This edition of Ares is weighted heavily with Mars education. It is time to unwrap the Society's educational goals and offer them for public view. As one of the Society's three cornerstones, education is a critical effort not only for the Society's reputation and forward momentum, but for the global education community.

American public education is a very difficult arena in which to work. America's public education was decided two centuries ago by the architects of our Constitution, who included education almost as an afterthought. In fact, the Constitution is virtually silent about this aspect of our culture except to say that each individual state should decide its own education system. Unfortunately, this is the manner in which education developed over two centuries of our history. The result is 50 different education systems completely devoid of coordination and cohesiveness. Young people in Massachusetts do not receive the same kind of education as students in Mississippi or Montana. Similarly, teachers in Colorado are trained differently from teachers in Kansas or New York.

Education policy-making is mandated by a state Board of Education. The figurehead for the Board is the state Commissioner of Education - usually an appointed position. Daily classroom instruction, therefore, usually is decided without teacher or administrator advice. Also, within any single state, any number of separate "school districts" have been set up to work within the general population. This means that Arizona can have 6 school districts while Missouri has 24. Funding is then disproportionate. The city of St. Louis needs much more money to operate than does the little town of Hannibal, and so St. Louis can exert much more pressure on the State Legislature than can Hannibal.

Strangely enough, all this disorganization can work to the advantage of the Mars Society and its educational goals. What is being offered to the Society's teachers is a standard national curriculum that is just as clear-cut and sensible for North Dakota as it is for Alabama or Vermont.

The curriculum was built from the bottom up - from Kindergarten through each successive grade right into the university level. The curriculum indicates what should and can be taught at each grade level. At times, there are opportunities for reinforcement of earlier learned information. In addition, the curriculum was designed for student "readiness" at each level - intellectual, emotional and physical readiness to learn and to be active.

Education functions in foreign countries should have little problem adapting the curriculum to each nation's own particular needs. In fact, the curriculum should fit very well with "nationalized" education systems such as those that exist in the United Kingdom or Norway. Over the forty years of my career, I've been privileged to teach almost all grade levels in America and Europe, as well as to conduct teacher training seminars. Most European nations have a nationalized education system with grade-targeted subject matter goals, including goals for Earth and space sciences. Great Britain, especially, should find it simple enough to incorporate the Mars Society's curriculum into its own system.

The curriculum printed on this CD-ROM is a starting place. Over the years it will, without doubt, change as progress is made in space science. It is a recommended guide, designed to provide the coordination the American system does not have and which the Europeans have had for many decades.

I have no doubt that the Mars Society curriculum will be severely attacked from numerous directions and by numerous groups. To be honest, the curriculum contains a bit of heresy here and there, but in general it is a rebuttal to the kind of American disorganization that exists today. My reply to these attacks is a remark made by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) mid-way through his life: "Unfortunately, my education was interrupted by twelve years of schooling." The comment is just as appropriate today as when it was first said almost a hundred years ago.

The education ideas contained in this second CD-ROM can be the start of something wonderful - preparation of humankind to meet the challenges of a new and exciting civilization on a New World. Make no mistake about it - there are "Martians" in your classrooms today, getting ready for the adventures of which you and I can only dream. But these young people, who later will be filling the shopping malls and election booths, must be prepared properly. They must know their way around Mars before they ever get there, and they must know what they can expect when they step off the spacecraft onto Mars' soil for the first time. That is our job - to give them the tools and information they need to succeed in a new civilization 200 million miles from planet Earth.

We MUST NOT sacrifice content subject matter for the sake of "hands-on" experiences. It is highly important that we understand Mars as a working body in space - a new world heir to the kinds of driving forces that are at work on Earth. Hands-on is interesting, and at times even highly entertaining, but it is not a substitute for the basic knowledge that helps us solve problems of living on Mars. Young people need endless experience with computers, but not necessarily computer games. The computer should be a tool for the purpose of creating and manipulating data. Young people need considerable experience building and launching model rockets, to get a suitable "feel" for aerodynamics. But these activities should be mixed with hard study activities if we are ever to understand what Mars as a planet is all about.

On a July evening in 1965, I quietly excused myself from a friend's lawn party to scurry back home to the television set to see the very first pictures beamed back to Earth from Mariner 4 as it whipped past Mars. It was an exciting moment as JPL's Al Hibbs narrated what we were looking at - those digital splotches and splats that for all time told us Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell were wrong. From that moment, I followed everything there was to follow concerning Mars through Mariners 6,7 and 9, the Viking missions, and now the modern fleet of robotic spacecraft speeding over and on the Martian landscapes.

In August 1998, and again this past summer of 1999, I took my family to the American southwest to see what Mars will look like when humans first step on its lonely landscape. From the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs and the Royal Gorge on through the Rocky mountains and southeast Utah's incredible canyons and bright red rocks, all the way to the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater in Arizona, we saw the world about which we had talked so much. This was Mars on Earth, and right here in America's southwest.

I hope teachers will visit those places and touch the enormous stones reaching skyward, and bring back pictures and tales to tell to students. This ultimate Mars field-trip will change your life.

Finally, I have to say to those not acquainted with professional daily education - the engineers and chemists and biologists - that public education needs your skills, your dedication, and your knowledge. Give of yourself to the schools in your own community, to share with these young people the dreams of Sagan and Bradbury and Zubrin. We have told them WHY - now you must tell them HOW. And it will be up to the Mars Society to tell them WHEN.

James P. Warburg, an historian, once wrote: "We shall have to learn to think, not in terms of charity or in terms of enlightened self-defense, but in terms of pioneers opening up new horizons, clearing new fields, and conquering the desert areas. We shall have to shake off the corroding fear of losing what we possess and recapture the spirit of adventure, along with the affinity for all men everywhere seeking change for the better, which once made our nation a symbol of hope throughout the world."

History will note that, here in this Mars Society, we have made a beginning. The present is but a fleeting moment ; tomorrow will prove the reality of our determination.

Tom Becker, Chair
Education Task Force