"Human history," said H.G. Wells, "becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." That was in 1920, but his words are more relevant than ever.
Commenting on the planned increase in spending on research and school science announced by Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, the President of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford, said on Tuesday: "Reversing [the previous government's under-investment] in school laboratories is essential if we are to provide high-quality school lessons to future generations of pupils, teaching them that science is about asking questions and testing ideas, not boring memorization."
Science education is an issue to which May is committed. In September last year, he told an audience of pupils and teachers at the Science Museum in London that science was a creative subject demanding imagination and ingenuity.