A grounded education

We have a small pile of composting leaves and twigs sitting in a terrarium just below the windowsill in our classroom, home to a community of roly polies we sometimes use in AP Biology. They get get a nice warm home over the winter in exchange for occasionally running around in Petri dishes, amusing young adult humans.

One on the driveway a few minute ago....

Soon after turning on the class projector on Monday, a high-pitched chirpy whir came out of our terrarium--we had an unexpected stowaway, a lovesick cricket, who after a week still sings his plaintive song of unrequited love to a projector that spurns his advances.

All this in a tiny patch of earth less than a foot square and an inch or two deep.

That we think we can teach cartoon models of DNA for meaning in a culture that fails to recognize the thousands of hearts beating within the sound of a child's voice every time she steps outside speaks to how ungrounded we have become.

You will not find roly polies inside a board room; you'll rarely find them underneath fluorescent lights at all.They do what all animals do, without ever giving thought to the abstractions that distract humans.

We are animals, have been for as long as the pull bugs and the squirrels and the squids that are doing all the same things all animals have done for well over a half-billion years. The first commercial fluorescent lamp was sold in 1938, not so long ago--my grandfather was already middle-aged by then.

He knew how to live.

Don't let the hum of fluorescent light be the plaintive song of your child's life....

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Spontaneous generation

Our pillbug tank (which also has slugs, and once held centipedes and soldier flies) has a new crop of newborns. Despite the dangers of sophomore handlers ("I guess I kinda accidentally dropped a rock"), our tank has as at least as many critters as we started with back in September.

They will be returning to the wilds of Bloomfield soon, and it's all good.

Almost.

Yesterday two snails emerged from the tank litter, slowly slithering their way towards a flake of fish food. We never had snails before. None.

And if my lambs are thinking, and they are truly open-minded,and if they trust that no one snuck in and put the snails in there, well, we have some evidence for spontaneous generation.

Further complicating this are the fry that hatched months ago. While most died (as expected), we have about 15 left, and they look less and less like their parents. Oh, they have gills and fins and scales and all that, but they're the wrong color and the wrong shape. (I know about color changes in goldfish--my students do not).

If I have done my job right, a few students will soon announce that we have provided evidence that spontaneous generation happens. If I've really done my job right, those same students will come up with several hypotheses as to how this occurred, and set up an experiment to replicate the results.

Heck, they'll be juniors next year, they can even run the experiment when they get back in September. In the meantime, if a few remain suspicious that maybe spontaneous generation still happens, well, at their age with their experience they should be suspicious. I encourage skepticism.

That's how science works.

No, I don't believe in spontaneous generation. I think....

I also don't believe children should accept what I (or any "experts") say at face value.