Science

Andy is a scientist. He works on linear particle accelerators for a living. I've seen several physicists of our acquaintance drool over a chance to see these wonderful(?) machines he works with every day. At home he looks into the mysteries of over-unity motors and he presides over the inner works of our computers and the network he set up between them. He knows an amazing amount about the human body, ranging from chiropractic adjustments to reflexology, acupressure, and massage. He occasionally ponders concepts of time travel and flight in his spare time.

Not surprisingly, the math/science component of Monkey's education is a topic of great concern for him.

So when I set out browsing through HEM this afternoon, I perked right up when i saw that they're featuring science right now. Here is something interesting. Something I am going to need to know about. I dived right in.

First, an article about teaching high school science from a scientist, "Learning and Doing Science," by Cafi Cohen. She's clearly unimpressed with regular high school science, and the reasons she gives for it are valid.

Classroom science ... focus[es] on ... the "body of facts" and "systematic knowledge" and "general laws." The result? Students taking biology read the text, complete worksheets, bumble through "experiments" (which, sadly, have but One Right Answer), and take exams to demonstrate that they can differentiate porifera from coelenterates. Classroom science... rewards memorization and regurgitation. Answers are prized; questions are discouraged.

Although I would say that my most intense and memorable science teacher worked hard to bring us interesting labs and was truly committed to seeing us reach our potential (he was also the class advisor), a lot of both the physics and chem classes I took from him were just like she describes: memorize, the stress over coming to the "right answer" in the lab, rehash on the test.

In contrast, real world scientists practice definition (2) above, "knowledge of the physical world gained through observation and experimentation." ...

They focus on doing, rather than on memorizing what everyone else has done. Instead of rehashing another's explorations and discoveries, real world scientists study the unknown, the not-yet-understood. Their questions are just as important as the answers. Unlike the situation with classroom science, real world scientists are often rewarded for asking new questions and for creative experimental design.

Interestingly, as I consider the dichotomy Cohen talks about between "real" science and "class" science, I realize that even when we did have a nice open-ended project - for instance building little balsa wood bridges to see how much weight we could get them to hold - it was often more competitive (whose bridge holds the most) than comparative (what design elements hold the most). Cohen talks about her son's ongoing interest in model rocket design. She tells a little about how he played with various elements of his rockets as he entered competitions. That's experimentation. How much more will he have learned from doing the "same" thing 50 different ways in search of the best flight possible? I'm quite sure that he learned more about rockets than I did about the strength of balsa wood or the strongest architectural shapes it can be made into: I only got to do it once. Then we moved on to something else.

Lesson for me: There is wisdom in letting an interest run its course, in finding materials for repeated experiments. Even when the Monkey manages to choose something that I'm not terribly interested in, which I'm sure he'll do at least once or twice.


Several of the other article I read were as much a list of reviews of science-related books as articles. Here are some of the books that appear most likely to find their way to our family's bookshelves:

The Amature Naturalist by Gerald Durrell

From Franklyn M. Branley's "Let's-Read-and-Find-Out" Science Series:

Snow Is Falling
Hurricane Watch
Tornado Alert
Sunshine Makes the Seasons
Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll

The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola

It's Raining Cats and Dogs: All Kinds of Weather and Why We Have It by Franklyn Branley (this one's supposed to cover pink(!) snow)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett

How Artists See the Weather: Sun, Wind, Snow, Rain by Colleen Carroll

Weather Dude: A Musical Guide to the Atmosphere by Nick Walter

The Weather Factor by David Ludlum (weather's impact on history!)


Yeah, I know, I'm showing my own biases in what is interesting, but with the Monkey so small at all I'm not sure where else to start. And even a few of those books would add to the foundation of science books already in our personal library.