Bringing Mars to the classroom

The straight-talking, chess-loving Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, has a new cause to champion - the British mission to land on Mars.

This week, he joined Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and Mars scientist Professor Colin Pillinger to launch educational resources linked to the Beagle 2 project, as BBC News Online's Helen Briggs reports.

Charles Clarke (left) with Colin Pillinger, Lord Sainsbury and school pupils

When Charles Clarke was a boy, watching the solar eclipse of the early 1960s, he asked his father when the next one would be.

"I don't know", he recalls his father saying, "write to the Astronomer Royal and ask him."

So he did, and duly received a reply - 1999, which turned out, of course, to be correct.

What struck him about this, he says, is that it is only in the last few hundred years that an answer could be given to the question.

The important issue, he believes, is to use science to answer the questions that we need and want to know the answers to.

From GM to MMR

This attitude to science translates into his ambitions for the school curriculum - to encourage thinking and dialogue around big and important questions, thereby promoting science and the scientific method.

The interface between science and scientific method on the one hand and political governmental decision-taking structures on the other is not as clear as it ought to be Charles Clarke

In this way, he is waging a battle against what he calls obscurantism - defined in the Oxford Dictionary as the practice of preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known.

"I sometimes feel we are waging a battle for science against obscurantism in whole areas of public life which are very important and which we need to take on," he said in his speech at the National Maritime Museum.

"And so I do think that we need the subject specialisms in science... to encourage thinking and discussion amongst all our young people and in our schools."

So what does he mean by this battle against obscurantism? It comes to the fore, he believes, in issues of "current political controversy" such as genetically modified food and the MMR vaccine.

"I think it is important to assert that science and scientific analysis or a scientific method is the right way to address these problems rather than the mobilisation of prejudice which is why I used the word obscurantism in this area," he told BBC News Online.

"On issue after issue after issue, the interface between science and the scientific method on the one hand and political decision-taking structures on the other is not as clear as it ought to be and I want to make the case for science.

"And what I think is very positive about this and the relation to education is that it is saying science and the scientific method is the way to try to deal with this problem."

Inspiring students

Charles Clarke studied Maths and Economics at Cambridge University before entering politics.

He admits that he is not a true scientist by training but says, while he has never studied it in depth, space has always excited him.

Pparc has produced a schools' pack

He watched the 1999 eclipse from Omaha beach in Normandy with his family and he has followed events such as the Mars close approach to Earth this summer.

He believes it is important for the UK to participate in high quality space science programmes, to inspire students to study science. But he will not break ranks on the issue of manned space flight.

"I don't think a manned programme is essential," he says. "A manned program can be dramatic but I'd say more important than a manned programme is a high quality scientific programme of which I think [Beagle 2] is part.

"The key element is to have an exciting scientific programme which says we want to understand more about where we live and how we are - and I think there is an appetite for it.

"You just have to look at the sales of Stephen Hawkings' books, for example, to see that there is an appetite for this if you get it across in the right kind of way."

So, with university applications for subjects such as physics and engineering falling dramatically, how does he hope to inspire today's school children to become scientists or engineers?

"The most exciting thing to happen is to get the working together of people who are actually working in science, whether in laboratories, whether in space such as this, whether in big companies which are based on scientific exploration, with what's going on in the schools," he says.

"Because actually it's in those working environments, where people are doing really exciting things, and I think that can of itself inspire students."

• The British National Space Centre's Learning Zone website has a range of curriculum-based education resources, including lesson plans and worksheets, targeted at teachers of 11-16-year-olds.
• The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PParc) has produced a special pack, Express To Mars, containing teacher notes, activities and worksheets for four age ranges (7-11, 11-14, 14-16, post-16) and an A4 poster of Mars Express and Beagle 2. To order a copy of the pack, email [e-mail].
• This autumn the Open University has introduced a short course covering the search for life on Mars. The 100-hour course, Exploring Mars: Beagle 2 And The Search For Life, is designed for people with little or no experience of scientific study.