Team:KAIT Japan/Human Practices

Survey on the Education of Gene Modification and Attitude Towards Synthetic Biology and Gene Modification Among Japanese High School Students

 As education is important for the next generation to understand about genetically modified organisms and food, we chose education as our human practice topic.

 To learn about what high school students think about gene modified food, we gave a presentation about gene modified organisms and foods during the open campus of our university. And we give out questionnaires to check out what high school students think about gene modified foods before and after our presentation.

 From the questionnaire, we found that most of them think that gene modified foods are not safe and can be harmful to our health before we give out our presentation.

 And after our presentation, not all, but 50% of them changed their mind after they learn about gene modified organisms and food. Some of them remains their thought that gene modified foods are not really good to our health. And some of them thinks that gene modified foods is somehow good to our health. From this, we found out that to let others know that gene modified brings no harm to our health, the best way is through education, as education changes life.

 Besides that, we also made a survey if these high school students learned about the safety of biotechnology and gene modified organisms and foods. And as what we thought, almost all of them haven’t been taught about the safeness of biotechnology and gene modified organisms and foods. From this, we get to know that in Japan, high school students are not getting enough education about biotechnology and gene modified organisms and foods. This is why people holds bad impression on biotechnology and gene modified organisms and foods, because they are not getting enough information about biotechnology, gene modified organisms and foods and their safeness. Education is important for people to know about the changes occurring nowadays, and changing make us improve.

Questionnaire on the education of gene modification and attitude towards synthetic biology and gene modified among Japanese high school students