Science Classes? Or Science Appreciation Classes?
We’ve talked before about how the U.S. needs to have a major overhaul in science education. The overall lack of understanding of how science works is detrimental to future progress.
Richard Dawkins had an interesting idea for combatting this. In a lecture called, Science, Delusion And The Appetite For Wonder, he cited a clarinet teacher who told Dawkins that his only memory of science in school was “a long period of studying the Bunsen burner.” This rings true in my case, too. With the exception of a few occasional moments in biology classes, I found science to be completely intolerable to my artistic-leaning mind.
My newer adult fascination and interest in science convinces me that my science education backfired. The potential to grab my interest was there. The educators failed to take advantage of it.
And this was Dawkins’ point when he mentioned the clarinet teacher.
Now, you can enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. You can be a discerning and informed concert critic without being able to play a note. . . Couldn’t we treat science in the same way? Yes, we must have Bunsen burners and dissecting needles for those drawn to advanced scientific practice. But perhaps the rest if us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.
Who do we approach to advance Dawkins’ idea of Science Appreciation classes? I think this might have done it for me!
Here is another analogy. My son, Aiden, has a fear of water. A life-long fear. Two different swim teachers who dunked him against his will, along with a near-drowning experience last October, exacerbated the fear. Now that summer time is here he is in swimming lessons again. While most of his class spends half the time learning swimming skills, Aiden and a few other water-shy students stay in the baby pool playing fun games with the purpose of getting them comfortable with the water. They are learning to associate it with fun.
There is no purpose in teaching Aiden the technicality of swimming if all he can think about is his fear that the water will approach his upper body.
But this is exactly the ineffective approach many of the schools take. They teach all kinds of technical lessons before students have learned to associate any meaning to it. Even if the student is able to memorize the lessons well enough to get good grades in the class, the student must have a real interest and understand the significance for it to last in the long-term memory.
In fact, I have a confession to make. When I took the ACT (the university I sought after, and went to, did not use the SAT), I did not recognize a single question in the science section. The only science class I took in all of high school was the required sophomore biology class. If there were any biology questions on the ACT, I did not recognize them.
I shut the book and colored in random circles.
Thankfully I did well on the other sections and my average score was high.
But now here I am, 15 years later, and one of my favorite subjects to read and blog about is science. All I needed was a reason to make it meaningful to me.
We are wasting time and driving away interest by having the schools teach technical science without first instilling an appreciation for, and a positive association to, science.
At least, as parents, we can work on doing this ourselves. Dawkins gave an example of a fun science-fascination activity to do with the kids.
To show how real astronomical wonder can be presented to children, I’ll borrow from a book called “Earthsearch” by John Cassidy, which I brought back from America to show my daughter Juliet. Find a large open space and take a soccer ball to represent the sun. Put the ball down and walk ten paces in a straight line. Stick a pin in the ground. The head of the pin stands for the planet Mercury. Take another 9 paces beyond Mercury and put down a peppercorn to represent Venus. Seven paces on, drop another peppercorn for Earth. One inch away from earth, another pinhead represents the Moon, the furthest place, remember, that we’ve so far reached. 14 more paces to little Mars, then 95 paces to giant Jupiter, a ping-pong ball. 112 paces further, Saturn is a marble. No time to deal with the outer planets except to say that the distances are much larger. But, how far would you have to walk to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri? Pick up another soccer ball to represent it, and set off for a walk of 4200 miles. As for the nearest other galaxy, Andromeda, don’t even think about it!
Don’t your kids love these types of activities? Just the attention from the parents and a family outing experience is positive enough for children. Combine that with a sense of wonder about the mysteries of the universe and you have an experience that may spark a reason for the child to learn the science behind it.
To go along with Dawkins’ activity, I found this page on a website, (thanks to a flippant, funny, and irreverent atheist blog called The WorldWide Rant) that demonstrates a comparison of sizes between the planets and suns. Blake thought it was pretty cool.
Show the web page to your kids, do Dawkins’ activity over the weekend, and come back here to tell me about it.
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June 30th, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
This is one of my favorite subjects and over the past 6 months I have been working on a project that directly addresses a slight variation of the points made in the post.
If one picks up almost any daily newspaper, seldom does a day go by that there aren’t at least four or five articles in the fist few pages that address topics that require some insight into a scientific subject such as stem cell research, global warming, pharmaceuticals, pollution, fuel efficient transportation, new communication and computing technology developments, etc., etc. How does the average citizen keep up with this stuff?
At the same time, there is a growing uneasy feeling about the whole scientific community that suggests that maybe the scientist might not have an adequate social conscience. Didn’t they come up with atom bombs and nuclear power plants that leave waste that is dangerous for millennia? Is there a risk they will try to clone humans? Is there a risk they will try to engineer some foods to make more profit at some risk of harming people that eat them? These types of questions are serious and emotionally charged so they stick in the public’s mind.
What can a science promoting- atheist/agnostic do about such lack of public interest and negative perception issues? My project is a “Science Literacy for Adults” presentation. My goal is to present this in about two hours and to test it I plan to take advantage of an almost captive audience. Mobile home trailer parks are full of bored people that love to have someone come and present almost anything in the recreation center and that is my target.
I am finding it a challenging task because there are so many paths such a presentation can follow. I purchased a “Joy of Science” lecture series that includes no less than 60 lectures on 30 CD’s to get some ideas. Surprisingly I found it to be of little help. It tends to grind through many science principles as though to science students rather than conveying the nature of scientific history and philosophy of critical thinking and excitement of the modern quests that people read about daily. If I can debug the presentation, hold the interest of the audience for two hours and simultaneously light a little spark of understanding, I will feel quite successful.
June 30th, 2006 @ 4:02 pm
Gregg100,
Are you going allow fellow bloggers a sneak peak?
June 30th, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
Wow, Gregg100, that sounds really cool. I hope that if this group does not give a good response you will target another group with slightly different demographics to see.
It might be interesting to go around to moms groups and give lectures or training on science activities to do with their kids.
I’ll be waiting for a report, either on your own blog or in a comment on this one! Email me if you report it on your own blog.
July 1st, 2006 @ 9:31 am
You may already know this, but that’s not just the title of a lecture, but also the title of an entire book he wrote. Coincidentally, I just got it out from the library this week, as I am waiting for his new book, “The God Delusion” to come in on order.
I think Dawkins is great. Had the pleasure of meeting him when he stopped through town to read and sign “The Ancestor’s Tale.” Not to digress into something akin to hero-worship, but it was nice to be able to tell him that his work was one of the 3-4 things I think showed me the road to atheism.
P.S. Thanks for the link.
July 2nd, 2006 @ 9:06 am
Bishop Rick: Right now I’m not sure how I would do a preview. I’ll have to think about that one.
July 2nd, 2006 @ 10:02 am
Andy, yes, I saw there is a book. The lecture seems to be a condensed version. I read a critique of the book and the writer mentioned many of the same things from the aricle.
Isn’t that funny, we have to remind ourselves to be skeptical, even of our skeptic science “heroes?” I would love to have dinner with Dawkins and a few others. I have some questions for them.
July 19th, 2006 @ 2:05 am
The Red Cross used to have a program for kids called “drown proofing,” which could be delivered in a pool in about an afternoon, which significantly improves a kid’s chances of surviving a fall into the water. Is that still out there?
The Boy Scout swimming requirements, especially for the swimming merit badge, include how to use clothes to make floating devices — something I always found fun to do.
Back to topic: Yes, science should be fun. How to do it? Your link to the WherethehellisMatt video offers some interesting possibilities — we see Matt dancing in shallow water, on a rock stuck in a crevice 1000 feet above certain death, on sand dunes, on ice, and on several other surfaces (or below them — Palau!) that should produce hundreds of questions about why the place is cool, and how difficult is it to dance there, etc., etc.
People are, naturally, scientists. We need to stop beating it out of kids first, before we figure out how to improve it in them.
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