Anthonares

I’m reading my copy of Richard Feynman’s “The Feynman Lectures on Physics” in preparation for taking the physics GRE in November, I came across this passage:

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms–little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied. –Volume 1, p. 1-2 [all emphasis original]

This lovely piece of thought, so succinctly delivered, immediately got me thinking. If the atomic hypothesis is what would be so important to pass on to those who would inherit the mantle of scientists in the event of some cataclysm, why not pass on that idea to our youth–those who are truly going to inherit that mantle. With Cheryl currently training to teach our next generation of young scientists, and having just recently passed through the current system, I feel like I can comment a bit on how we train our scientists, so here goes.

Right now, we teach our young scientists by the following two methods: 1) try and get them “excited” about science by neat demonstrations and flashy, pointless experiments, 2) when, having used method 1 for four years, students have already decided whether or not they “are good at science” create two tracks, one of which will lead to real training for college, and the other of which will be a series of rote-memorization tasks to be hated and feared for the remainder of the students’ schooling. I equate this method of teaching science to teaching someone to play piano by handing them a nifty electronic keyboard that has all sorts of preloaded songs on it, and the keys even light up! Man, that student will just be so wowed by that keyboard that they will look at it and marvel, and then think: “how the heck am I ever going to play The Entertainer when all of those keys light up at the same time?”

Only when they reach the six or seventh grade do students usually even learn about atoms. Right now, I am looking at Cheryl’s reference of Michigan Content Standards and Benchmarks for Science and I see that, in 3-5th grade students are expected to put together “simple, useful electrical circuits”, and talk about evaporation, freezing and even sublimation, but the are not required to learn about atoms and molecules until at least the 6th grade! How can you explain freezing, melting and sublimation(!), let alone electric circuits, without telling them about atoms? If this seems like a rare example, here’s another, grade-school students are not expected to learn about cells until at least 6th grade. Okay, if I wanted to teach a student biology, I would sure as heck teach them that we are all made of tiny cells, and that those cells, working in concert, produce humans, fish, birds, and trees. Now that idea is almost guaranteed to spark a lifetime’s interest in science!

I suggested instead what might be referred to as the Lego Method of Teaching Science:

First, you give them nice big pieces, Duplo, when they are really young (so they won’t choke). These would be the seeds-turning-to-plants, or rocks-tasting-like-salt, or nails-as-electromagnets ideas that you can teach a child in first and second grade. These ideas and experiments should be simple, hands-on, and encourage interactive play. They should be easy to do, and hard to screw-up, yet be interesting enough to get the students excited about the next project. Here’s also where you teach the basic idea of science: asking and answering questions methodically. It’s akin to teaching kids how to snap plastic blocks together. That skill, learned at the Duplo level, will be used identically, if more carefully, in all later levels.

By the time they are in third grade, they can graduate to real Lego pieces. Teach them about atoms and cells. Give them the tools to understand the world as it really is. Going back to my piano analogy, this is where you first hand them the keyboard and show them how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb. You show them how hitting a key makes a note, and that adding a bunch of notes together makes a real song! This is all that Mozart needed to then go on and compose brilliant symphonies and operas while still a child. We wonder why humanity’s seemingly built-in capability of producing wunderkind doesn’t seem to work anymore for science, well this is why: We are not giving them the tools to express their youthful brilliance and creativity until their brains have gone a long way towards understanding the world. Teach them these fundamental concepts while they are still spending most of their time how the world works, instead of thinking how to get the opposite sex to notice them!

Now, when they reach middle school, this is where we move on to Technics. The students, now firmly grasping how the world really works, are given the tools to do experiments that make science really do something for them. This is where students begin to learn about chemical reactions, Newton’s theories (or laws) of forces (gravity included), the concept of energy (energy doesn’t actually exist, BTW, it’s just our way of keeping track of things), the existence of complex molecules such as DNA that contain all of the information to construct our bodies, and so forth. We’re still adding capabilities and knowledge to our solid base established in earlier grades. Each day, we hand a new piece to the student, and the piece actually fits into what they’ve already constructed!. Currently, we just give students a bunch of pieces, and they have to kind of store these in little bins, hoping that they don’t lose them by the time they need to actually build something.

High school comes next–this is where the real fun begins–and with it, Mindstorms. Now, we not only give our students pieces that can move and be used to create new ideas and experiments that themselves do something, but we give them the tools to actually animate their constructs. Here is where we bring science back to the real world they see every day. To do it, we teach them geometry and calculus, biochemistry, genetics, the chemistry of reactions, early thermodynamics, “college” physics, ecosystems, physiology, and so on. Again, they need to be able to understand how something works, as much as is known, based on what we’ve already taught them. It is so important that the ideas not be taught as separate facts but instead as one astounding, remarkable edifice of knowledge. Biology can be understood, in part, by physics and chemistry, ecosystems can be understood by evolution and natural selection, and physiology can be understood by cellular biology and molecular biochemistry. But at each step, because the students have a sturdy and semi-complete base upon which to stand, they are given the opportunity to make new discoveries themselves.

I’m not suggesting teaching students any more than they are already taught today. In fact, the same content, just rearranged, could be taught in less time because students would actually be able to remember what they’ve learned before. Their brains would be molded in a deep, scientific understanding of the world, so each new idea can connect itself to thousands of bits of knowledge already stored there. Thus, recollection becomes as simple as riding a bicycle, or telling the time. We will find that we can teach them more, especially in High School, because we have to re-teach them less. The end result, however, is what is most important: We will graduate millions of high school students more science literate than most college graduates are today. They will have all made independent “discoveries” during the course of their studies, and will feel that science is as natural a pursuit as gardening or playing sports. Many more will go on to careers is science, which will help to create jobs for everyone else. And, most importantly, the public will be able to understand the critical debates over science and technology that coming generations will face. After all, we are facing the possibility of science (and its applied cousin, technology) fundamentally changing what it means to be human, and to live in concert with millions of species on the planet Earth.