A New Approach to Teaching Science- My 2.2 Yen

Parent Cafe
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<p>Lately, government officials have been lamenting the “inadequacy” of U.S. students in the areas of math and science. We are something like 13th in the ranks of the industrial countries, and naysayers cry our economic doom if we do not fix this problem. So we try. We add remedial science classes, and build fancy new labs, and create science and technology schools, ignoring the damage these actions have on humanities and arts programs. </p>

<pre><code> And it doesn’t work, or not as well as we had hoped, anyway. Why? We’re not changing anything; we’re merely increasing the scope of what we did before. You could say we’re failing in a more spectacular fashion. Unless we change the texture of science classes, U.S. students will continue to rank below those elsewhere in the world.

We need to stop teaching science classes like history classes. Students spend too much time memorizing the intricacies of theories which may or may not be correct, and not enough time developing theories of their own. Current ideas, and the history of science, is certainly the base of further achivement; it is, as Newton said, the shoulders of giants. But it is only the base.

A truly challenging science course would teach students to think outside of the box, or even outside of the three-dimensional shape. It would not treat the scientific method as a boring process to be covered at the beginning of the year and then forgotten. It would teach students the scientific facts currently instilled, and then teach students how to think about those facts. Unless we make this change, we will not produce scientists, but merely people who know science.

A basic science course might spend half of the year on scientific history, and then the rest on scientific discovery. For example, students would be taught Newton’s Laws, and then be given the data he used to draw these laws, and be instructed to come up with their own explanation of the facts. Students would also be taught that theories, while the most respected unit of scientific knowledge, are not infallible; they would be taught how to effectively read and criticize theories.

Unfortunately, this would be an exercise in creative thinking, and as such would probably be decried by the education administrators as dangerous. Of course we can’t actually educate our students, they might do something with the knowledge! But when an increase in the quantity of mismatched sludge of facts that is poured into students’ brains fails to produce the desired improvements, perhaps we will take another look at science education.
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<p>That is a very cool idea. I can’t imagine in a million years it being implemented, but its a very cool idea nonetheless.</p>

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<p>Willow:
Our district went through several changes of science curricula, most of it at the high school level. first, it was the introduction of Principles of Science and Technology. Parents of high achievers howled because the classes were heterogenous and taught at a 6th grade reading level (teachers were specifically told not to select materials at a higher level for fear of leaving struggling students behind). Additionally, the parents were afraid that this would put another hurdle on the path of their kids wanting to take 3 science APs.
Next, and in tandem, was the introduction of heterogeneous classes across the board and the elimination of honors classes which students wanting to take SAT-IIs but not AP had previously taken. AND, the reversing of the science sequence, with Physics First as the first course, which made a lot of prospective science students and their parents unhappy, as it would not prepare them for taking AP-Physics.
But all this tinkering masked a deeper problem: that middle school science was not challenging enough. Indeed, it was our S’s science teacher who alerted us to that problem and sent our S to CTY.
One big hurdle to making progress is the teaching of lab sciences as discrete courses. In France, students are expected to take biology, physics and chemistry every year. The level of difficulty depends on what tracks they’re in. But the fact that all sciences are taught every year eliminates the problem of whether to teach physics first or last.
The same goes for math, by the way: geometry and algebra are taught throughout high school rather than sequentially. Trigonometry is introduced in 9th grade and all students are exposed to some calculus.</p>

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<p>Marite,
What you seem to be referring to is integrated science; this is present in the local school system, but is regarded as less challenging than the biology/chemistry/physics track. I don’t think this is because of the integration, but because the curriculum chosen was weaker.</p>

<p>Another thing that might prove helpful would be to have discrete courses taken in the same year; for example, the first year could be science year, with biology, chemistry, and physics. That way, the students wouldn’t be confused by the jumping around of the integration track, but they would still make the connections by taking the courses simultaneously.</p>

<p>The distinctions between the math courses have never seemed clear-cut to me, and parts of each subject are used in the others. This might make it a good subject for integration, as you said.</p>

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<p>You are correct. The science courses in France are taught as discrete courses but in parallel. Our school toyed with the integrated science for a couple of years before introducing yet another reform. The problem, as you noted, was that the level was very low.</p>

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<p>Of course, this would make life pretty unhappy for those students who hated science. Perhaps there could be two tracks, two versions of teaching science- but this smacks of the “honors” vs. “integrated” approach. </p>

<p>How familiar are you with the French school systems? Do you know how they deal with the doubling-up of other subjects that would probably result from such parallel teaching? Do they do the same thing with math?</p>

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<p>Willow:
I went through the French system before the 1968 reforms; my nieces and nephews have gone to school since the 1980s. One of my nieces spent a year at our high school and was able to contrast her education with that offered here; another niece spent a summer with us, looking over her precalculus problems in preparation for taking calculus in 12th grade, so I got to see what was expected of a student headed to the humanities or social sciences.</p>

<p>Before 1968, there was primary school through grade 5 and the lycee 6-12. After grade 5, students were tracked into Classics, Experimental Sciences and Math. All students were expected to take up foreign language beginning in 6th grade, plus another one beginning in 8th grade. In addition, classics majors were expected to start Latin in 6th grade and, if they so wished, add Greek in 8th grade. All students, no matter what track had math, biology, chemistry through 12th grade, as well as history, geography, literature. The level of difficulty and the number of hours devoted to each common subject differed according to tracks. Students in classics had more literature and history than students in sciences and math (a really ambitious student could combine classics and math). Students in math had lots more math than students in classics, and somewhat more than sciences students. Sciences students had more bio, physics and chemistry than students in the other two tracks, especially in classics. BUT, all students had to have math through 12th grade, and bio, physics and chemstry through 12th grade.</p>

<p>Since the reforms of 1968, a middle school has been created, and the tracks have been relabelled. I’m told that the middle school curriculum is weak (a complaint heard frequently here, too). All students are expected to take a year of Latin, and to continue if they so wish; or not if they don’t care for it (Classics has plummeted). The tracks are now: Literature and Languages; Economics and Social Sciences and Math and Experimental Sciences. But the expectation that all students will take math (algebra, geometry plus trigonometry and some exposure to calculus) through 12th grade remains. So the sciences are not integrated but taught parallel to one another. And because the curricular expectations are clear, it is possible to make references to other segments of the curriculum (in the way that AP-Physics carries the expectation that students have some prior or concurrent exposure to calculus, for example). </p>

<p>Hope this helps. By the way, I had an abysmal physics teacher in 9th grade. The curriculum may be better, the teaching not necessarily so.</p>