskip=1\n\nhttp://www.astrocentral.co.uk/beginners.html\n\nhttp://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/astron98.htm\n\nhttp://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/\n\nhttp://www.education.nasa.gov/home/faq_general.html\n\nhttp://www.windows.ucar.edu/\n\nhttp://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/cfapps/free/displaysubject.cfm?sid=8&subid=58\n\nWEBSITES ON THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND SPACE\n\nhttp://www.cumbavac.org/Solar_System_and_Space.htm\n\nGood luck for the future.\n\nKevin, Liverpool, England.
247028
As a teacher i believe that evolution is the only way that we can teach creatioin of man on earth because it is the only theory that we can offer proof of.  Also with the cultural melting pot that America is, teaching only the christian belief of creation would alienate many of the foreign students in America who just do not believe in the same things.  I feel that anything that is based on belief or faith does not have a place to be taught in public schools... it is the job of the parent or guardian to instill thoses beliefs and faith in their child, not the teacher.
192055
That is because like our solar system, other systems are diverse in birth and formation. There are many classes of stars that go through different phases. These phases will determine how many planets, asteroids, comets and planetoids a star has. Some major factors that decide this are:\n1. Amount of material and how much the star uses\n2. The amount of gravity the star posesses (Material will float away from it and in time orbit it.)\n3. The behavior of the star (Does it like to swell 60 times its original size every 200 million years? That would surely destroy any planets.)
332684
It's a failure of American culture that so many people take Genesis literally. Science teachers can only do so much, you know? And besides, when kids are taught Genesis at like age 1 and then evolution at 15, what are they going to believe? Most likely the thing they've known the longest and is the easiest to understand.
1037220
There are definetly more than nine planetes in the solar system.There are many discovered by scientists and many more are yet to be found. And it is suggested that there are many more solar systems in the milky way.
747851
The whole school teaching system should be renewed, from the basic to the high school.\n\nThere are irrelevant things that should not be taught, and there are things that misses from there.\n\nThe world has changed, and so should the school systems.  Because it hasn`t changed, the whole school feels booring and unnecassary waste of time.\n\nAlso I think that the high school mathematic skills should not be tried to teach all of us, because there are clearly 2 kinds of people: the ones that get`s it and the onès that won`t  (no matter how they are threatened with kicking outs) The same goes to subjects that need creativity skills.
432686
The "intelligent design" bandwagon is rolling towards the UK too!\n\nIn direct contrast to the US, we have compulsory school prayer and compulsory religious education, which is probably why we have one of the lowest rates of church going in Christendom (much lower than the US)!\n\nGiven that we have religious education as a school subject compulsory for all students, it seems pretty obvious to me that religious creation myths should be taught in religious education and evolution should be taught in science.  To mix the two would be to confuse the nature of science and religion (the "how" and the "why").\n\nIn the US, you don't have religious education taught in schools, and I think this is why you have more of a problem.  Not teaching children about religion leaves a great many things unexplained!
443551
Satalites have helped make the society we have today possible:  \n1. We broadcast live around the world. \n2. We spy with satalites and I would hate to see space war technology develope elsewhere but not in USA.  \n3. We can study the earth in space in ways we can't on the ground, (a birds eye view so to speak.)\n4. Things with which others can explain.\n\nNASA and Space exploration may be able to detect an asteroid or comet that may strike the earth.  Something most certainly did in Siberia in 1908.  I would not go by any event that happened 65 million years age, but 1908 isn't so long age.  We were so lucky then.  If something like that happens over New York, 10 million people will be killed.  If it happens over the ocean, the title wave will probably compare to the one in 2004.\n\nColonizing space, the moon and/or Mars may prove to be invaluable in the future.  It is proving difficult to clean up this Earth after we messed it up so bad.  We could start over.  (if you care about future generations.)\n\nWe are a species that need to test it's limits.  That is why Stonehedge and the pyramids were built.  We need self esteem as a species.  We will concider our selves disapointments if we don't do that which we are capbable.
78740
Our schools should teach students HOW to learn and study on their own. I was the Valedictorian of my high school, not so much because my teachers were good at teaching me (although they were very kind for sure), but because I learned how to study effectively.\n\nThere is too much information in society today. Schools should focus less on "teaching" (which presupposes that they know everything) and focus more on "empowering students to learn on their own and use their rationality to verify the relevance or validity of information they come across."
1143471
In my astronomy 310 class we discussed missions to Mars, and my professor explained that it COULD be done in a couple years - if there was public interest in it. Since there isn't, and since probes to Mars have been relatively unexciting other than telling us that it used to have water on it before it all evaporated, not many people are too interested in going to a super-hot, rusty, dead planet.
650674
Because astrology is not science. Astrology is a weird system of using astronomical events to predict peoples lives. This has no place in the science section it could go in the Society and Culture section
753718
One is capable of understanding the principals of science, the other is not.\nOne understands that he or she does not have all the answers.\nOne of these two types of people would like for students to learn some usable information while in school.\nOne allows human knowledge to grow and deepen.\nOne is capable of personal development.\nI'll leave it to you to guess which is which.
156002
The solar system was formed from the debris of earlier stars.  As the dust and particles collided and formed bigger chunks, they began to exert a gravitational attraction to each other.  These particles began to rotate around a central point (what would eventually become the sun).\n\nThe sun was formed from the majority of the matter.  Once the sun reached critical mass, it started the fusion reaction that powers the sun still to this day (Fusion of hydrogen into helium).\n\nThe gravitational pull of the sun caused the terrestrial (or rocky) planets to form from the heavier debris that was drawn in closer (and in a faster orbit).  These planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.\n\nThe lighter gasses didn't have as much gravitational attraction as the heavier minerals and these gasses formed the gas giants of our solar system (much further out away from the sun and in a slower orbit).  These planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.\n\nThe last planet, Pluto, is an exception.  It was formed of the left-over debris at the outer edge of the solar system.  It reallys isn't a true planet, more of a Keiper belt object; like a large asteroid.