Embedding digital tech makes our children scientifically illiterate

A Crooke's radiometer measures sunlight intensity, which sounds all scary and scientificy, until you see one in action. It's simpler than a Talking Elmo.



The more intense the light, the faster the radiometer's vanes spin inside its glass bulb. It looks like a toy.

I keep one on the windowsill in our classroom. On sunny days in September, it spun so hard it rattled. In December's dying light, it moves like an elderly statesman--steadily, slowly, with a hint of what once was.



Sunlight is not abstract. The spinning radiometer is not abstract. Telling my lambs that the sun barely rose 25 degrees above the horizon is abstract. I can show them fancy solar data charts on the internet, teach them algorithms for interpreting the data, and get them to bark like trained seals.

We need the abstract. I get that. Focusing on the imaginary before children grasp the real, however, will create a generation of idiot savants.

***

Our children live in an abstract world. They bop along life with personalized song sets, immerse themselves in virtual worlds with personalized avatars.

We used to worry when kids held on to imaginary friends a bit too long. A toddler talking to a giant imaginary squid is cute; a 13 year old doing the same thing is disturbing.

Constructing the abstract is a special kind of imaginary thinking, but the abstract is still imaginary. If I describe my Christmas tree, a lovely balsam afflicted with minor scoliosis now covered with ornaments, some made by hand by my children years ago, I am talking about something real.

If I tell you that the average balsam sold in Bloomfield this year is 2.11 meters tall, weighs 20.3 kg, and has 533.7 branches, you might be able to imagine it in your head, but it does not exist. Anywhere.

Yet when we teach science, we focus on the imaginary average, often at the exclusion of looking at the bent-over balsam sitting in the room.

Using a machine that helps a child grasp the abstract version of a Christmas tree may improve test scores (though there's evidence that it won't); it cannot, however, help a child see the real tree.

***

There is a huge push to use "technology" in classrooms. By technology, I am assuming most folks mean the digitized high-tech expensive stuff, or else the discussion is just silly. All of us use some sort of technology in class, even if it's just paper and pencil.

The Innovative Educator blog is a fun read, with lots of good ideas. It has almost 1800 followers. It carries clout. A few days ago, Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator, headlined her post:

Tech Doesn’t Make Us Illiterate.
Not Embedding it Into Instruction Does.

In it, she discusses reactions to The New York Times article discussing the failure of 1:1 computing in some schools, then reconstructs the false dichotomy tossed about in the ed tech world: tried-and-true old skool ("readin', ritin', rithmetic") vs. the visionary new big thing.

What gave me pause, however, is her suggestion that we turn classrooms into video games:

What would happen if rather than lament what our kids loved to do, we re-envisioned school. They love games. What if we stopped fighting it and the adults changed and started looking at School as Video Game?

Ms. Nielsen does not stand alone. I read similar words every few days, hers just happened to be the latest I stumbled upon.

What would happen?
Science in the classroom would die. Science requires contact with the physical, with the real. Until children know the ground under their feet, they cannot hope to grasp models.

I use plenty of technology in class: our Crooke's radiometer, our Drinky Bird, our Newton's Cradle, our classroom garden (hey, we even use fluorescent lights!), our prism, our aquaria filters...and on and on.

I agree with Ms. Nielsen that tech doesn't make us illiterate. Embedding digital technology into science too early, before our children get a decent handle on the physical world, does make our children scientifically illiterate.

It's why my class has an analog clock. It's why I threaten to smash calculators in class.

Do I use a computer? Yep. Sometimes I sip a good Oirish whiskey as I do so. Neither belongs in the hands of a child.

Radiometer pic by Nevit Dilmen, used under CC.

The cost of one laptop buys a lot of tangible science gadgets.
Bet a young student learns more science from a bag of magnets than from a puter. .

Uh-oh

Turns out Sue Ohanian beat me to the punch in her Outrages blog.

N.J. education czar nominee appeals to union, Dems

"...and is already being praised by educators."

The Star-Ledger, front page today

I'm a registered Democrat.
I'm a card-carrying member of the NJEA.
I trip on the word "educator," but I think teaching science in a public high school qualifies me as one.

Governor Christie will nominate Christopher Cerf (alas, not the muppet music guy) as the next education chief here in Jersey.

Before we get all gooey with joy, let me speak for at least one Democratic unionized teacher here in Jersey. If the Ledger is right, and the union and Dems go gaga on this guy, I'm going to put my considerable union dues to good use, buying ale instead of politicians. I'll even share a pint or two with Bret Schundler, who always struck me as a decent and reasonable man even when I disagreed with him.

• Mr. Cerf was the President and Chief Operating Officer of Edison Schools, Inc., a for-profit corporate invasion of public space, for eight years! He led them through the years when their stock was publicly traded on NASDAQ. The Edison Schools, Inc., record speaks for itself.

• Mr. Cerf showed questionable judgment in 2008 when he sought a contribution from Edison Schools while he served as Deputy Schools Chancellor in New York City.

• Mr. Cerf was a partner in the Public Private Strategy Group, a company that claims on its site that PPSG "[led] the successful turnaround of over 100 underperforming public schools in major urban centers across the country." If you look for the evidence on the "Education" page of the website, you get a picture of flying mortarboards and the words "This section is currently under development."

• Mr. Cerf was trained by the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy, founded by Eli Broad, a real estate mogul, who believes that business executives can turn around failing schools through their extraordinary management skills. Broad has joined with master educators Bill and Melinda Gates, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee to teach us slow-witted teacher folk how to do our jobs. Billionaires can influence policy, and they can influence the press. Still, take a good look at the numbers, then draw your own conclusions....

• Mr. Cerf served as senior policy advisor for Bloomberg's latest run as mayor.

“What has happened to schools under Mike Bloomberg is one of a kind,” Mr. Cerf said in an interview. “It really is a national model for reform.”

If juggling statistics to fudge perceived results is the kind of reform you want, you'll love Mike Bloomberg's plan.

None of these disqualify Cerf from the nomination. Heck, he's perfect for Christie. Cerf's tinfoil Democrat badge works in Christie's favor.

Still, if you value the public in public school, value democracy in Democratic values, value union in the NJEA, you should be frightened by Christie's choice. Especially if The Star-Ledger tells you everybody else thinks otherwise.

In a week that Democrats gave the super rich a huge tax break, I have no idea what "Democrat" means anymore....

Credit Sue Ohanian for digging out the article on Cerf's conflict of interest.

Image of Christie and Cerf from The Star-Ledger.

Top 10 Rants of 2010

1) Fluoride, an OK idea at best for protecting teeth, should not be dumped into the public water supply. Dumping hydrofluorosilicic acid, an industrial waste generated by the phosphate industry, into the water supply makes as much sense as putting rocket fuel in breast milk.

2) Vaccines, a great idea, should not be mandatory for school unless the disease it prevents is communicable in a school setting. Unless the students are involuntarily boffing in the hallways, Hepatitis B vaccine and Gardisil should not be mandatory. Not saying they're not a good idea--just saying they should not be mandatory.

3) College should be for expanding ideas, sharing thoughts, and learning. If you're going to college to get a job, well, don't look at the statistics. You'll only get depressed. If you're going to learn about snake poems, you're in luck. D.H. Lawrence's words haunt me still.

4) Bottled water, tainted by BPA and a ridiculous price tag, should be sought by the same people who seek Trinity Yachts and Sevruga caviar. Those of us who paddle and drink ale should just use tap water. Not only is it safer, it's a magnitude cheaper as well. And no, there is no (as in NO!) evidence that you need 8 glasses of water a day.

5) SMART Boards are fun, as are yo-yo's, and about as useful in a classroom. Once you get past the groovy factor, neither contributes much to thought. Invest your money in the poor man's white board instead. If you can't teach well using the back of a napkin, you can't teach well.

6) Walk. Really, just walk. Driving will get you killed.

7) Milk is for baby mammals. Cow's milk is for calves, human milk for infants. This should be glaringly obvious. That it's not is a testament the National Dairy Council's financial clout. Got Milk? should be replaced by Got a Brain?

8) Only an industrial society could think that developing a vaccine from a healthy aborted baby merits no debate. The rubella vaccine here in the States uses cell lines from abortuses. This is not the rant of a mad man, nor the rant of a frothing Catholic.

9) If your young child spends more time in front of monitors than at the family dinner table, you will get the child you deserve. Parenting is hard, but it matters. Get it right.

10) The designated hitter rule destroyed Major League Baseball.

The cow boob is from Natalie Dee, of course....

Runners up? Howard Gardner's intelligences,
BP's cleaning efforts, the NJEA, American Exceptionalism, unmanned drones,
the raised ceiling on estate taxes, and the striped bass' insistence on staying just off shore this fall. Really....

Christmas crank

Years ago a verbal scuffle broke out in the back of my classroom.

"Six days!"
"Seven days!"
"SIX!"
"SEVEN!"

The crux? How long it took G-d to create Earth. I calmed them down, and learning that each used King James as her source, suggested that they settle this by actually reading the Good Book instead of barking.

***

These are the shortest days of the year in this neck of the woods. Life needs sunlight, and the light is dying. The longest night of the year looms.

Mammals foolish enough to dance under electric lights go, well, bonkers. Much of my life exists outside of science, as it should. I come from a family that fed me the dominant mythology, a beautiful story that helps us get through these dark days. Other cultures have similar myths for similar reasons. The fading sun frightens us.

Our nation is careening towards cultural chaos as we blend the myths of American and Christian exceptionalism into a story that serves neither well.

I am a science teacher, but the words that follow are not science. They are, however, based on how the myths were constructed over generations, for good reasons.

The Christ was not born in the winter.

The Wise Men were not at the manger while The Christ was an infant.

The current version of Christianity is not in danger of extinction. It has the strength of the United States military behind it. Just ask the Afghans.

The Christ did not tell Constantine to put the cross on the shields of his soldiers before his battle against Maxentius. Constantine may have believed this, but it is our shame that we accept a myth utterly contrary to His words.

We move with energy from the sun, our mass built from the breath of the life before us. Carbon dioxide and water and sunlight play with a few strands of DNA. We are special, but no more special than the yeast that taught Jesus how to make wine.

Christian privilege is real. Try greeting a TSA agent with "Assalaamu Alaikum."

OK, I'll get off my high horse now.

Yes, another repeat. But, Lord, I get tired of the "War Against Christmas" myth.

The illustration is by Tripod2282, found here at Uncyclopedia, released to the public. I think....

Uncle Arne Pennybags

But the findings, I'm sorry to report, show that the United States needs to urgently accelerate student learning to remain competitive in the knowledge economy of the 21st century.

Arne Duncan

And I'm sorry to report that our knowledge economy--our bankers, masters of derivatives; our brokers, masters of the 30 millisecond trade; our mortgage lenders, masters of the liar loans; our MBA's, masters of the mega-mergers--is what got us into this mess.

We still grow a lot of corn, wheat and soybeans. We still have abundant sunshine, decent soil, and plenty of people willing to work.

We still have an aging infrastructure, plenty of iron ore and coal, and plenty of people willing to work.

We still have thousands of miles of coastline, sturdy boats, and plenty of people willing to harvest the grace of the sea.

***

The only things worth even a nickel in a true economy come from the earth. Water. Wheat. Lumber. Ore. Corn. Petroleum. Cotton. Wool. Soybeans.

The only things worth even a nickel in a true economy are tangible. You can hold them. They are not abstract.

Real gross domestic product--the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States--increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the third quarter of 2010.

Bureau of Economic Analysis

A lot of knowledge-based professionals made a lot of money the past few months extracting money from the "real gross domestic product," money made from the incredibly fruitful land under our feet here in the States.

The unemployment rate "edged up" to 9.8% in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fewer people working, more money made.

I live a few miles away from the Goethals Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel, and Port Newark. No one pretends to hide the infrastructure in urban areas; the deterioration is obvious.

"More than a quarter of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Leaky pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water every day. And aging sewage systems send billions of gallons of untreated wastewater cascading into the nation’s waterways each year."

Michael Cooper, New York Times, January 27, 2009

While those in power continue to siphon the goods of a growing economy, using fancy paper from fancy schools to lead fanciful lives, we keep telling the kids education matters because it will get you a good job.

Teaching a new generation of children how to take a piece of the pie they did not bake themselves will not make us stronger.

We do need children who can think, who can create, who can see the fallacies spewed by those now in charge by virtue of birth or connections or money.

A decent public education goes a long way to creating that kind of citizen. Education matters, even if Arne is confused as to why.

The photo is from The Real Views Online--North Central Louisiana's Multicultural Magazine.

Science pr0n

No 8 year old in her right mind is curious about Neptune.
She does like to make Mommy happy, though.

If a young adult told you in class that she does not believe that the Earth revolves around the sun, what would you say?

Who's the better scientist, the child who accepts heliocentrism by the time she's out of elementary school, or the high school student who trusts her eyes over her teachers?

It's all relative, this motion thing, and, of course, heliocentrism works well for those who have the background to understand it.

But geocentrism works, too. It's just slightly more complicated.

The ancient Greeks could predict eclipses. As far as I know, none of my lambs can (yet):

A piece of science shatters each time child builds a model of our solar system while still in grade school. We are asking children to accept something beyond their comprehension on faith alone, surrounded with rites developed in school, rites that preclude thought.

Children have more evidence that Santa exists (cookies eaten, NORAD, and, of course, presents) than that the sun is the center of our world (pictures in books, balls on wires, and the teacher's word).

None of my students believes in Santa Claus anymore, but just about all of them believe the Earth revolves around the sun. Many of them also believe we never landed on the moon, that the world will end in 2012, and that evolution is bunk.

Because people of authority told them so.

Google "solar system science fair projects." You will find pictures of children, smiling with that I-made-an-adult-proud grin, standing next to their work. The projects are flash and glitter, science pr0n, rites of passage that reward children who bleat baaa.

My young student lives in the universe of Aristotle and Tycho Brahe. She's still thinking.
Despite being trained not to....

Again, Tom Hoffman's "In My Head" got me going this morning, this time a link to here.
Image of solar system model from CraftCritique.com here.

Thoughts shared after hearing Galwall Kinnell speak in his 9th decade

19° degrees outside, and the furnace decided to nap. A reminder, but not an omen. There's a difference.

I love Galway Kinnell. I am fascinated by snot. The two are not unrelated. I saw Galway speak last night, which is like saying I saw Pavarotti sing, or Frank Lloyd draft.

I last saw him over three decades ago. We're both still here. We'll both be gone a few decades from now. When I remember this, I behave differently.

***

Eating is part of the deal.
Defecating is part of the deal.
Chlorinating is not....



I grab my rake when the tide and the winds are low. I paddle my plastic boat out to the flats, lugging a rake older than me.

I work the mud knowing that it will give up its secrets.

Quahogs quietly eat, quietly grow, quietly drag tiny organisms into their guts. Do zooplankton ("wandering animals") drifting in light, suddenly tossed into the dark, struggle against the siphon's current?

Before the sun rises again, a few clams will be killed, and eaten, and then shat. Bacteria will feed on the remnants of molecules spliced together by plants and clams. My shit will pass under the street in ancient pipes, delivered to a wastewater treatment plant, and slaughtered as the chlorine rips through the lipids in the cell's membrane.

The clam gave its life, as I will, as you will, knowing that it will remain, in pieces, part of the whole of life.

I pray no one pumps my veins with formaldehyde when I die. I want my carcass to burst from corpulence as the bacteria, freed from the tyranny of my immune system, rip the energy from complex molecules I will no longer use.

***

Chlorination works. I like safe water. I am not against chlorinating our water. (Don't get me started on fluoridation, though....)

If a lot of mammals squeeze themselves into small areas, excrement and water find each other. Excrement is dangerous because it's alive. Given a chance, the critters in scat will eat, grow, and reproduce, living life with the same impunity and unawareness we all do. Holy shit.

Humans are special, true. Only humans have the ability to consciously and utterly remove ourselves and other critters from the cycle of life. Formaldehyde, mercury salts, and chlorine mark our progress.

Chlorinating water works. It was developed by the U.S. Army as a way to make a lot of water safe in a hurry for our soldiers as they wandered away from the American tap water we take for granted. 3 ampules of calcium hypochlorite are added to 36 gallons of water in a Lyster bag, releasing chlorine gas.



Proteins work because of their specific shapes. Any function in a live organism that requires a particular shape, which is just about everything, requires proteins. Change the shape ("denature"), and the protein no longer does what it's designed to do.

Chlorine changes the shape of proteins in bacteria, changes their nature, and they die. The proteins in humans are made of the same stuff as bacterial proteins.

On April 22, 1915, in Ypres, France, thousands of men, and innumerable other creatures, had their proteins denatured by a yellow-green cloud smelling of "pepper and pineapple." The gas destroyed the cells lining the airways.

Suddenly down the road from the Yser Canal came a galloping team of horses, the riders goading on their mounts in a frenzied way; then another and another, till the road became a seething mass with a pall of dust over all.

Plainly something terrible was happening. What was it? Officers, and Staff officers too, stood gazing at the scene, awestruck and dumbfounded; for in the northerly breeze there came a pungent nauseating smell that tickled the throat and made our eyes smart. The horses and men were still pouring down the road. two or three men on a horse, I saw, while over the fields streamed mobs of infantry, the dusky warriors of French Africa; away went their rifles, equipment, even their tunics that they might run the faster.

One man came stumbling through our lines. An officer of ours held him up with levelled revolver, "What's the matter, you bloody lot of cowards?" says he. The Zouave was frothing at the mouth, his eyes started from their sockets, and he fell writhing at the officer's feet.

Anthony R. Hossacks memoirs
Soldier, Queen Victoria's Rifles, 1915

Chlorine gas strips away functioning proteins, irreversibly disabling your cells. It is not an easy death.

One nurse described the death of one soldier who had been in the trenches during a chlorine gas attack. “He was sitting on the bed, fighting for breath, his lips plum coloured. He was a magnificent young Canadian past all hope in the asphyxia of chlorine. I shall never forget the look in his eyes as he turned to me and gasped: I can’t die! Is it possible that nothing can be done for me?”

John Simkin, Spartacus Educational

***

Leslie and I love to paddle. We have kayaked as far up the Passaic River as you can, until the water becomes too shallow to allow even a 10" draft.

A few miles before you reach the shallows, we pass a sign facing away from the river, just above an active discharge pipe.

The pipe belches out sickeningly sweet water, pepper and pineapple. The smell reminds me of a mall, where the aroma of too perfect cookies mixes with the aroma of too perfect perfumes and too perfect people.

I beached my kayak so I could get out and read the sign.

The sign announced that the effluuent was the shit and pee and spit and snot and blood of the good citizens of Livingston, caressed with chemicals, now safe for the river.

I got back in the kayak and headed upstream, my paddles dredging through the shallow muddy bed. I dragged my fingers over the paddle blade, the mud sliding back into the water, and then held my hands to my face, the mortal mud's smell reminding me who we are.

***

One of my lambs ran an experiment to see if water would start to smell if left out for a week. He was startled to find that water smells right out of the tap, like, well, chlorine. In a day or two, the chlorine smell dissipated.

Decades from now, I doubt he'll remember much of anything in class, but he will remember that.

We do not talk about "shit" in class. We talk of excrement and E. coli and waste, but never of shit, sacred shit, Holy Shit.

If high biology were truly the study of life, of death, of cycles, we'd read Galway Kinnell's Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, or Mary Oliver's poem "Oxygen," or W.B. Yeats, who asks the essential question of science, of life: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

I would give up an eyetooth (or two) to have Galway Kinnell teach my students biology. I talk of ecology, Galway talks of life:

The black bear who swatted down the apples
from the lower branches began before first light
expelling foot-long cylinders of apple-chompings
—some apple nectar removed, some bear nectar added—
which could almost be served up in a restaurant
in Lyons or Paris as Compote de Pommes des Dieux.

Galway Kinnell
From "Holy Shit" (Imperfect Thirst)

Until we teach biology as the study of life, we have no real hope of pretending we are not those young men who tossed the chlorine gas at other men, and whoever else happened to be in the way, back in 1915.

Until then, I will sink into tidal mud flats, filling the air with the molecules of the dead, a pungent smell we've been trained to fear, scratching for clams, each one reminding me of impermanence, of what matters.

In May, I will again be trekking over a hundred young humans to Sandy Hook Bay,
where many will smell tidal mud for the first time.
Biology cannot be taught indoors.

Lyster bag photo from Olive-Drab, which posted the photo
"courtesy Family of Jack Chriss, veteran of Co. B, 129th Airborne Engineer Bn., 13th Airborne Div."

Clam and tomato photo taken on my windowsill. Both were eaten soon after.