Science is Dead

I've just finished reading a few articles involving science teaching and felt compelled to write exactly how I feel about the status of the subject as it is today in New Zealand and possibly the world. I'll probably be labelled a male chauvinist but facts is facts! Because I'm ‘old' I can say, "When I was young....," and get away with it.

For my first formal exam in the sciences I remember learning by rote hundreds and hundreds of diagrams and hundreds and hundreds of formula etc in order to pass with a reasonable mark. I crammed all this information into my brain in order to regurgitate in the form of answers to this National Exam.

The exam was divided up into two parts. The first was a quick 20 short answer questions. They didn't have multi-choice; you just had to know the answer. The second was made up of four long answer questions that you chose from a battery of six. Each was worth 20 marks the same as the short answer questions making 100%

In order to answer these four long answer questions I had committed to memory the entire year's work from A to Z along with all the diagrams and passed with a mark of 88%.

Now to the point I'm trying to make. All of my science teachers were men. Every one of them was a science graduate and taught nothing else but science. They knew their stuff and they spent the whole lesson imparting their specialised knowledge to me (and anyone else who would listen). Fifty years later I still have that body of knowledge firmly fixed in my head and am able to call on it at any given time. You might ask of what use is that?  Literary people will tell you that in order to think you need a vocabulary and so it is with science. Before you can solve the world's problems or design a Middle School Science Project you need to have some "vocabulary" of science.

You cannot expect children to tackle the intricacies of technology unless they have some background knowledge of science. I have watched the "Discovery Learning" method of teaching come and go. The only children who actually learnt from this were those in the upper classes who had a fabulous vocabulary and a family of clued-up parents. The less academic had absolutely no idea what to do or even where to start.

I'll give you an example. I asked each different class to list for me the adaptive features of a mosquito wriggler. I had brought along a jar full that morning. I even put one on the overhead projector so it was enlarged on the screen. After half an hour of struggle to even get them to see that it didn't breathe under water I tried the "Guided Discovery" approach and what a difference it made.

I was able to get many, many concepts across to the students I taught because I had an in-depth knowledge behind me. Even when I got it wrong in front of the class, nothing fazed me. I admitted the mistakes and we just looked harder at why it happened that way (intellectual honesty).

Many schools in New Zealand, and I would imagine all over the world now, are full of women teachers. This is for a number of reasons that I won't even attempt to explain at this time. Just believe me they are. I remember these women who accompanied me through my teachers' training school years. They were the ones who handed in huge assignments to the lecturers that were full of butterflies around the edges; large, elaborate headings, in large folders composed of hand-made recycled paper. Embedded in these ‘Science' plans were tangents that went from the central theme of Butterflies to: a butterfly dance; an art lesson on butterfly wings; children's songs about butterflies; fairy stories involving butterflies and a PE lesson on flapping their wings like butterflies.

This attitude and approach to science has absolutely pervaded our classrooms. The children do so many other options around the periphery of the main theme that the topic of "The Life Cycle and Adaptive Features of a Butterfly" actually disappear. The actual science is forgotten.

Another disturbing development of our so-called science programmes is that women teachers tend to stick to the Earth Science topics and only pay lip-service to the Physical and Chemical Sciences.

The sooner we get back to actually teaching science as pure subject, that is allowed to stand on its own, the better for our children.