Hunting tadpoles in an NGSS world

Photo by Jessica Pierce, with permission

I am going tadpole hunting with my aunt and uncle in an hour. We'll creep along the edge of a pond, muck around our ankles and nets in hand, dodging poison ivy and biting bugs, because it brings us joy.

Between the three of us we have over two centuries of living and hours to play on weekends, and this is what we chose to do, even in the 21st century. We have evolved little in the past few thousand years, despite what the futurists would have you believe.

***

Plants are aware, if not conscious. They are as much alive as you and me, and in many ways far more sophisticated. They communicate to each other, and to animals. They respond subtly, precisely to the world around them, and are more aware of what's happening than most "civilized" humans.

Without a background in natural history, without a childhood immersed in the natural world, a child in our culture has little chance of realizing the lives of the living beings around us. Without this knowledge, all the talk of "interdependent relationships in ecosystems" is like the love song of a twisted psychotic stalker--not just meaningless, but passionately dangerous.

NGSS promotes the practice of science; it does little to promote natural history. This matters. It's like learning the mechanics of sex by using a mannequin--it can be done, but really, what's the point? If a child doez nort fall in love with the natural world, with its deep nuances and rhythms, with its internal beauty, then pushing her to become a scientist becomes a cruel exercise. Benchwork is a hard, lonely business.

Take a child tadpole hunting--you'll do more good for America than anything I can do within the cinder block walls of my classroom.

Ironically, even corporattions would benefit--you want scientists?
Let children roam in the real world.

NGSS will not produce a nation of scientists

US Navy judging science fair contestants (public domain)

If you want a child to learn science (as opposed to engineering or technology or the catechism we pretend is science), it will require (for most) a quasi-religious conversion--a search for truth beyond what one knows, or thinks she knows.

Such a child should be taught not to tolerate the conventions that keep her glued to her seat, asking permission to leave the room to pee.

Such a child should be taught not to tolerate statements without evidence, even the obvious ones. How do we know the Earth turns? How do we know the season are related to the Earth's tilt? How do we know atoms exit?


Fastfission via WIkipedia, 

We praise children for drawing the Rutherford model of the atom, a model long ago replaced. We praise them for making oobleck, for making batteries out of lemons, for making elephant toothpaste.

God help the child that truly challenges her second grade teacher on how we know the sun does not "rise"--we ask children to deny their own reality in order for them to succeed in a classroom culture thrust upon them.

Not every child is destined to be a scientist (thank Zeus), but we should encourage every child to think independently, to support claims with evidence, and to have the courage to call bullshit when appropriate.

The Next Generation Science Standards, while not awful, have a misplaced urgency for producing workers as opposed to scientists. A career as a scientist (as opposed to an engineer or a technician) ain't for the weak.

NGSS folk: To say we need to understand science to use technology is a baldfaced lie.

Coding, NGSS, and cultural madness

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” 

Aside from coding (and more on that in a minute), pretty much everything about computers and their use impedes the spirit of the Next Generation Science Standards.

If the goal of the NGSS standards is to create scientific thinking in a child, then the child must be immersed in the natural world, swimming in the sea of sensations outside of our artificial universe of screens.

Everything on a screen is reduced to pixels and sampling, following algorithms--the foundation of reality in a machine is defined by humans.

The natural world cannot be captured intact by the models we create.

An impossible being that visited me one evening.

Coding for schoolchildren matters. It helps develop a working sense of logic and presents interesting challenges for young brains. I could say the same for solving Sudoku problems or learning to use a slide rule. All of these have value for similar reasons.

What separates coding from other exercises is the potential for a child to see the machine for what it is; to develop a feel the algorithms beneath the life we now impose on humans, to expose its artificiality.

If a child gets that, she just might see the cultural delusions that limit her ability to see the universe around her.

Still, in a world where we have become the gods, where artifice becomes reality, a child may never know what she's missing when she no longer notices the earth around her. And maybe that's the point--a child less distracted by reality will be that much more compliant when she's sitting in her corporate cubicle.

Science starts with the mud between a child's toes.

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. =)