Slashdot Mirror
Stop Taking All the Fun Out of Science
HughPickens.com writes: Heidi Stevens writes in the Chicago Tribune that according to NASA astronaut Mae Jemison schools treat science like the class where fun goes to die. "Kids come out of the chute liking science. They ask, 'How come? Why? What's this?' They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it's discovering the world around us," says Jemison. "Once we get them in school, we turn science from discovery and hands-on to something you're supposed to do through rote memorization." But science doesn't have to be that way says Jemison. Especially in the elementary school years. "When you have teachers saying, 'I don't have enough time for hands-on activities,' we need to rethink the way we do education," says Jemison. "The drills we do, where you're telling kids to memorize things, don't actually work. What works is engaging them and letting them do things and discover things." Jemison has teamed up with Bayer to advance science literacy across the United States by emphasizing the importance of hands-on, inquiry-based learning opportunities in public schools. Bayer announced recently that it will provide 1 million hands-on science experiences for kids by 2020. "Science is around us everywhere," says Jemison. Farming is science. Cooking is science. Even styling hair involves science. "When we go to the hairdresser, we want her to know something about pH balance," says Jemison with a laugh. "Boy, do we ever want her to know something about pH balance!"
No. We have times that are natural for us to go to sleep and to wake up, regulated mainly by our perception of sunlight. This is shown by studies of shift workers (Working nights and sleeping days is very bad for your health).
While the natural bedtime and waking time is different for each person, studies have also shown that both, on the whole, get later for teens (and then get earlier again as we age). It really would be better if high school students could sleep in. Making them be at school at 7 AM is not good. Your point that it was made for the convenience of the working parents is quite true, but doesn't make it any better physically for the kids.
What, exactly, is useful about memorizing facts, in a world where any fact you want is at your fingertips on demand?
New facts are built on a foundation of old facts, and if you don't know them, the new facts will not get built.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Again, no. Small children naturally wake by the crack of dawn and are ready to go soon after. Teens naturally wake later. They can force themselves up earlier given sufficient motivation, but they will not be ready to learn at that time.
Because there may come a time where they aren't.
Interesting fact: Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Francis Bacon were all totally shit at using Google.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Science isn't supposed to be fun.
Speaking as someone with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and who is currently working in a scientific laboratory (as in, it's Sunday afternoon and I'm literally sitting at my desk in lab while I type this), this statement comes as a surprise to me.
I definitely didn't choose it for my health (viz. I'm working in lab on a Sunday afternoon), and the money certainly isn't all that great. "Fame and fortune" are not really in the cards, either (there's no Kaley Cuoco knocking on my door) - the most I can hope for is respect among my peer group in the rather narrow field I'm in. Given the current science funding climate and the abundance of Ph.D.s in my field, job certainty also isn't all that grand either.
So why am I doing it? Because I enjoy it. Because there is immense satisfaction in staring the world in the face and wrestling knowledge from it's byzantine grasp. Is science a laugh a minute and all excitement? Certainly not. It can be slow, tedious, and at points soul crushing. I have yet to meet a scientist who doesn't look at their time as a Ph.D. candidate and think that most of it was a pointless waste. And still ... "third time pays for all", as they say, and the good times outweigh the bad. It *is* enjoyable, and any time I forget that, I just need to go to a seminar where a colleague is presenting their latest research, and I'm reminded about how fun and interesting this whole enterprise really is.
So I, as a scientist, completely reject your statement that "science isn't supposed to be fun". If you're dong it right, it *is* fun and it *should* be. But it's fun in the same way that playing sports is fun - you have moment of glory in the game, but tempered by hard work and perseverance during practice, with an underlying satisfaction about doing a job right. It's not nonstop excitement, but then neither is anything else in the world.
I certainly agree that the "I Fucking Love Science" crowd really doesn't understand science -- but in part that's due to the very way we're teaching science that's being decried in the article. Science is presented as amazing knowledge bequeathed upon the world by mysterious adepts. The "How come? Why? What's this?" attitude which is really the core of science is replaced by "Thus sayeth SCIENCE!" proclamations. Actual scientist who do actual science have a much more "play like" attitude to the process: "what happens when I do X?" "I want to tweak X, Y and Z, and figure out what happens." The grade school formalism of "scientific methodology" is a caricature of what actually happens (much like the "how a bill becomes a law" story is a caricature). And this stilted formalism only serves to cement the image of scientist as stolid masters of arcana whose word is "truth".
So, yeah, ccience is a method, and it is rigorous, but it's fun, too. And people would be better off if they understood why it's fun.
"What, exactly, is useful about memorizing facts"
They are the bricks to build comprehension.
"in a world where any fact you want is at your fingertips on demand?"
Facts outside your brain are of no value. In order to get value as nodes to tie connections in between you need to already have them in your brain.
"The facts you need will be memorized along the way."
Are you sure?
Just like Homer's use of epithets basically made them into a single substantive, it seems USA is changing "memory" into "rotten memory" as if it were a single word. It isn't: memory is a most useful tool, and exercising it is only good for growing minds. Change your education system to avoid rote memorization but don't make the mistake of thinking that all memorization is rotten.