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Interesting discussion, and follow up here.  Its interesting that, somewhat contra to both crystal's summary and some of the posts below, what I came away impressed by was not the improvement in science education at BMC relative to high school but rather what I thought was a pretty strong and near consensus view that intro bio as it was several years ago was as bad as high school or worse ("so much of what is learned in intro bio is crap"), that it was not only largely regurgitation based but largely repeating things people had already been exposed to in high school. 

That seems to me relevant not only to recent departmental efforts to rethink intro biology (largely for the reasons mentioned), but also to thinking about biology and science curricula generally and about whether there should be separate majors and non-majors courses.  Our other conversation last week, about immunization/autism, seemed to me to imply that there are aspects of biology/science that it is important for people to understand regardless of their future careers, and that we haven't been  doing a particularly good job of getting those across to either population (cf seeing science for what it is?).  Maybe that's what we could usefully be focusing on in intro courses with both student populations (where they could, among other things, learn to talk better to each other), and we could rely on upper level courses to provide the material needed to be a professional biologist (or to, as per lbonnell, "prepare for a standardized exam that tests specific, detailed information"). 

I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation next Monday, perhaps with further effort to define "scientific literacy", perhaps in contrast to professional literacy?  And to thinking more about forms of pedagogy.  The latter is being actively explored in another course I'm teaching this semester, one on brain, education, and inquiry, and was extensively discussed this past summer in a three week workshop with K12 teachers.  Some of the links/discussion at both places may be useful for our conversation.