In 1996 the National Science Education Standards were developed to offer a
coherent vision of what abilities students need to achieve scientific literacy by
the time they graduate from high school (National Research Council 1996). Scientific
literacy is, unquestionably, a necessity for success in the modern world:
“Science, energetically pursued, can provide humanity with the knowledge of
the biophysical environment and of social behavior needed to develop effective
solutions to its global and local problems; without that knowledge, progress toward
a safe world will be unnecessarily handicapped” (American Association
for the Advancement of Science 1990, xiv).