A New Approach to Teaching Science

Gallenod writes "The Washington Post has an article on Joy Hakim, an author trying to re-write junior-high science textbooks to make them more readable. There are some interesting observations on how traditional textbook publishing houses control pretty much everything children read in school and her difficulties in challenging the status quo. However, she's already succeeded with an award-winning history textbook series, so maybe she'll rack up another win here."

Comments

A Kinesthetic Approach

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Don't bother with textbooks - just teach them hands-on. I had 10X as much fun combining chemicals that gave off smoke than I ever did reading some dumb paragraphs.

Re:A Kinesthetic Approach

[flewp]

Indeed, hands on approaches are the best. However, I think there needs to be some written (ie, textbooks) references. In other words, hands on approaches need to compliment the written matierial. Perhaps do an experiment to get the students' attention, and then teach the why and how. I don't know about most people, but when I see something cool, I want to know the hows and whys.

Although, back in high school I used to have the most fun combing combustion and chemicals to give off smoke.

Re:A Kinesthetic Approach

[NOLAChief]

Both yours and her's approach to learning I agree with as the best way for children to learn. Unfortunately the pressure cooker our schools are under to make kids pass high stakes assessment tests (the LEAP here in Louisiana, the CSAP in Colorado, etc. etc.) pretty much requires that teachers stuff as many facts, however disjointed, into kids heads so that they can regurgitate them come test day. Until this nonsense changes, I fear she'll have trouble getting her approach off the ground. I wish her luck though!

Different at the College Level...Why?

[CheshireCatCO]

The article claims that textbooks at the K-12 level are usually written by committees. This is probably true, based on my limited recollections. So why is this so very different from college textbooks, which are usually written by a small number of authors? (Usually, there are one, two or at most, three.)

There must be some driving force that makes the committee system work better for the K-12 textbooks, but what is it, I wonder?

Re:Different at the College Level...Why?

[ArmyOfFun]

In addition to this, it's apparently pretty difficult to make a profit on k-12 textbooks, and the toughest committees for passing/buying a book are in Texas. To avoid differing versions, costly rewrites and so on, most publishers give their books to a few select committees in Texas (and California) for approval and only if they pass there do they go on to the rest of the country.

It's not as local a decision as you may think. Well, unless you live in Texas or California. But you don't have to take my word for it.

A complaint about textbooks...

[rabiteman]

...from the article:

Books are written by committees. They have no literary merit, no voice, no style, no charm. They are focused almost exclusively on facts...

Is it just me, or is an almost-exclusive focus on facts a good thing for textbooks of any sort? Would people prefer books based on rampant speculations, unwarranted assumptions, and outright lies?

A nice idea.. but..

[windows]

First of all, I agree that publishing houses suck. I know the context of this article relates to middle school, but textbook publishers are lousy at all levels.

As a college student, I get frustrated with math textbooks that present few examples, a lot of derivations, and problems that don't necessarily follow the examples. It's rather difficult to learn from that. If I'm stuck on a homework problem, I'm pretty much screwed no matter how many times I go back and read it. There's also an attempt to ruin the used book business by publishing minor revisions with different problems every couple of years. As a victim of this, I'm all for anything that opposes the large publishing houses.

It's an interesting way to teach science, and the approach sounds a lot like reading A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. I learned a lot from that book that I certainly would never have picked up from a classic textbook. It's a good idea.

I'd also like to add a suggestion. In a lot of schools, textbooks are being replaced with CDs containing the text. It's a nice idea, but I think a combination of both is the best idea. Consider a book that has the text, PDF files on a CD, and interactive examples or at least videos to supplement the text. It seems like a good way to learn, especially for the audience these books are intended, that being middle school.

What I want to see...

[GeneralEmergency]

.
...is all k-12 text books and supporting materials (worksheets, lesson plans, etc.) produced under an open source licence so we, the taxpayers of this nation, can give these publishing houses the collective finger, and to make this material available to the world freely.

This work could be all be done collectively by the nations teachers themselves, just like this good woman has done. This idea just needs a Corporate Sponsor or two to host the server space and bandwidth.

Re:Students.

[hobbesmaster]

Then perhaps our the teachers/text books should try to use parts of our society in their lesson plans/text.

For instance, in physics class you could start off talking about how wrong most everything out of hollywood is...

Re:Lets dumb down the schools some more!

[Dunkalis]

I remember my elementary school and middle school days. Its been this way for years, since I started going to school 11 years ago. In 4th grade, I remember the class also had some 5th graders in it. The teacher had both halves working on different assignments, and I could do the math delegated to the fifth grade segment of the class faster then they could after they had been learning it for a while. It was pitiful. In 7th and 8th grade, I still breezed through math. Sadly, the school didn't think I could, though, and placed me in a standard math class. They offered high school credit algebra, and they know I should have taken algebra. Now, I am still good at math (I'm taking algebra II now), and I still belong in a higher level class. I do my work, I know how to do most of the things we are shown, and the damn school doesn't allow you to take classes elsewhere to get up to the appropriate level to take the most advanced math class they offer, AP Calculus AB, so now I have to find the appropriate loophole in Arizona law to bypass the need to take the prerequisite class my senior year. The American education system is a joke. It is so reliant on the assumption that all students are dumb and ignorant idiots that the exceptional students are forced to be at the same level as the ones that really are dumb and ignorant.

Even the teachers believe that the American education system is terrible!

The American education system does have some measures to make sure the brighter students are learning and challenged, but these are open to only a select few who meet the prerequisite requirements. And these prerequisite requirements require the schools to have recognised your ability years beforehand. My AP American History class is incredible, and it is one of the few classes I enjoy, mainly because it is interesting and not dumbed down. If you aren't familiar with the AP program, it provides for university level classes in high school. I don't know how well the classes do in that regard, but AP Am. Hist. is a great class, and everyone in it is intelligent and understands what is going on. Because we are expected to.

And science in middle school is a joke. It was 6 years ago. It was 4 years ago. It still is. Its not science. Its just a filler class. We built mousetrap cars. Why? Not a clue. The teacher never explained the physics, and we were just supposed to build the cars.

Textbooks are terrible for most subjects in school, anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Oh, and we spent three days covering World War II. You have a problem with that?

"FDR, sitting in his car, smoking a cigar, driving over tar, he's gone to far, he's gone to far." If you get this, all I have to say is "Wie heisst du?"

on the subject of textbook writing

[circusboy]

no one should be allowed to even think about writing a textbook without reading

• lies my teacher told me
• surely you're joking mr. feynman

in the latter, it was the chapter where feynman was asked to serve on a textbook selection comittee. very enlightening. and scary.

the first book is a rather scathing review of a dozen high school history books, how they are written, reviewed and edited, (read scrawled, mauled and gutted.) it's actually almost painful to read as you realize how much more interesting history class would have been had they just told you ALL of the facts.

Re:NO!

[zaffir]

I agree with you 100%.

First, we have to get up damn early - at least in highschool - to go to a place we don't even like (see reasons below). Google for info on teen's sleep patterns, and you'll see that waking at 6:00 or 6:30 AM is a BAD THING for people my age. The fix? Change when we start. Why hasn't my school done this? "It would mess up the sports schedules." Yay, athletics over education. Not that team sports are bad - i think they're great for students - but come on, what's really more important? Hell, let the athletes out of school early if you want.

When we get to school, we get to look forward to 6 or 7 periods of different subjects. It can be very, very hard to be extremely involved in something - a problem, reading, etc. - and have the bell ring, signaling that you get to go to another class. Switching from CompSci to Humanities to Government is pretty rough. Admittedly, block scheduling aims to fix this, but then we can get stuck with a teacher who just drones on for the whole 2 hours instead of the usual one. The fix? Block scheduling with teachers that can actually TEACH.

And finally, I would enjoy school 100 times more if I didn't have 2-3 hours of homework every night. 20-30 minutes of homework from one teacher doesn't seem like that much, but when I have 6 or 7 teachers all assigning that much, it takes alot of time. Teach the fucking class, don't make me copy answers out of my book. /rant