Un-teaching "science"

I am a high school un-teacher. I spend more time un-teaching than I do teaching.

I cannot hope to get kids to think if they walk around life believing much of the nonsense they learned during their impressionable years.

The idea of teaching a room full of children who still have reason (at least economic) to trust the tooth fairy makes my eyeballs quiver. Good Lord, somebody has to do it, and I respect anyone possessing the gadolinium gonads needed to teach larval humans. If you're going to dabble in science, though, please put away the textbooks. and get it right.

Children are sent to school earlier and earlier ("please wipe your feet, hang up your coat, and dry your umbilical stump") and expected to perform more and more. A child reciting a list of organelles before he's sprouted an axillary hair is about as learned as an Irish dancing monkey but not nearly as entertaining. My lambs come to high school spewing content without understanding, and have been rewarded for this. How can this be?*

I've complained about this long enough to get myself attached to a committee, and we're looking at science into the early grades, which means perusing the state standards. Uh-oh.

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Language matters. I am trying to parse the state standards. The first one below applies to children before they finish second grade. We're talking about 7 years olds. A lot of them will be bored hanging around the old folks weekend. Go chat with one.

The Sun is a star that can only be seen during the day.

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards

True, I suppose, but tautological. It says nothing. A young child never asks why we can see the sun during the day. The interesting question is why can't we see the other stars.

Worry not--we'll jam some science in the young'uns:

Determine a set of general rules describing when the Sun and Moon are visible based on actual sky observations.

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards

Asking second graders to do "actual" sun observations can lead to "actual" blindness.

Part of me loves this idea. Let the kids find patterns. Let them observe periodicity in nature. Don't expect them, however, to come up with a set of general rules. Really. Go talk to one. Even one who does the Irish monkey thing well. (She's the one with the report card on the refrigerator.)

Here's one for the Pre-K crowd:

Experiments and explorations provide opportunities for young learners to use science vocabulary and scientific terms.

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards
t

No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!!

Children are magical thinkers--words have tremendous power. Telling a child that things "fall" because of gravity is catechism, not science. We have enough of that already.

Instead, focus on the word "fall"--what does it mean to fall? If a child asks why things always fall "down", work on the word down. If you have an ambitiously curious child, tell them that stuff is attracted to other stuff and no one knows why. Do not use a science vocabulary term until the child has a chance to discover what it means.

I'd rather ban the word gravity in elementary school than "provide opportunities for young learners to use science vocabulary." They got plenty of other things to grasp before throwing talismans at them.

I look forward to the committee meetings.

*Turns out our state standards are designed by "educators and experts
recognized for their content area expertise. [italics mine]" Gulp.

The Einstein acceptance speech wordle was found at Ptak Science Books here.

The cartoon is from, of course, Toothpaste For Dinner....

On the "R" word

toothpastefordinner.com

When I led teaching rounds at Children's Hospital of New Jersey, residents avoided certain words in my presence: "diabetic," "sickler," or "asthmatic" would hang in the air as I smoldered.

The residents learned quickly--they had survived medical school. I'm not sure I changed any behaviors, but language does make a difference. I did not want young doctors to see my patients as diabetics--I wanted them to see "a child with diabetes."

It's much harder to treat a child than it is to treat a disease--and I would not allow short cuts on my teams.

How we use language has profound effects on our world view.

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Governor Christie signed a bill yesterday outlawing the "R" word in state rules--New Jersey will no longer use "mentally retarded" in its documents.

"Mentally retarded" will be replaced with "intellectual disability" or "developmental disability," neither of which means the same thing as mentally retarded. The law was pushed by many well-intentioned groups, including ARC, which used to stand for the Association for Retarded Citizens, but now stands for, well, "Arc."

Lots of words become poisonous because of our very human ability to dehumanize just about any human who is not "normal." "Dumb" meant simply only mute a long time ago.

"Moron" used to be a medical term, used by (you cannot make this stuff up) the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded.

The American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded, 1910

"Cretin" comes from the French--it was originally used to remind folks that even developmentally delayed people are people.

[T]he original meaning of cretin was, literally, "Christian"....synonymous with "human being". Due to the lack of iodine in the medieval Alpine diet, certain regions of Switzerland were prone to severe thyroid problems, such as goiter and congenital idiocy. The local priests, moved by compassion for these poor imbeciles, encouraged the populace to treat them kindly. They deserved pity, it was said, because they were, at least, Christians (i.e. "human beings").

Melanie & Mike Take Our Word For It
Issue # 27, February 8, 1999

Today many families prefer "autistic" to "mentally retarded." The words (historically, anyway) were not synonymous, and fusing them diminishes the usefulness of either.

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The "R" word is verboten in my classroom. The kids learn this in a hurry. I also will not tolerate "gay" or any version of "homosexual" used as a weapon, nor the "B" word. The "C" and "N" words get you bounced.

I have a bit more tolerance for the "A" word if used to describe mulish behavior instead of an orifice, and I barely hear the "F" word unless it's aimed at someone specific.

How we, as teachers, use words in a classroom can make a huge difference in how students see words. We have a wonderful chance to develop some asolescent meta-cognition as we dissect why some words have so much more force than others.

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"We’d like New Jersey to get to a place where you can’t use the ‘R’ word with it being inflammatory.’’

Elizabeth Shea
Assistant Executive Director for The Arc
Today's Star Ledger

Read that carefully.
Sounds like Ms. Shea wants to demonize the "R" word.

I think she meant to say The Arc would like New Jersey to get to a place where "mentally retarded" is not used as an inflammatory term. Or maybe she meant what she said. Turns out words matter.

I'd be willing to bet a pound of lima beans that "autism" will face the same exorcism rites in a couple of generations, and we'll see the word the way we see "idiot" and "cretin" now.

Or maybe I'm just a dodo schmendrick human being.

My mother and uncle grew up with Georgie Carlin, literally.
My views on language may be skewed.

Dr. Robert Rapaport, a mensch, and one of the best teachers I ever had,
just about slaughtered me the first time I uttered "diabetic" in his presence.