Science class

[fabrisse]

I have a new student. She’s 12 years old, has read (and loved) 1984, and is learning to play vibraharp. We’re still trying to get a handle on each other -- we had a long discussion about whether nouveau punk could be considered a musical rebellion. I think though, that we'll eventually be a good fit.

Because my dad's a big fan of jazz, and I know he has the complete Lionel Hampton on record, I called him last night to ask for some tapes and advice. The tapes will probably be done while I'm visiting them at Thanksgiving. He also recommended a vibes player that I'd never heard of called Red Norvo. I've added a couple of his CDs to my Amazon wish list.

While working with her on science vocabulary (No, dear, an hypothesis isn't just an educated guess), I asked her why such an obviously bright girl wasn't able to figure out the different types of variables from performing the experiment. Her answer, "The teacher told us not to do the experiment because we could figure out what we needed from reading it."

Obviously, I have to take this revelation with a grain of salt. I've only known her two weeks. It's possible that she was exaggerating or even lying (though, I don't think so -- she seemed very angry that the teacher wasn't taking their education seriously). I'd like to point out that she tested into one of the top public schools in the country. This is not a problem of inadequate funding to a poor neighborhood.

In talking to my dad, I mentioned that incident, the fact that heroin is, according to yesterday's Boston Globe, so cheap, pure, and plentiful that it's being sold near playgrounds for snorting, and the difficulties in enforcing the rules in a crowded Boys and Girls Club.

All these little things came together in one of those blinding moments of revelation that we all get from time to time. So many people are complaining that 'kids today' lack any type of moral education -- that they don't understand responsibility or that consequences have actions.

Drug education, sex education, and mental health education are all trying to teach these basics and impart self respect and a core sense of values. But how can any of these programs work if the kids aren't being taught the scientific method?

It sounds silly, maybe a little simplistic, but it's a serious question. If people want preteens and teenagers to see that actions have consequences, how better than by setting up experiments and showing them. A ball-bearing dropped into water is going to make a splash. The size of the splash and the depth the ball falls are going to increase as the height of the drop increases. Cause and effect are immediate and visible. Maybe in the poorer schools, they can't get enough equipment to do the experiments in pairs or small groups, but once in front of the whole class is still helpful.

The people who are worried about secular humanism and whether suspect 'theories' like evolution are being taught are often the same ones lamenting the poor moral choices their children are making. If they could see the connection between science and ethics, would our schools also improve?

Comments

[jerminating.livejournal.com]

Her answer, "The teacher told us not to do the experiment because we could figure out what we needed from reading it."

This doesn't sound that unusual to me. A lot of teachers want students to read the prompt for an experiment to figure out what they'll need to perform the experiment and what procedures they'll need to go through in order to make the experiment work.

Like eanja, I'm not sure that learning the scientific method necessarily teaches you that your own actions have consequences. Even if it does, I'm not certain that it's necessarily applicable to a lot of decisions that we make as human beings. Science is supposed to be dispassionate, using nothing but logic in the analysis of a problem. Unfortunately, emotion tends to enter into a lot of decisions that we make.

Can you tape Alias tomorrow night at 9? On ABC. The tape I was using should be downstaits and is labeled. Thanks.