annotate org/science.org @ 8:4dfeaf1a70c0

typos, gender reassignment
author Dylan Holmes <ocsenave@gmail.com>
date Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:02:59 -0500
parents 3ff40c869d1a
children 23db8b1f0ee7
rev   line source
rlm@2 1 #+title: Science Minus Science
rlm@2 2 #+author: Dylan Holmes
rlm@2 3 #+email: ocsenave@gmail.com
rlm@2 4 #+description: What's wrong with our current Science Education?
rlm@2 5 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
rlm@2 6 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
rlm@2 7
rlm@2 8
ocsenave@5 9 Today's science classrooms are remarkably
ocsenave@5 10 unscientific. According to prevailing wisdom, it is less important to teach
rlm@2 11 the empirical mindset than to impart our accumulated scientific
rlm@2 12 knowledge. Thus, because the field is so vast nowadays, teachers are
rlm@2 13 obliged to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential
rlm@2 14 subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results
rlm@2 15 into simplified half-truths. Needs must when the devil drives, of
rlm@2 16 course--but what is the end result?
rlm@2 17
ocsenave@5 18 In modern science classrooms, students must swallow a
ocsenave@5 19 deluge of unfamiliar scientific dogma in time to
ocsenave@5 20 regurgitate it onto an exam. To accomplish this daunting task, they
rlm@2 21 cannot possibly stop to consider various alternatives which scientists
rlm@2 22 have methodically eliminated over the course of centuries; instead,
rlm@2 23 they must simply trust that science has done what it purports to have
ocsenave@5 24 done--or, faster, simply stamp out their own conjectural, critical
rlm@2 25 instincts.
rlm@2 26
rlm@2 27 By the end of such a course, students might be able to recite the
rlm@2 28 tenets of our current scientific creed and might employ those tenets
rlm@2 29 when answering carefully formulated questions. But even if, by chance,
rlm@2 30 our students get their facts straight, they will have acquired at most
rlm@2 31 only our pre-processed truths, and nothing of the empirical machinery
ocsenave@5 32 that produced them.
rlm@2 33
ocsenave@5 34 In my opinion, such a lackluster result demands
ocsenave@5 35 that we re-evaluate our priorities. Surely the essential mark of the
ocsenave@8 36 scientist is not his ability to recount the latest model of reality,
ocsenave@8 37 but rather his pervasive inquiry and methodical, empirical
ocsenave@5 38 approach to obtaining answers? Instead of canonizing the latest
ocsenave@8 39 theories, shouldn't we be stimulating a zeal for scrutinizing
ocsenave@5 40 them?
ocsenave@5 41
ocsenave@5 42 #Surely the shibboleth of the
ocsenave@5 43 #scientist is not his ability to recount the bleeding-edge depiction of
ocsenave@5 44 #reality--after all, theories are transient and revolutions expected--but
ocsenave@5 45 #rather his pervasive inquiries about the world and his methodical,
ocsenave@5 46 #empirical approach to answering them? Indeed, don't we recognize the
ocsenave@5 47 #scientist by his lack of allegiance to the status quo, by the way he
ocsenave@5 48 #scrutinizes even his own theories with utmost irreverence?
ocsenave@5 49
rlm@2 50 In valuing data absorption over methodical reason, we give our
rlm@2 51 students a fragmentary and moreover inexplicable impression of
rlm@2 52 reality. We must ask ourselves: how much of science is left in that?
rlm@2 53