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What are the major issues facing society?

Increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth and income, in this country exacerbated by race, invites social disorder and threatens the institutions of self-government in the major Western economies.
Weakened authority of government in those economies -- for example, their total loss of control of the value of their currencies -- reduces the prospects for halting or redress of 1., above.
Ignorance of science in the populations in those countries disables citizens in the exercise of their sovereignty. Having no economic independence (85 percent or more make their living in the status of employee; contrast Tawney's "... no fairer social order than that where the citizen could say: 'It is a comfort in a man's mind to live upon his own, to own the tools with which he works and know his heir certain.'"), they are deprived as well of intellectual and moral autonomy.

What is the role of science in addressing these issues?

If "science" can be taken to mean the community of science, then the role is plainly indicated by 3. above. The high-school curriculum reform of the late '50s - early '60s stands as an admirable precedent and model of the action to be instituted and sustained, next time, as a social obligation of the professoriate.

What are the issues/challenges confronting science?

See 3., above. Among other considerations, the community of science cannot expect support of its enterprise from weakened central governments in the absence of an informed electorate. It is by no means clear that the 1996 election will reverse or reduce the determination of the 1994 Congress to secure a reduction by one-third in the Federal outlay for the sciences by 2002.

What should the role of the AAAS be?

The AAAS should readdress the question of science education with concern for the intellectual and moral autonomy of the future sovereign citizen. "What we know" is not nearly as important as "How we know what we know."
The AAAS should mobilize the third sector -- funding by the Federal government being increasingly unlikely -- in mounting a nationwide campaign for the reform of science education, the initiation of education in science, as defined above, in the earliest years of education, and the permanent commitment of the university professoriate to this cause.

Introduction

AAAS at the Millenium Board Position Paper