view org/science.org @ 11:1f112b4f9e8f tip

Fixed what was baroque.
author Dylan Holmes <ocsenave@gmail.com>
date Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:30:49 -0500
parents 23db8b1f0ee7
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1 #+title: Science Minus Science
2 #+author: Dylan Holmes
3 #+email: ocsenave@gmail.com
4 #+description: The debate between teaching scientific facts and the scientific way to think.
5 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
6 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
8 I'm worried that science classes are becoming unscientific.
9 Typically, science classes are supposed to teach not only how the world works, but also how
10 to think scientifically. Lately, however, our mentality has been
11 marginalized to make time for teaching students all the theory that
12 eventual college students should know.
13 #I've noticed that classrooms
14 #have been heavily emphasizing our information, rather than our
15 #mentality. They haven't forgotten about teaching ways to think, but
16 #they insist that teachers familiarize their students
17 #with theories that every college student should know.
18 Because our theories are complex,
19 with intricacies that would be cruel and unusual to
20 inflict upon unsuspecting pupils, such a curriculum requires teachers to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential
21 subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results
22 into simplified half-truths. They must avoid the imperfect boundaries
23 of our knowledge, instead concentrating on an idealized and sanitized
24 account of what we know. But what's the result of such abbreviation?
26 #Needs must when the devil drives, of
27 #course--but what is the end result?
29 #As a result of this shift, they have been saddled with the
30 #difficult task of disseminating complex scientific theories in a short
31 #period of time
33 # and it is less important to teach
34 #the empirical mindset than to impart our accumulated scientific
35 #knowledge. Thus, because the field is so vast nowadays, teachers are
36 #obliged to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential
37 #subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results
38 #into simplified half-truths. Needs must when the devil drives, of
39 #course--but what is the end result?
41 In modern science classrooms, students must still swallow a deluge of
42 unfamiliar scientific dogma in time to regurgitate it onto an
43 exam. In their forced hurry, they cannot stop to ponder various
44 alternatives which scientists have methodically eliminated over the
45 course of centuries; instead, they must simply trust that science has
46 done what it purports to have done--or, faster, simply stamp out their
47 own conjectural, critical instincts.
49 Facility with
50 scientific concepts and language is
51 not such a bad skill to have.
52 By the end of such a course, students might be able to recite the
53 tenets of our current scientific creed and might employ those tenets
54 when answering carefully formulated questions. I am worried, though, because even if
55 our students get their facts straight, they will still have acquired at most
56 only our pre-processed truths, and nothing of the empirical machinery
57 that produced them.
59 In my opinion, this shortchanges our students, and we ought to re-evaluate our priorities. Surely the essential mark of the
60 scientist is not his ability to recount the latest model of reality,
61 but rather his pervasive inquiry and methodical, empirical
62 approach to obtaining answers? Instead of canonizing the latest
63 theories, shouldn't we be stimulating a zeal for scrutinizing
64 them? Might we even want to /postpone/ handing our
65 students canned knowledge, at the very least until we've taught them enough
66 about how to be curious, how to acquire knowledge for themselves, how
67 to be analytical---in short, how to live like scientists?
71 #Surely the shibboleth of the
72 #scientist is not his ability to recount the bleeding-edge depiction of
73 #reality--after all, theories are transient and revolutions expected--but
74 #rather his pervasive inquiries about the world and his methodical,
75 #empirical approach to answering them? Indeed, don't we recognize the
76 #scientist by his lack of allegiance to the status quo, by the way he
77 #scrutinizes even his own theories with utmost irreverence?
79 When we value data absorption over methodical reason, we give our
80 students a fragmentary and moreover inexplicable impression of
81 nature, one which will probably evaporate outside the classroom. That's an approach to science which hardly sounds like science.
82 Instead, let's teach students how to think, so they can build a
83 framework that will house the rest of their knowledge. Let's stop
84 rushing to teach students everything we know, and let them grapple
85 with Nature themselves for a while. Let's train them to be curious rather than
86 complacent learners. The results will be worth our effort.
88 #I ask you: how much of science is left in that?