Comments on: If I were king of the teachers…

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:24:17 +0000

I was really happy to read this article. I stumbled into a scientific career path accidentally, and every time the work I do thrills me I wonder how come the stuff I learned in school was nothing like this.

I think more people would be scientists if there was some clue as to what it’s really like back when you’re choosing career paths and memorizing the stages of mitosis.

By: DNLee

DNLee — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:07:13 +0000

I co-sign it all. but I do find some of it really fun…

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:26:21 +0000

Thanks Jesse… you should join the Edmonton Skeptics Facebook group and if you’re ever passing through when we’re meeting you’d have a place to stop and chat!

As for my own education.. very comparable. Same curriculum, I suppose. I loved science when I was in High School because I didn’t understand what real science was supposed to be. It was taught wrong, and I compared it to Star Trek and “fun.” Then I went to University and hated it because it was nothing like I thought it was. Now, having spent years getting to know what it’s really about, I’m enamoured again. But not everyone has that opportunity, so yeah.. I hope I can do better with the teaching part, too.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:34:19 +0000

Hi Brad. I just started reading your blog, and it’s right up my alley. I’m a rationalist/skeptic raising two boys under 4, and it just so happens I was also raised in Edmonton. I’m living in Saskatoon now, moving to B.C. this spring. Nice to find a blog so close to home both ideologically and geographically.
Anyhow, onto your post. I have two main issues (and a bucket load of side issues) with my dismal science education. The first one is how the scientific method was repeatedly presented as nothing more than a static flow chart to be used in lab experiments, and that was all. I had no concept of how to use scientific reasoning in my thought processes about anything else, or that the scientific method was something that took many forms in practice, or that the method itself was always evolving and subject to scrutiny, or even what the basic underlying epistemic principles were.
Secondly, there was next to no synthesis of ideas, just three isolated subject, each with isolated lessons teaching isolated facts. It was like learning film studies by watching movie credits: sure, there’s relevant information in there, but good luck making it useful, relevant, or engaging to a teenage boy with his eye on the girl two seats in front of him.
I hope I can do a LOT better with my sons’ science education.

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:37:18 +0000

It’s always nice to hear I’m not the only one. The best part was that a day after I wrote this article I was at a trade show where the local “Science World” science museum had a display. The host of the booth was dressed in a decorated lab coat, had pink hair, and was making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Science fun, or science sad? What are really learning here?

By: Athon

Athon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:03:09 +0000

I’m sitting wondering how the hell I could have written this article and not remember. It’s taken me a moment to realise that I, in fact, didn’t write it. So, thank hades somebody else shares these views. :)

I work for a science education department of a major science research organisation, and could not agree more with these five points. I’m forever fighting the ‘geek chic’ factor of science, and trying to argue that merely making science fun (without addressing the philosophy) is doing damage. It’s a lonely fight, but rest assured somebody is making it.

By: Jess

Jess — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:18:41 +0000

I whole-heartedly agree on Point 5. One of the guys in my second-year creative poetry class was a biology major. His poetry was brilliant because he had a relatively untapped set of metaphors to work with, and his scientific perspective blew the water out of the musty, in-bred metaphors that came from the English majors.