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

[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!

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.

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.