rlm@2: #+title: Science Minus Science 
rlm@2: #+author: Dylan Holmes
rlm@2: #+email: ocsenave@gmail.com
rlm@2: #+description: What's wrong with our current Science Education?
rlm@2: #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
rlm@2: #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
rlm@2: 
rlm@2: 
ocsenave@5: Today's science classrooms are remarkably
ocsenave@5: unscientific. According to prevailing wisdom, it is less important to teach
rlm@2: the empirical mindset than to impart our accumulated scientific
rlm@2: knowledge. Thus, because the field is so vast nowadays, teachers are
rlm@2: obliged to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential
rlm@2: subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results
rlm@2: into simplified half-truths. Needs must when the devil drives, of
rlm@2: course--but what is the end result?
rlm@2: 
ocsenave@5: In modern science classrooms, students must swallow a 
ocsenave@5: deluge of unfamiliar scientific dogma in time to
ocsenave@5: regurgitate it onto an exam. To accomplish this daunting task, they
rlm@2: cannot possibly stop to consider various alternatives which scientists
rlm@2: have methodically eliminated over the course of centuries; instead,
rlm@2: they must simply trust that science has done what it purports to have
ocsenave@5: done--or, faster, simply stamp out their own conjectural, critical
rlm@2: instincts.
rlm@2: 
rlm@2: By the end of such a course, students might be able to recite the
rlm@2: tenets of our current scientific creed and might employ those tenets
rlm@2: when answering carefully formulated questions. But even if, by chance,
rlm@2: our students get their facts straight, they will have acquired at most
rlm@2: only our pre-processed truths, and nothing of the empirical machinery
ocsenave@5: that produced them. 
rlm@2: 
ocsenave@5: In my opinion, such a lackluster result demands
ocsenave@5: that we re-evaluate our priorities. Surely the essential mark of the
ocsenave@5: scientist is not her ability to recount the latest model of reality,
ocsenave@5: but rather her pervasive inquiry and her methodical, empirical
ocsenave@5: approach to obtaining answers? Instead of canonizing the latest
ocsenave@5: theories, shouldn't we be stimulating a zeal for scrutinizing the
ocsenave@5: them?
ocsenave@5: 
ocsenave@5: #Surely the shibboleth of the
ocsenave@5: #scientist is not his ability to recount the bleeding-edge depiction of
ocsenave@5: #reality--after all, theories are transient and revolutions expected--but
ocsenave@5: #rather his pervasive inquiries about the world and his methodical,
ocsenave@5: #empirical approach to answering them? Indeed, don't we recognize the
ocsenave@5: #scientist by his lack of allegiance to the status quo, by the way he
ocsenave@5: #scrutinizes even his own theories with utmost irreverence?
ocsenave@5:  
rlm@2: In valuing data absorption over methodical reason, we give our
rlm@2: students a fragmentary and moreover inexplicable impression of
rlm@2: reality. We must ask ourselves: how much of science is left in that?
rlm@2: