Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
I disagree. My parents didn't talk about science at the dinner table. All those kids need is challenging reading material. Not science related reading material, not even science fiction necessarily, just challenging. If they enjoy reading and it makes them question the world around them, then they will naturally want to branch out into science, if thats the direction for them. Some of them won't, they'll end up English teachers. Nothing wrong with that. My English teachers were a huge influence on me. They never needed to point me in any direction, they just taught me the value of the written word. I went and found plenty of books on my own as a result.
"All those kids need is challenging reading material."
... Were you thinking: Man if only I had some "challenging reading material" this would be so much more interesting?? I didn't think so either.
... 1, 2, 3... I thought about creating individualized geometric notation for the number system, so kids could add and substract via shape/color recognition very quickly (visual system) instead of pushing around our standard boring number system around. (1..2...3, etc)
Can we stop with the "one size fits all" mentality? Most schools have no idea how to 'educate'. They don't need "challenging reading material" you have to identify what the child wants to LEARN ABOUT, you have to hook whatever it is your teaching into a child's natural interest or curiousity and then work back from it. You really have to get into kids heads about the adventurous things they want to do, what they like, and what they (even if naively) dream about. I was a product of said school system and even I can see how alarmingly curiousity killing it is. I didn't learn to like learning until I got OUT of the school system completely including university.
What modern educational systems are doing is killing children's natural curiousity be forcing them to learn boring dry material that has no *relationship* to what kind of things they dream about, want to explore, think about or want to accomplish... if anything if I had the money I would open my own private school because I can see how criminal the "adults" of education have no clue about what it was like to be a kid! When you were at the ages of 6, 10, 15
When I was in school I had curiousity about a lot of things and how they worked:
-I wanted to know how cars worked (and how parts of it were made, I wanted ALL the details even if it was some simple small part)
-I wanted to know how to put (small) video games together (and I understood at the time after a bit of reading they required math, etc. If someone really smart from the game industry had come along with a 2D shmup / shooter (not to be confused with First person shooter). I would have sat there for days trying to build my own and gobble up everything I could about it after being shown step-by-step from start to finish how to put a small one together.
-I had a fascination with math but I think in pictures, gemoetric shapes and words, not symbol scratch like
Those are just the really quick and dirty ideas too. The truth of the matter is education really needs to become more individualized to the child's preferred mode of thought and data processing style in many instances.
Right now few people in the educational system understand nor talk about neurodiversity amd really understand what that means.