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New UK Initiative - Make Science Easier
An anonymous reader writes "Examiners in the UK have been told to make science 'easier'. From next year 70% of the paper must consist of 'low demand' questions in the form of multiple choice or similar answers. Currently this type of question makes up some 55% of the test. When the recent A level results were announced, with even more students in the UK getting A grades than ever before, educators were congratulating themselves on improved teaching. 'Jim Sinclair, the Joint Council for Qualifications director, emphatically denied that the changes would lead to a rise in the number achieving grade C - the top grade in the foundation tier. Future results would depend on how the marks were allocated. Dr Sinclair added that the changes would help to stop children being turned off by science.' Even still, it's hard to see the benefit from future science students passing by guessing."
I can't believe he would possibly think this would attract people to science! I very nearly didn't do Physics at A-Level because GCSE science was too easy. They watered down stuff so much that you couldn't possibly reason with it. You could only solve a limited range of problems with the mathematics available and none of them were remotely interesting.
I was sad to see the same was true in A-Level Chemistry. A-Level Chemistry isn't really science, it's more like religion. You learn an enormous table of facts with some spirtual-esc "electron cloud" explanation for it. There's no way to work through it from first principles - there is no understanding and a vague promise it would come some day.
I am convinced that the way to get people in to science is to get down to brass-tax much earlier on; get down to the real physics of what's going on. In my opinion, there is no reason that the bright kids could not be walked through a solution to the Schrodinger Equation's solution for the Hydrogen atom energy levels at sixteen. There is no reason you can't teach them basic calculus either. There's no reason why you can't walk them through how to derive the equations for circular motion.
You see, it's not the details of the mathematics really matters at this early stage but an appreciation how the solution is arrived at. It's seeing that we take a fundamental postulate, which they would establish by experiment in class, and run with it and here's the physics that we come up with. In short, it's showing them that with rigorous application of the scientific method and a few years of training on the mathematics, that all of this interesting stuff can be arrived at with nothing more than a pencil and paper.
That, my friends, is how you really inspire! You do not inspire anybody by making a intellectual Mount Everest in to a word-search.
Simon
"There is no royal road to geometry." (Or science.)
Dumb science down, and you get dumb scientists. What we need is a way to make it more interesting -- and show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun. Once they're interested -- and the mathematics involved have a clear purpose rather than being just rote memorization of arcane formulae -- Science suddenly becomes something they *want* to do.
There may be no "royal road" to science -- but there's nothing saying that we can't make the trip more enjoyable, and encourage more travelers at the same time.
As a side benefit, science is a great way to teach critical thinking (which IMHO is the whole point of education).
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I had a Biology professor that could make multiple choice science tests that actually tested scientific reasoning skills (not just memory skills). He'd present the results of a single experiment and then offer a multiple statements that might (or might not) be derivable from the outcome of the experiment. The devilish part (and the part that tested reasoning versus memory) was that many of the statements would be true, but NOT derivable from the experiment. Students that memorized facts and picked the true statements based on their memory of those facts would get the answer wrong.
Of course, I suspect that the Brits want to turn science into a set of dumb facts, and that would be a shame because it misses the entire point of science.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hey, science is easy. Dead easy. The problem is that science is taught as a religion. "Remember things" is all we've ever asked to do. In the eight years it took me to get out of Secondary School Hell, I've never been given the occasion to actually TEST by the Scientific Method any idea I've had. There were answers to all my questions already, but I just might have remembered SOMEthing if I'd discovered it myself!
But teaching Science in that way would make kids learn that there are effects and causes to everything, and maybe even that they can all be discovered and modelled. That is very near critical thinking, thus dangerous. Not going to happen at this point in this world. Maybe later, but I'm not counting on that...
The news is about "The UK is going to lower its requirements regarding what science facts kids have to know before they can get unemployed." Big deal.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.