Essential topics in science education

[ray245]

Of course, this is where we disagree that the average adult would bother sifting through their oversimplified factoids via their critical thinking skills even if they had them. Perhaps they would be equipped to think better if we trained them, but some subjects are so complex or deemed 'unnecessary' to the average person that said person remains much happier with what they think they know. Sounds like a job for science journalism.

Can't we have teachers teaching and demonstrating to them why the should not think that they have learn everything they need to know to form a proper judgement about a certain scientific theory?

In my personal experience (anecdotal , I know.), teachers often give the students the view that they have learned everything they need to know by the time they finished their secondary school science classes. Teaching kids and students to respect the views of people who are qualified enough to make a judgement would go a pretty long way in moving people away from pesudo-science.

[Simon_Jester]

Look at all the students in freshman physics courses whose attitude is "whatever, just show me the equations I need to memorize." Those kids will never learn the material in a useful way, at least not until they get the "just show me what I need to memorize" nonsense knocked out. Seriously, it's like pulling teeth to get them to think about a problem rather than pick one of their memorized techniques and factoids and trying to hammer the thing into submission with it.

Fair game; Uncle James taught Physics at Guelph U, and he's said more than once that kids that come in with bad habits leave with a failing grade. The question is, could more kids pick up the material before they get to their freshman year?

That's what I'm getting at: don't try to teach college physics in high school; teach the habits that make it possible to take college physics in college.

Encouraging those who are interested to think that way is liable to be counterproductive, from my point of view, because it favors interest in "what do I need to store in my head to master this?" over "what do I need to understand to master this?"

But you're arguing for the minority; a science curricula can't be tailored only for these top kids, because that would only serve to alienate more kids from science.

I'm arguing for the minority that actually goes into the field. The sciences require students of above-average intelligence who enjoy learning the material in the field in question. Alienate those students and your system fails, because it isn't training new scientists. Moreover, it will not achieve the desired objective of giving every student a scientific education (whatever that may mean) because they will interpret the facts as useless trivia to be recorded only for the sake of getting nice friendly letters on their report card, not for the sake of any practical long term goal.

In short, you will not get more chemists by cramming students' heads full of Chemistry Fun Facts in the eighth grade. Nor will you get a significant improvement in the takeaway level of chemistry knowledge those students display ten years after they leave school; they'll just have more useless trivia to forget (from their point of view).

But the mental process underlying science is at best only taught during science fairs. Having been a science fair judge, I can tell you that a lot of students just aren't getting it; at the low end there is painfully little comprehension of just what it means to develop and test a hypothesis, and almost none of the fact that "hypothesis" does not mean the same thing as "random half-assed guess." Which is one of the most important steps of the process in real science...

And I'll give you that right off, though we're drifting away from adding skepticism programs to high school science classes. A child taking even elementary science should understand the terms on which science is conducted and, I'll go you one better and say that even more important than that is to practice being able to take accurate measurements. I don't get the feeling that many people day-to-day understand how to take proper account of their observations.

Thing is, that's critically related to skepticism: in both cases you have to cultivate that inner voice that says "I really need to do my homework before jumping to conclusions" and "is this a valid argument to justify Claim X?" There's a reason the skeptical philosophies of the Enlightenment and the age of rapid advances in science came together, after all.

This takes priority over Chemical Fun Facts, because not only is it a better tool for engaging the interest of students who might one day become chemists, it is also a better tool for teaching a useful long-term skill to the vast majority of students who do not become chemists. Whereas Chemical Fun Facts lessons are pretty much wasted on students who don't become chemists.

Which takes us back to Twain's statement about how a little knowledge can cause lead people to a big fuckup. The problem with your example is that some subjects are too complex for the average person, even one equipped with good thinking skills, to comprehend in anything other than sound bites. The best we can say for them is that they're insulated against pseudoscience as long as their prejudices don't win out and they have the inclination to test the claims of those who claim to be authorities.

What makes you think the sound bites will be useful in isolation? Without a functioning brain to stitch them together, you just get [name of notorious idiot poster deleted for diplomacy's sake]: someone who thinks they know much because they know many sound bites, but lacks the habits of mind to use the facts they learn effectively.

To paraphrase something I said before (and bearing in mind that I have tried to do both), I would much rather explain advanced science to an adult with decent critical thinking skills than try to explain anything (including things much simpler than advanced science) to an adult who spent their childhood years tooling around with an endless series of Chemical Fun Facts. The former will at least leave school with a functioning, somewhat disciplined brain; the latter will see their arsenal of fun facts evaporate within the first few years of their adult life. Or, worse yet, get transmuted into bizarre reefs of delusion wherein the factoids they think they remember crowd out actual learning on the subject, as with the elementary school math teacher who thinks pi is equal to 22/7.

[RedImperator]

I wish we had Red to chime in on this, honestly, because none of us have either experience in education or evidence that shows success of one educational model over another.

You rang?

I'm not going to try to reply point by point to the entire debate, because that would take approximately thirty thousand words and six hours of writing. However, a few things:

• The OP is too ambitious. Setting aside certain practical policy difficulties (if you implement the OP's course and teach it successfully, your brilliant little critical thinkers will bomb their science NCLBs, the school will be labeled "failing", and then the state will step in and dismantle your entire program and replace it with NCLB cram courses), you're asking 14-18 year olds to grasp a lot of fairly advanced concepts in four years, with not much time for more concrete concepts or lab work.
• That said, there's a lot there that could be spread into other courses. Elementary statistics could and should be taught in social studies. Identifying reputable sources and citing them properly should be first semester 9th grade English--that's where students should be first learning the mechanics of writing research papers. Formal logic could be shuttled over to the math department, though God knows math teachers have enough to deal with in four years.
• I would absolutely love to see a required critical thinking course for all high school students. Not just because it's the foundation for truly understanding the physical and social sciences, but because bullshit detection and avoidance is a valuable life skill.
• Rote-memorization only is what we're doing now. How's that working out?
• Tracking is one of those ideas that makes sense in theory but's fiendishly difficult to get right. Historically, tracking has meant "shuttle the privileged students onto the college-bound track and dump the brown people into warehouse classes until we can give them their diplomas and kick them out". This doesn't even have to be deliberate--there are a lot of subtle pressures on minority kids coming from all directions, including inside their own heads, that tends to keep them off the upper track.
• On the other hand, of course, the broader the ability level in a given classroom, the more difficult it becomes to cater to everyone's needs. Write the course to challenge the honor students, and the middle students struggle and the low performers give up and tune out. Write it for the low performers, the middle students are bored and you're completely wasting the honor students' time. Try to individually tailor the workload for each student, and the teacher will drop dead of exhaustion.
• The best compromise, I think, may be to write the course for the middle of the bell curve, and try to assign students so that the majority in a class are reasonably talented and the slower kids are in the minority. This makes classroom management easier, makes it possible for the teacher to provide individual tutoring after school for the kids who are having problems, and for group work, it reduces the number of "one smart kid" groups. The really bright kids should be off on their own gifted track.
• Of course, since nobody asks me about policy questions, I've never had a chance to test that in real life. I could be completely full of shit.
• Another possibility is to group by ability levels within a classroom. I had to do this as a student teacher, because my students ranged from near-honors students to kids who literally (ha ha) couldn't read or write. So, for example, when grading essays, I might demand mistake-free spelling and grammar and clearly-written theses supported by attributed, reliable evidence from the top group, while from the bottom group, all I'd ask for was a few related, coherent ideas. The drawback here, of course, is that an "A" for a top level student indicates a much greater depth of understanding than an "A" for a bottom level student, but you won't know that just by looking at transcripts.

I'll probably have more later, but this is what I've got off the top of my head for now.

[Packbat]

Thanks, RedImperator!

It occurs to me that we could profit from taking the meta level for a moment - what do we want from secondary school science education? I think that will make it easier to decide between ideas. My suggestions:

• A population with a clear understanding of the power and authority of science, and capable of distinguishing to-a-first-approximation reliable sources (e.g. a physicist talking about astronomy) from unreliable sources (e.g. a physicist talking about biology).
• A continuing source of proto-scientists - students who, after leaving secondary school, successfully become scientists.
• A continuing source of other technically-adept persons - students who, after leaving secondary school, successfully become engineers, computer programmers, machinists, maintenance technicians, machine operators, etc. etc. etc.
• A population with a basic understanding of elementary science facts - e.g. conservation of energy, the germ theory of disease.

Anything I missed?* Things I included that are unnecessary?

* Other than the science NCLBs, I mean - I'm including those under "elementary science facts".

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you, RedImperator. My experience with teaching, such as it is, is extremely limited and pretty much associated only with college students, so your perspective is very valuable.

[Starman7]

Thank you Red. I suppose my list might well have been too ambitious: it was me thinking about my own experience as a completely bored student who was utterly unchallenged by anything until Calculus II in college. I know I could've handled that material, but you probably know far better than I what your average student could handle.

On that note, could you prune down my list to what you think is reasonable?

[Chirios]

I'm not a teacher, but based on what I remember about secondary I think that relatively little time is spent on teaching kids what science is, what the scientific method is and why it's necessary. I think more time needs to be spent teaching the kinds of logical blunders that can be made when the scientific method is ignored.