NGSS: Meet the new boss

This is too much science for one post--

I'll get around to splitting it up but wanted to toss it out there now since we only have 3 weeks to comment on the proposed standards.

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

I've started plowing through the  Next Generation Science Standards draft.

We, the public, have all of three weeks to comment on a document so confusing it comes with an article and a video on how to read the document.

When you get to the document, you get 87 pages of color-coded (at least 9 shades at my count and I'm color-blind) jargon with DRAFT splashed across each page.

You don't have to get too far, though, to find subtly major problems, the kind that condemn elementary school kids to a lifetime of ignorance.

Chemical reactions produce new substances; physical changes do not. 

Melting and freezing are physical changes--this is a tougher concept than it appears, which is all the more reason we need to get it right in the lower grades.
'
Most of my time as a science teacher is spent helping children unlearn. Turns out unlearning takes a lot more practice than learning.


Sponges are animals, too.

And they don't "move around."

My sophomores think "animal" means something warm, fuzzy, and mobile. So do a lot of their teachers. 


Humans (and other animals) can, in fact, release energy from glucose without oxygen.

We cannot meet all our energy needs this way, of course, but plants, animals, and bacteria all share an ancient pathway called glycolysis ("splitting sugar") as the first step in extracting energy from organic compounds.

If you're going to mention that breaking down sugars produces carbon dioxide, why not mention the water part as well? Make this stuff real for a child. A child can grasp the idea of water. A teacher can show her that water "comes out of" fires. (Flash a propane torch against a cool sink faucet--you will get a flush of condensation.)


Instinct is not the only thoughtless response to stimuli.

If you touch a hot stove, you'll pull your arm back before you're even aware that it's hot. That's a reflex, not an instinct.

This is a trivial point, I suppose, but we shouldn't tolerate sloppiness in a document that purports to be the woo woo of wisdom.


Please stop feeding the children the idea that energy means movement.

I suppose this may be tossing a bone to Vygosky's zone of proximal development--kids can "see" where the energy goes--but we're fueling the idea that energy means movement. I thought Sir Isaac took care of all that a few generations ago.

(Also, anaerobic respiration does not follow a different chemical pathway--it follows a shorter one. Aerobic respiration is preceded by glycolysis. We're more connected to bacteria than we know....)


The one gene, one protein model is dead, and has been, for a long time.

We have fewer than 25,000 genes, we have over 100,000 proteins--do the math.

(The authors caged their language here with "chiefly"--so this isn't so much wrong as misleading.)



 Food molecules do not react with oxygen--electrons stripped from food molecules do.

Oxygen is not "captured"--it diffuses in with about as much sophistication as a fart traveling across a room.

The carbon dioxide we breathe out gets stripped off the food we consume long before the remaining electrons are picked up by oxygen to form water. Again, I trust that the authors knew their biology, but simplified it for the standards. Language matters.

 If you do manage to find the time to peruse the document, reserve a good chunk of that time to make your comments--

The survey competes with the document for clunkiness.

Light again

May 11th is special to me--we're in the sunlight now, and will be for 3 months.
This was written a year ago, and it works again today. We only get so many Msys in a lifetime.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Theodosius Dobzhansky

I should be crafting a descent with modification (misnamed "evolution") exam.

Descent with modification is the heart of biology. Without it, a world with red-lipped batfish, roly-polies, and humans makes no sense, no matter how clever God pretends to be.

Without it, nothing in biology makes sense. Nothing.

Seems sacrilegious to test it using vocabulary and a few standard examples any student paying attention can just fly through half aware of our universe.

 ***

 
I walked tonight, crushing thousands of insects and worms, breathing in microbes, watching squirrels and starlings and dogs and robins and humans go about their business.

A cherry tree late for the party dropped a few last petals on my head.

Mosquitoes paraded around my tiny pond, blissfully unaware that soon it will be filled with young fish born in a tank in Room B362, trapped by glass they learned to avoid, soon to be munching on the young wrigglers laid today.

Sunlight bathes us now, and everything that buzzes or tweeps or flaps or gurgles has forgotten that darkness was ever possible. At least I have.

And if I can forget, despite centuries of words telling me of death and of destruction and of entropy, well, what hope does the fledgling robin I saw bouncing around the Green yesterday have of grasping how serious this all must be.

Seriousness is a human conceit.

It's May. I going to listen to the fledglings for now, as long as now lasts, as long as the sun continues to bathe us with grace.

Red-lipped batfish--really, how serious can we be if red-lipped batfish exist?

The red-lipped batfish photo from PBS here.

Hubris and humility

The primary social consideration for savants is purely and simply one of professional duty. Savants are people who are paid to manufacture science; they are expected to manufacture some; they feel it is their duty to manufacture some....

The spirit of truth is nowadays almost absent from religion and from science and from the whole of thought.

Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

Any chance of me becoming a researcher ended the moment I pulled the head off a living cricket under a dissecting scope because, well, I was told to.

And now I teach my lambs about DNA polymerases before they can see the difference between a dandelion and a plantain, because I am told to.

And that's wrong. Not illegal, and maybe even not immoral. But it is wrong. I won't pull heads off a living creature, and I shouldn't be wasting a child's life on polymerases before they know about the plants they walk on.

Why? Because a child is a child for finite hours.

***

Despite all the nonsense that has been going on in Jersey, I work under a reasonable and bright principal, and a team of building administrators that give a damn enough to allow real discussion.

Meanwhile, the state has confused me with a super hero, able to overcome poverty in a single bound. 

I'm supposed to teach science, and I'm pretty good at teaching what passes for it. If I ever managed to get a child to grasp the awe that surrounds us, though, I'd fully expect that child to just get up and walk out of class--she can learn a lot more staring at a patch of earth outside the building than pretending to know something about polymerases.

So far, no one has done this. This surprises me.

They're that well trained--Mr. Cerf would be proud. They may not be college ready, but Lord knows they're career ready.

Whose life is it anyway?

And yet they sit there.
OK, Simone Weil makes no sense in January, and too much sense in May. 

Cricket photo from The Pest Advice

I've been slimed

Every day I am asked what the secret is to ensuring every child in New Jersey graduates from high school ready for college and career, and I always have one simple response – outstanding teachers.

I do not  doubt that you have "one simple response"--I do doubt your sincerity.

At a small meeting last spring among a few other teachers, and the Governor himself, you said that teachers were the most important factor affecting student success.

I said, perhaps a bit too pointedly (politeness is not my strong suit), that teachers are the most important factor in the building, but that poverty weighs more heavily than teachers do.

The Governor jumped in and said that you said "in the building." I did not hear that.

And here you go again.

I began my career as a high school history teacher, and I can honestly say that I never worked harder or felt more rewarded than I did during those four years.

Why did you leave, Mr. Cerf?

We as a state should make sure that we celebrate outstanding educators every day for their work with our children and for developing the next generation of leaders.

Providence knows we need them. Our current leaders need a few lessons in civility, in history, in analysis, and most of all in love.

But I don't just teach "the next generation of leaders," Mr. Cerf, I teach children. I teach the next generation of plumbers, of soldiers, of clerks, of attorneys. I teach the next generation of doctors and line workers, of ball players and police officers. I even teach a few destined for incarceration, for cruel endings despite living in a land blessed with fertile soil and decent water.

But mostly I teach the next generation of Americans, and perhaps the last generation of Americans, who have reasons to dream of a lofty experiment in government that trusted people, because it was once made of the people.

It is ridiculous, of course, to expect leaders to agree with everything I believe. It is not ridiculous, though, to expect a man like Mr. Cerf to serve openly and honestly, to work for the best interests of all children, not just those he cares to mold for his corporatocracy.

I teach in a public school, Mr. Cerf.
Do you even  know what "public" means anymore?

And Mr. Cerf does add the "in-school" clause later. He knows it's true.

Cerf photo from here.

A world divided

I was forbidden to accept science and still believe in the lyrical poetry, the song that pushes the dance of cosmology or the story of descent with modification -- first by the science teacher and then by the church....

I never chose between the two and, on some level, I've never felt at home in either world.

John T. Spencer, in response to "I don't believe in gravity, either"

Science is not about the "real" world but about the natural world--and there lies a world of difference. Your science teacher was mistaken when he divided the world.

The church, too, is mistaken, when it seeks to cleave what we want to be true from what we know to be true. The prophets lyrically warned us, but we do it anyway. (Which is, I guess, the whole point of prophets.)

If science is seen as a process--and it is, a particular process of developing stories to help us grasp the natural world--then "scientific belief" is nonsensical.

Art and science are both better defined by process than by ends--no one asks me if I "believe in" Picasso's Guernica. It's a silly question.

***

Neither science nor art require "belief" and neither invalidate any particular belief systems that tolerate truth. Both art and science are dangerous because both privilege truth.

This is why I believe in taboo. There are some things humans best leave alone, in science and art.

The Picasso piece is obvious; the other drawing is by Charles Darwin--turns out we're all related.

I don't believe in gravity, either

I may have more trouble with those who "believe in" evolution than I do with Creationists. At least the Creationists are upfront about their deliberate ignorance of the empirical.

If you think that the poster is an effective argument for evolution, then you may not quite grasp the profundity of gravity either. That things fall is obvious. That all things made of stuff are attracted to all other things made of stuff, not so much.

That there is a predictable relationship between all matter in our universe is a bigger deal than many who "believe in" gravity grasp.

There may be some confusion about religion, too, a confusion exacerbated by those who would distinguish spiritual from religious.

Natural selection, by itself, is obvious. Living things have heritable differences. Some living things are more likely to reproduce than others, partly because of these difference. Those that reproduce pass their qualities on to the next generation.

You need time for complexity to evolve, and time we have.

But complexity is not the "goal." We are not headed towards a higher being, just a different one, possibly more complex, possibly not.

When a child gets this, do not be surprised if she goes into a trance for a day or a week. A child who gets this will feel her universe shift under her feet, her place redefined, her sophomoric cynicism squashed by awe.

Some folk call that a religious feeling, and it is. 

Grasping evolution changes our relationships with the living world around us.

Darwin's reasoning does not need to supplant God, and for many it does not. The theory of evolution does, however, supplant the need for a superior consciousness (or any other sort of consciousness) to guide the development of the beasts we call human.

It takes more than a class or two for a kid to get this, but there's no mistaking when one does. She's the one who's gone silent, stunned.

Natural selection is deceptively easy to grasp. It's not the concept that most of us resist. It's the implications. Evolution has no goal.

We're no more evolved than the earthworm, the mushroom, or the E. coli in our guts.

The jumping lamb is from Life is Physics Not Mathematics.

It's all good--we're all a part of this universe thing, and that's just awesome!

Beltaine

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” 

Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle

The increasing light, the returning horseshoe crabs, the bay rising, falling, and rising again, remind me what I'll forget again in a moment. If I were not mortal, the forgetting would not be sin.

But I am, and it is.

Bealtaine again.