The national education standards for teaching science provide little guidance for teaching about the ocean and atmosphere. As a result, information about the oceans, atmospheres, and hydrology are taught in separate, unconnected modules. Worse, many texts include much trivia, neglecting the most important issues. To provide teachers with better guidance, I have been working with the National Marine Educators Association's ad-hoc Committee on National Standards and with six senior oceanographers to outline what every high-school student ought to know about the oceans on graduation. We have produced a document which is open for comments and revisions by all who have an interest in the topic, especially teachers. What is appropriate, what is not? Is it complete? At what level ought the material be taught? The document will eventually be used as a supplement to the national standards.

The senior oceanographers include Wolf Berger (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), Daniel Baden (U. North Carolina, Willmington), Penny Chisholm (MIT), Ted Moore (University of Michigan), George Philander (Princeton University), and Gary Thomas (RSMAS, U. Miami). All have helped produce summary documents of knowledge in their field, and they are widely respected by their colleagues.