Space biology class as part of science education programs for high schools in Japan

Declining incentives and scholastic abilities in science class has been concerned in Japan. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology encourages schools to cooperate with research institutions to raise student's interest in natural sciences. The Science Partnership Program (SPP) and the Super Science High-School (SSH) are among such efforts. Our short SPP course consists of an introductory lecture on space biology in general and a brief laboratory practice on plant gravitropism. Space biology class is popular to students, despite of the absence of flight experiments. We suppose that students are delighted when they find that their own knowledge is not a mere theory, but has very practical applications. Space biology is suitable in science class, since it synthesizes mathematics, physics, chemistry and many other subjects that students might think uninteresting.