Observation vs. information

There's the difference between "information" and "observation."

An alert letting you know it's raining outside is information. Standing outside getting hit by drops of water under gray clouds while your brain melts from the earthy aroma, that's observing.

Both can be summed up as "it's raining outside." On a multiple guess test, you'd be hard-pressed to separate the two--but it matters.

Here's a piece of information--that rainy day smell comes from geosmin, and chemists draw it like this:

"Geosmin" means "earth smell"--that's information.
Letting a child dance under the first raindrops of a late May rainfall, letting her sniff the ethereal aroma, that's observing.

If a child is to have any hope understanding the natural world, she first need to observe it.

Yeah, ethereal is the wrong adjective there--
chemists use it to mean related to ethyl ether. That would be information.

NGSS: The first "S" means "science"

As I sink deeper into the morass of words that pretends to advance science in the name of economic security (which is like asking a flower to open in order to fulfill an order for FTD), I find comfort in reading  Walt Kelly's Pogo, a document at least as sophisticated as anything "managed" by Achieve, an organization of governors and business folks working to push "college and career readiness" as the primary purpose of public education. (They are starting to pay lip service to citizenry now...)

When you mix a corporate agenda with "science," you get oddly unscientific practices:

"Obtain and communicate information about..."

The above phrase appears nine times in the performance expectations of the prepubescent crowd (4th grade and under) in the draft of the Next Generation Science Standards. You could look it up.

Obtaining and communicating information is what business folks do. Science is not in the business of information, it's in the business of grasping how the natural world works. It starts with observation.


We're talking about children. The committee might consider renting one out, and setting it up on a beach somewhere. Observe what a young child does as she runs, crouches, runs, then crouches some more. She's observing. Sure, it's undirected, and yes, she'll need context and language and technological tools to help her along--but what she doesn't need is a formal education that confounds science with obtaining and communicating information.

We don't need science teachers and business leaders leading the charge here, we need child development specialists, we need pediatricians, we need Mommies and Daddies. Heck, we need could use a few children on the committee.

We got too much  Howland Owl, a pedantic pricklish sort, and not enough Porky Pine, a wise, if cynical, denizen of the swamp. I'd make Grundoon the chile woodchunk or his sister Li'l Honey Bunny Ducky Downy Sweetie Chicken Pie Li'l Everlovin' Jelly Bean the chair.

Francis W. Parker had a few words to say about this long before public schools fell prey to the agenda of careerists more interested in the dubious concept of "global economy" than the interests of America and its children:

I wish to earnestly protest against making school-children wander though a long desert and wilderness of words before a few of them, who intellectually survive, can have the inestimable privileges of direct observation found in the laboratories of universities. When pupils in the lower schools study science throughout the course there will be a hundred students in our universities where now there is one.

Francis W. Parker, Talks on Pedagogics

Maybe, just maybe, elementary school teachers know a tad more about the Grundoons of this world than do Eli, Bill, and Arne. Maybe, just maybe, they'll do what they have always done when faced with nonsense imposed from on high.

Put a nice poster of George Washington on the window, close the door, teach and explore the world together.

Yes, of course, communication is a huge part of what scientists do--

but it's what they do after the science is done, to share their observations, to keep them honest.

The Walt Kelly cartoons used without permission, but hopefully fall under educational use.

I hope the Kelly family agrees. Let me know if you don't--we've chatted before. =)

NGSS and Achieve

I have been nipping at the heels of Achieve for a flawed draft attempting to push their corporate world-view into public schools. The board of Achieve is made up of "leading" state governors and high level businessmen.

You can squeeze crap into a platinum tube trimmed with gold, but when you squeeze it out, it still stinks.

I may be unfair. It may be that no committee can create the kind of document a teacher needs to effectively teach to a specific group of kids.

Individual teachers, however, create these sorts of documents daily--we call them lesson plans. We tailor them for our classes, playing to our individual strengths, adapting to the real-time assessments good teachers do every minute of class time.


When you're ready to listen, give one of us a call....

 

Here's a list of their contributors:

The Battelle Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Boeing Company
Brookhill Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
The Cisco Foundation
The GE Foundation
IBM Corporation
Intel Foundation
JP Morgan Chase Foundation
The Joyce Foundation
Lumina
MetLife Foundation
Nationwide
Noyce Foundation
The Prudential Foundation
Sandler Foundation
State Farm Insurance Companies
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation