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Bringing Science and Math Into Writing?
I am an eighth grade English teacher. As much as I love my subject and believe in the value of skillful writing, I also believe that there is a terrible lack of interest in the sciences and maths among students in general. In some sense, I believe English to be a support subject for the others classes at this grade level. At my school, the average science classroom has time for labs and note taking, but reading and writing on the subject (beside textbooks) is usually limited. Math is in a similar situation: they have time to learn a concept and practice, but not to linger on possibilities. Therefore, I have two questions for the readers of Slashdot: which books / shows / movies caused a curiosity towards these subjects when you were young, and what suggestions do you have for incorporating these subjects into writing?
It's a noble quest you are on, but it is doomed to failure. Books/movies/shows won't do it. As any psychologist can tell you, by far the strongest formative influences on a child are other people. First among these are the parents. If they discuss Paris Hilton's latest cunt flash at the dinner table, the kids are not going to learn that science and math are important. They can be exposed to good books/movies/shows, but they just won't care. If they discuss mathematical proofs - as happened at our dinner table - the child will develop an interest in math and science. Then you won't need to find books/shows etc for him - he'll hunt them down himself.
The one good bit of news is that the next most influential person in a child's life is often a teacher. Your own enthusiasm for the subject will do more than you know. Just be your nerdy self; you will change their lives.
MacGyver may be a help. It also will teach thinking and improvising.
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Doesn't matter what it is. It can be the latest and greatest gizmo like the iPhone, or a simple older gizmo like a dial telephone or a blender. Question how things work. Plant those questions in your young students minds, and then harvest their observations.
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We are geeks!!! we are predisposed to Math and Science.
at any rate, the best thing you can do is to talk with the math teachers in your school to find out what the students are working on and then collaboratively design some extensions that you can apply in your classroom. a writing assignment that gets the kids to crack a book and report on a famous mathematician... make it a 20th century mathematician to make the kids see math is a living subject.
perhaps get them to write some modern applications in the realm of medicine, construction, urban planning, etc. TO make such an assignment interesting to the student, make sure they pick a career field they are interested in and have them investigate math's applications in those fields
I would not mix math and science in the same unit... Science is a little "softer" than math and will be more popular fore the students if given a choice. Also, make sure to have the kids pick the career field they want to write about before they are told what angle they will be looking at it from. knowing the angle will likely affect the career field they choose and thus fail to make them see math/sciences real contributions to areas other than engineering/science. Make sure they stick with that same field when you have them investigate the science involved.
As you may have gleaned, I am a trained, but non-practicing, math teacher. I found that I could not stand the classroom. All that work on lesson plans and then even when you make up games, they still do not want to learn the material. I found the business world to be much more enjoyable. At least there your hard work gives you benefits.
You have to be careful with your selection, though, because a lot of what passes for SF these days is My Talking Pony stories and/or porn.
Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel has a nice discussion of acceleration and interplanetary distances. Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise offers an introduction to material strengths and orbital mechanics. Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity juxtaposes gravity and centripetal acceleration.
Slightly off-topic, but tangentially related to TFA: I'm in the process of writing my masters. I'm doing it on the NAS Conjugate Gradient (CG) benchmark to several exotic architecture. Now for those of you who haven't heard of CG, it's a very-commonly-used but extremely complicated algorithm. I wanted to have a section in my masters explaining how CG works, only I hit a snag - all of the explanations SUCK. I mean, REALLY SUCK.
I went to one of the profs in my department. He does numerical electromagnetism, so he is very good at math and CG is familiar to him. I asked him if he could recommend a "CG for dummies" book.
He told me, as a matter of fact, there is: An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method Without the Agonizing Pain by Carnegie Mellon professor Jonathan Richard Shewchuk. My E&M prof said it was the best bit of technical writing he'd ever seen. I'm about halfway through, but I have to agree - though it's complicated, it's by far the most comprehensible explanation I have ever seen. It really is a perfect example of what technical writing should be like.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Read to your kids when they are too young to be able to do it themselves. This will at least teach them that fun things can be found in books. If you can then direct them toward science fiction, such as Tom Swift or Heinlein's juveniles, an interest in math and science becomes a likely side-effect.
Rather than attempting a direct approach like including science or maths related material in your reading list, I would suggest adding in a healthy amount of philosophy and debate to the curriculum.
Both demand understanding the subject matter (whatever it may actually be) and promote critical thinking. They also encourage the development of a larger vocabulary and command of more complex grammatical constructs, as expressing complex ideas necessitates a mastery of whatever medium is being used to convey them. These skills will be invaluable to your students in every aspect of their academic careers, and are fundamental requirements for sciences and maths.
The best part is that the subject matter can be something that they're actually interested in. In fact, the deeper their personal interest, the more likely it is that they'll actually put forth the effort required to develop coherent arguments and care enough to force themselves to learn how to express their personal positions more clearly and effectively.
As for TV, one used to say Star Trek, but recent versions have less and less to do with science, and in any case aren't in production now. I enjoy the new Doctor Who, but that has a great deal of fantasy these days.
But for reading please avoid at all costs any novelisations of TV or movies. Hack writers can't bring anything worthwhile to plots whose shortcomings are only too apparent without special effects and explosions to distract.
Short story anthologies might be a good bet. Many excellent ones, perhaps the annual Hugo Award Winners.
And see Mathematical Fiction for a listo f books and stories about maths. I like Greg Egan and Rudy Rucker, but they might be beyond most kids.
One of the ways to encourage love and respect for maths and science is to teach the children where it all came from to begin with. Mathematics and science came out of philosophy, so that is what you must teach your children! Teach them good philosophy and maths/science will reveal themselves and you can go from there. I think that teaching children what they can do with maths/science is good and necessary, but to many it will remain a pile of magical symbols and rituals instead of a beautiful language and investigation of reality. You need to give them the why, before the what. As for how to do that with an English curriculum well I'll leave that determination to others.
I wonder if the time one has - or rather the time one finds to linger on possibilities is not bound to their motivation in exploring the subject. I for one remember having done that two times, once in 9th grade (internal composition laws) and in 10th grade (2x2 matrices). Being eager to explore that really new world to me, I was writing pages and pages of exercices without anybody asking me to, just for the fun. As far as I remember, I missed deliberately "The Flintstones" once on TV because - though I loved this cartoon - I did not want to abandon the exercise I was in.
Therefore, I have two questions for the readers of Slashdot: which books / shows / movies caused a curiosity towards these subjects when you were young, and what suggestions do you have for incorporating these subjects into writing?
Books like Gamow's "Mr Tompkins" (not the recently revised vesion) and "One, two, three... infinity" aroused also my curiosity on the subject. Also, some exercises like : "You have a 10m statue on a 30m column. At which distance should you stand from the column's foot in order to see the statue with the widest possible angle ?" reminded me from time to time how maths could be a form of "super-power", allowing to do what would be either impossible or very tedious without them (well, incidentally, I chose an engineering career because of that).
Today's books on physics by Colin Bruce seem quite challenging too, but lack the technical appendixes that would be needed by those who want to go beyond the anedotic side of things to venture a little in calculus.
Finally, the is an SF novel by Normam Kagan called "The Mathenauts" which describes students exploring a mathematical space, and which is a quite accurate desciption of the feelings you have when you are doing it.
Just my two cents. Hope it can help...
Reading about the life of a certain scientist or mathematician was important for me. Knowing that those kind of people exist (all I knew was sports prior to my discovering mathematics, astronomy, and physics), and knowing about their work made me want to know more. Make a list of scientists and mathematicians. Assign each student to one, and have them read a biography about that person. Have them choose a writing topic, and then have them give an in-class presentation so that they can share information about the scientists and mathematicians to the rest of the class. You should have no trouble filling out a list. The ones I read about when I was young included Marie Curie, Einstein, Fermi, Newton, Euler, Gauss, and Bohr.
I'm an electrical engineer who's been in industry for 30 years (you can figure out how old I am). In addition, I was about 6 years old when I determined that I wanted to be an engineer. With that as a bit of background, I'll try to answer your questions...
What books/shows/movies influenced me...
Books:
The "Alvin Fernald" books - about the boy inventor
Popular Mechanics - how stuff works
Popular Science - sort of like Pop Mech, but substantially more cerebral
Shows:
Nova - this was "after the fact" but still kept my brain a chunkin
Movies:
James Bond, Matt Helm, Our Man Flint - aside from the other aspects, the gadgets were fascinating
And although you didn't specifically ask about it... for those that grew up in 60's, there was also NASA and the space program. Even if I didn't want to be an astronaut, you still spent a lot of time thinking about how those machines worked (and oggled a bit over those shots of mission control on TV).
To address the second part of your question, how to incorporate this into writing... hmmm....
This is going to be something that's more difficult to approach. First, English is NOT a precise language. Mathematical formula, chemical equations, etc., are precious. At the same time written language is always a bit more ambiguous. I'm not saying that its not important (it is), but rather, you can't simply apply it everywhere.
In particular, you need to use spoken/written language to convey your thoughts and ideas, however at the same time it is usually imperative that some of these thoughts be conveyed using other notation (e.g., mathematical equations, chemical formulae, etc.).
I think, what you want to instill in your students is that this can be fun. When I was in college we had to take "Technical Writing" during our senior year as a degree requirement. The instructor I had was GREAT (I wish I could remember his name). The thing that made him great was that he taught by teaching you the "mechanics" of how to do something (i.e., he didn't dwell on stuff like grammar, etc.). That's not to say that this didn't come through, but rather that the delivery method was geared towards engineers. It was fun! And nearly everyone in the class LOOKED FORWARD to the next class.
I wish you much success and I hope this helps!
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 novella by Edwin Abbott Abbott, still popular among mathematics and computer science students, and considered useful reading for people studying topics such as the concept of other dimensions. As a piece of literature, Flatland is respected for its satire on the social hierarchy of Victorian society.
I didn't like to read until I got into D&D. It's kind of hard to avoid reading when you have a Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Guide, the adventure itself, etc. So, find out what the kids are interested in and get them to write about that.
For science and math, focus on technical writing. English was viewed as "creative" writing when I was in school. There is not much to be creative about when it comes to writing about science and math. Unless things have changed, technical writing isn't covered until college, and that's only if you take a technical writing class. So if you want to help those interested in math and science with writing, try focusing on technical writing (even though that may seem dry for someone who teaches english).
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
For me, fiction wasn't particularly inspirational. I was mostly intrigued by the automation power of computers. Since computers automate that which, at the lowest level, is mathematics, I was naturally inclined to attempt to learn mathematical techniques for tackling problems because I could then devise a machine that would tackle those problems for me with great speed and proficiency. So essentially, it was the computers themselves and their capabilities that inspired my interest in maths. Science was also fundamentally attractive to me because it presented a way to discover truth with little foreknowledge. And since it involved a methodology, it could also be automated to a substantial degree. Of course, the "wow" factor of things like fighter planes, nuclear warheads, solar cells: ("look! it does work for free!"), and postage stamp sized ICs with bajillions of internal components also contributed to my interest in science. I eventually got a BS in physics and I am currently working on the core BS requirements for a CS degree in pursuance of CS graduate school, so one could say that my interest in these subjecs is significant.
To answer your question more specifically, even though I can't stand to watch it now, Star Trek:TNG offered a look at a possible future society that was attractive to me. I suppose the general benevolence of the characters and the "mission" combined with the reverence the characters showed toward those who were knowledgable and proficient made me think that a future that transcends the usual social, economic, and political BS that our society is riddled with might be possible. I think I had a more indulgent imagination back then.
A few books (apart from the Asimov, Clark etc SF that has already been mentioned.
Surely You're Joking Mr Fenyman
The Man with No Endorphins
Although technologically quite dated, the SF novels by Fred Hoyle.
I don't know if the transcripts or videos are available in the USA but the UK) Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are great vehicles for stimulating a child's interest in Science and Engineering.
They try to pose the 'What if?' question.
However much of the writing I have to do as part of my work is 'dry, technical and totally uninspiring'. (Reports, Specifications etc)
Get your children to express their imagination and be creative in their writing. SF (classical SF anyway) with a sold basis in Science and Fact can be a good platform to get kids to let their imagination run riot.
Why not let them have a go at writing a screenplay for a Dr Who episode? or something similar?
I think back in total horror at the 500 word English essays I had to write in School. As I am dyslexic these were a real bind. There was no stimulation of though or any need to be creative. One time I let my imagination run riot and instead of 500 words, I produced over 5000. IT was a proper story with a beginning, middle and end. I thought it was brilliant. I got an 'F' for my efforts (it was not 500 words approx) but won the School prize for best story of the year.
I write stories even today. Mainly they are for my (and my grandkids) enjoyment. They are what can only be classed as in the Classic SF genre. I do it for relaxation and fun. I also write everything in Longhand first.
Good Luck in your quest
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
All I remember about my 8th-12th grade english classes were the hours wasted analyzing rhetoric. As soon as I stepped foot in college, I took classes on technical communication, writing research papers, etc. In other words, learning to write without ambiguity. Without rhetoric. If you want to do a service to science and math, encourage writing assignments with tangibles and applicability. Give assignments like writing useful instruction sets, targeting audiences (this is a big one) and targeting different cultures. There is zero value in analyzing Shakespeare. None.
Science fiction in general is good, but there are some very good non-fiction books out there as well. Suggestions, possibly for a somewhat older age group, would be:
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
The Dancing Wu Li Masters - Gary Zukav
The Tao of Physics - Fritjof Kapra
The First Three Minutes - Steve Weinburg
Here in the States, Smart = Uncool.
Been that way for a long time. There's the occasional aknowledgment of scholarship, but look at the schools. Great athletes are paraded about like gods. Great scholars get a Printshop certificate. It's a tired old complaint, but nothing ever gets done about it. Our pro sports teams have become high paid clubs for thugs, and still no one cares.
I mean, like, dog fights? A guy makes it huge and becomes a millionaire and is staging asswiping dog fights? He doesn't need to be put in jail, he need to be put to sleep and have his brain srudied by science so we figure out the fuck happened in there.
I still remember the time I was at a gym and overheard a guy complaining how his ex-wife was raising hid son. "Fuck, she probably has him coming home with straight-A's some stupid shit!", he said. I've seen this stuff over and over. Even the parents thing smart = bad because it's how THEY were raised. It's a generation that thinks it's perfectly OK for a 50 year old to be a bagger at the supermarket.
So you see, this is why I laugh when laws get passed that fuck over the population.
Whatever. We'll all be wiped out soon by nuclear holy war or an asteroid or giant bees, so what matter?
And I absolutely disagree with the precepts your question. As an English teacher, you should be doing your best to teaching the English language, and an appreciation of the English canon. It's almost like you're sabotaging your own field, and hope to stress other subjects! The sciences already receive far more government spending and grants than the arts; anyway it's not your place to correct perceived imbalances.
Plenty of nerds here will advise you to read Heinlen or some shit. But the prose of science fiction (or really, of any genre fiction) is for shit and the metaphors shallow, and really don't add anything to being a well-rounded, broadly-educated youth. They're the literary equivalent of watching "the Matrix" and "Independence Day" in a marathon session, with no real depth or artistic value. Furthermore, the sort of people who would get anything out of science-fiction are the sort of people who would read it anyway.
I think people have too little appreciation for culture, here in China my friends (many in the Computer field) can rattle off 8th century poetry, and have a much deeper appreciation of history and culture. How many Americans can quote even a single poem? Honestly I think it's terrible that an English teacher has so little regard for their own subject. If you were the teacher of my child I would demand them being transferred out, and I strongly believe you're in the wrong field.
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Issac Asimov wrote almost as many Science books as Science Fiction. Among the best are "Asimov on Chemistry" and "Asimov and the realm of Algebra". The 2nd is so good that paperback versions sometimes sell for > $50 on eBay. (It's out of print) I read it in 8th grade at the beginning of Algebra class and sailed through the rest of the year.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
One of the greatest movies on mathematics ever. A Disney masterpiece that transcends all grades to show how very complex math concepts appear everywhere around us.
Everyone should check Donald in Mathmagic Land out. It's one of the best movies I ever saw in grade school and I still remember it to this day.
San Le www.slffea.com
I loved this in high school. Still a great read.
:: Clifton Fadiman (editor)
FANTASIA MATHEMATICA
Partial selections from Contents:
* "Young Archimedes" by Aldous Huxley
* "Peter Learns Arithmetic" by H.G. Wells
* "Socrates and the Slave" by Plato
* "The Devil and Simon Flagg" by Arthur Porges
* "--And he Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein
* "No-sided Professor" by Martin Gardner
* "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke
* "The Captured Cross-Section" by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
* "A. Botts and the Moebius Strip" by William Hazlett Upson
* "The Tachypomp" by Edward Page Mitchell
* The Island of Five Colors" by Martin Gardner
* "A Subway Named Moebius" by A. J. Deutsch
* "The Universal Library" by Kur Lasswitz
* "Postscript to `The Universal Library'" by Willy Ley
It might sound a little corny but Jurassic Park actually created my interest in science-fiction, computer programming and science in general. I saw the movie first and besides being an entertaining thriller with some cool special effects it had no effect on me at all.
Then I read the book a couple of years later. I was around 13 or 14 and sick at home for a couple days. I read through it very quickly and I just remember how despite being a nut, Ian Malcolm was the one character who seemed to have a down-to-earth and realistic point of view on the whole situation. I also remember how cool it was that Crichton gave actual examples of computer code to support the story. It sparked my interest in computers and programming and logical, scientific thought in general.
Afterwards I convinced my grandmother to help me buy a computer and I spent the next few years going from pothead rocker to nerd teaching myself how to program the best I could.
Without having read that book my life would have turned out quite differently.
If you're trying to appeal to the average kid who watches far more movies than they do reading books, why not use something from pop-culture that was made into a successful movie ? Like most books vs. movies the two are rather different and so it would be difficult to impossible for one of the students to do any kind of report or test based on the movie.
It also has the advantage of demonstrating how powerful science can be. It's science fiction but it does a good job of coming off as plausible (if not then no one would have asked afterwards "could we do that?", even if the answer is "no because we haven't found such DNA still in tact"[1]) and it also goes to show how "cool" science can be. It deals with computers, biology, science fiction and logical thought and even touches on scientific ethics every once in a while. Over all it's a very entertaining book that most young people should enjoy reading while also doing a good job of advertising what science and math has to offer.
[1] Yes I realize there's several other reasons that it's still fiction, as well.
I agree, books etc. won't do it. What I would love to see in English classes is a notion that mathematically-inclined people almost take for granted: that contradictions highlight a weakness in the argument, somewhere.
In the quest for producing essays that are "balanced", the students are encouraged to think that holding simultaneously mutually exclusive points of view is desirable. This, of course, is not true. If you can, try to get the students to see the different assumptions that lead to the different perspectives. This type of analysis will be invaluable in all subjects.
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
For math books I personally was inspired by and really enjoyed the Mathematical Recreations books by Martin Gardner and Ian Stewart. They really made math fun. To explore the creative fun aspect of science, I think reading and writing is not the key for children. What I really liked was those 1000 in 1 electronic kits. When you can make a radio and hear yourself on the radio, it's really cool! So those are the things that I enjoyed when I was a kid.
Why science fiction, why not science fact? How about a book like "One, Two, Three... Infinity" by George Gamow? Or anything written by Martin Gardner? How about Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos? Or Max Born wrote a book, "Einstein's Theory of Relativity", which explains relativity in great detail with nothing more than pre-algebra. Or for the computer nerds, the obligatory recommendation is "Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter.
I have never understood the point of fiction, except as pure entertainment. Non-fiction is where the good stuff is. If it really has to be fiction, try Flatland by Edwin Abbott.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Since studies showed how critical mentors were, NASA supports numerous programs where we mentored students ranging from annual Engineers Week where we visited classrooms at all grade levels, explaing how "cool" science and engineering concepts are and how great such careers are. Often this became the first time students had been exposed to a scientist or engineer and provided a connection with science and engineering that can be followed up on. I was also involved in mentoring dozens of high-school and college students on challenging problems making textbook learning alive - including sunmer or year-long mentorships.
I'd encourage my students to get "hooked on" Feynman, Faraday (who turned on Edison) or others. who had a gift of explaning complex concepts of how our world works in a simple and intriguing fashion, like "unraveling an onion". For Example, Feynman's:
1. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) (Paperback)
2. What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character (Paperback)
3. Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character
Although books alone are NOT the answer, books, such as Feynman's, can go a long way in turning on our young people to science and engineering. Good luck on your worthy but formidable challenge so critical to our future.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
While there is a lot of hype about increasing the level of Sci & Math education, I do have reservations. A lot of this hype is just propaganda resulting from corporate lobbying. If there is a shortage, it is because of economics and not education. I see way to many PhD's running community colleges making practically nothing. Its absurd to expect people to rally to a profession that is more demanding and less rewarding than almost any other. How many tenure positions are open vs qualified applicants? I would guess the ratio is at least 50 to 1. Scientist are not only required to get a PhD, but also have to have significant post Doc at almost no pay to be even considered. Scientist do not get to study the fundamentals of the universe, but have to fight tooth and nail for limited funding for earmarked corporate research. Corporations artificially up qualifications for scientist and engineers, although there are plenty available because they need to ensure enough H-1B visa's are allowed to ensure low cost research. As technology streamlines and consolidates, there is less demand per capita of needed high skill workers. We are pushing all these kids to go into an economy where they are just going to be frustrated. I absolutely love science and math, but we are taking it to far. The government and cooperations do not emphasize social studies because the more the general populace knows about history, economics, and science combined, the harder they are to manipulate. Science and math alone are just great money makers. Its a great idea to incorporate other subjects into English classes, but over emphasizing any one subject is unbalanced and harmful.
If you just want a neat writing activity involving writing and any subject at all (I've seen it done in geography and science, and I used it myself in an art/social studies lesson), you might want to try a GRASPS activity. Here is a page that describes how to think up a GRASPS activity. I learned it from a guy who uses these activities as performance assessments in 8th grade Geography. I'm going to try to incorporate one into a math activity this year. If you need suggestions, or if that link isn't very helpful, let me know.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.