Kieth Hudson
and I have often locked horns on the subject of education. He maintains
that some subjects, sciences and math in particular, have been dumbed
down. After reading the following, I have to consider conceding that he
may well have a point.
Ed
Which
ionic compound would you like to be?
By
MARGARET WENTE
Thursday, June 16, 2005 Updated at
8:08 AM EDT
Globe
and Mail
Attention, parents. Teachers don't teach science the way
they used to. If you suffered as much through Grade 11 physics as I did, you may
think this is a good thing. On the other hand, if you're interested in
scientific literacy, you may be interested in the trendy notions that have
infected modern science teaching. Drill 'n' kill has been replaced by something
called discovery learning, in which students are encouraged to stumble across
the theory of relativity all by themselves.
That's not all. Science teachers are encouraged to make
their material accessible and touchy-feely, so kids will feel good about it. "If
you were transformed into an ionic compound, which would you be?" asks a sample
test question included in Nova Scotia's official science curriculum. No,
this question isn't for Grade 5s. It's for Grade 11s. In British Columbia, Grade
11 (!) students are instructed: "You are a moss. Describe your
experiences."
According to Nova Scotia's provincial curriculum, the idea
is "not to teach content but to help students become mini-scientists, lifelong
learners and hypothesizers." In order to become mini-scientists, Grade 11
chemistry students are instructed to demonstrate intramolecular forces by
organizing into groups and holding hands. Perhaps it's no coincidence that
Nova Scotia
students have some of the worst science-test scores in the country, according to
results made public yesterday. (Alberta, as usual, leads the
pack.)
Experiential, child-centred learning is the order
of the day. Drop in on any science class and you're likely to discover groups of
kids huddled together doing projects as the teacher looks benignly on. The
teacher is there not to instruct, but to facilitate. This is fine as far as it
goes. But it's gone overboard. "Little Emile is supposed to go out and
investigate things as if he were Archimedes and Newton all rolled into one,"
says Donald Cropp, a retired science teacher who co-authored a new report that
evaluates science curriculums across the country (Teaching Science in the 21st
Century, published by the Society for Quality Education: http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org).
You might think that something as objective as science
would be immune from ideology. But you'd be wrong. In many U.S. states,
creationism is being sneaked back into science teaching in the guise of
something called "intelligent design." Progressive educators are properly
appalled at this. But among progressive educators, the whole idea of objectivity
itself is under fire. The education establishment has succumbed to the siren
call of postmodernism, which holds that all truth -- even scientific truth -- is
relative. In Quebec, for example, students learn that
scientific knowledge is "constructed by human beings and is not necessarily an
absolute reflection of reality." This may come as a surprise to those of you who
were brought up to believe that if you fell out of an airplane you would
accelerate at the speed of 32 feet per second{+2} until you went splat. But what
do you know?
Nor is science class immune from today's obligatory
multicultural pieties, whatever damage is inflicted on the facts. Instead of
being oppressed by the unfortunate fact that nearly all the great scientific
discoveries of the past millennium were made by white males, students learn that
science and technology have "evolved from different views held by women and men
from a variety of societies and cultural backgrounds." Manitoba students,
despite much historic evidence to the contrary, are assured that aboriginal
people have "exemplified the qualities of good stewardship in their interactions
with the environment."
Teachers who've been around for a while say that in the
interest of equality, democracy, and experiential learning, science content has
been dumbed way down. (The province of Ontario is smartening it up again, an
effort that's causing complications of its own.)
"We've become less quantitative. We're frightened to give
them numbers to crunch," says Barry Armstrong, head of the science department at
Lower Canada College in Montreal. He points out another problem:
Science, even in secondary schools, is frequently taught by people who don't
have science degrees, and don't know much more science than they themselves
picked up in high school. School systems have enormous trouble recruiting people
with BScs, who can make far more money elsewhere, and teachers unions make it
impossible for them to pay physics teachers more than phys-ed teachers.
There's a fair bit of evidence that teacher-led
instruction, high expectations and frequent tests work better than child-centred
learning, especially in the early years. There's also quite a bit of evidence
that people who have a background in and passion for their subject are better
teachers than those who don't. But who needs evidence? The real question is,
which ionic compound would you like to be?
Personally, I'd like to be salt.
