I just watched the documentary, Freakonomics, made from the book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It was an entertaining and enlightening documentary highlighting several chapters from the book.
One particular episode in the documentary was quite eye-opening. It was the chapter on giving incentives to ninth graders to earn better grades. What was eye-opening was not whether the incentives ($50 every month that the student maintains a C or higher in every class, plus a lottery with a chance at winning $500) worked or not (it didn't work as well as hoped), but a very brief clip on what was taught in ninth grade biology.
I don't know about you, but I skipped biology. Ninth grade for me was physical science, which was just an introduction to science. It taught the scientific method and used physical sciences to demonstrate how to use the scientific method and how to measure and replicate experiments. Experiments in physical science are easily measureable with minimal tools; no microscopes, oscilloscopes, radiation detectors and the like. I enjoyed it a lot.
When I was in ninth grade, my sister was in tenth and she took biology. She brought home the biology textbook which was three inches thick and weighed a bunch. She also brought home a frog in formaldehyde that was partially dissected. Heavy book and eww. I decided to skip biology in tenth grade and instead take chemistry, the generic eleventh grade science class.
But here, in this documentary, ninth graders were learning biology and one question asked by the teacher was, "two phenotypes are homologous if they have the same…" where the answer was "alleles." I may mis-quote the question, but that really emphasizes my point. That point is, why the heck are they teaching alleles and phenotypes to ninth graders? How many people will ever need to know such information once they graduate from college?
Sure, we can all use more and better biologists to help improve medicine or save the environment or even create new controlled bacteria to grow fuel. That's not the point. The point is that probably 95% of the general population will never see or hear about phenotypes, alleles and homology ever, outside of their biology class. Whereas 100% of the general population eat and drink and have sex (probably, maybe not 100%), become diseased, grow old and die.
What biology should be teaching is how to eat and drink better for our health; how to have sex better for our and our child's health; what political, technological, and economical factors are involved in helping people become more fit, what may become of us, biologically, as we age from 1 - 13, 14 - 25, 25 - 60, and 60 to death; issues in gerontology; and how to deal with death and grieving.
Are they biology? Not all exactly in the exact scientific nomenclature of sciences, but nothing in life is compartmentalized into neat, clean, mutually exclusive categories. There are political, economic and technological factors involved in almost everything in life. Rather than teaching about alleles and phenotypes -- knowledge and understanding that is useful probably only to a select few involved in molecular biology, a field that a person might decide to enter into soon after college -- we should be teaching students pertinent items related to biology. And the most pertinent item for almost all students is themselves.
We should be teaching hygiene, pharmacological and metabolic effects of injesting things. We should teach nutrition and improving one's health. Explain how exercise affects bone and muscle growth as well as reduction of body fat. If we do, we will firstly have kids knowing things that will be useful to them for the rest of their lives no matter whether they become molecular biologists or wall street financiers or baseball players or even drugged out stoners living in the streets. Secondly, because it's pertinent to the kids, it will involve and interest them more and make them want to learn the subject, thereby helping them get a better grade. Thirdly, some of this information is crucially lacking among our citizens and people really ought to know such items.
Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, schools taught the vanguard of knowledge. What is known now as basic algebra was, back then, a new way of thinking to solve problems. Biology was novel back then because people thought god made everything and nothing has changed since Adam and Eve. People learned them not because they wanted to become knowledgeable (well, that was a secondary benefit), but because they wanted to know these things to succeed in life. We need to return to that incentive: teaching kids how to succeed in life. Part of succeeding in life is to not do biologically stupid things and unnecessarily shorten one's life. There is so much that we can teach and re-teach about basic biology related to human and humanity that it would cover six or ten years of learning. We don't need to push the vanguard of learning what alleles are.
One particular episode in the documentary was quite eye-opening. It was the chapter on giving incentives to ninth graders to earn better grades. What was eye-opening was not whether the incentives ($50 every month that the student maintains a C or higher in every class, plus a lottery with a chance at winning $500) worked or not (it didn't work as well as hoped), but a very brief clip on what was taught in ninth grade biology.
I don't know about you, but I skipped biology. Ninth grade for me was physical science, which was just an introduction to science. It taught the scientific method and used physical sciences to demonstrate how to use the scientific method and how to measure and replicate experiments. Experiments in physical science are easily measureable with minimal tools; no microscopes, oscilloscopes, radiation detectors and the like. I enjoyed it a lot.
When I was in ninth grade, my sister was in tenth and she took biology. She brought home the biology textbook which was three inches thick and weighed a bunch. She also brought home a frog in formaldehyde that was partially dissected. Heavy book and eww. I decided to skip biology in tenth grade and instead take chemistry, the generic eleventh grade science class.
But here, in this documentary, ninth graders were learning biology and one question asked by the teacher was, "two phenotypes are homologous if they have the same…" where the answer was "alleles." I may mis-quote the question, but that really emphasizes my point. That point is, why the heck are they teaching alleles and phenotypes to ninth graders? How many people will ever need to know such information once they graduate from college?
Sure, we can all use more and better biologists to help improve medicine or save the environment or even create new controlled bacteria to grow fuel. That's not the point. The point is that probably 95% of the general population will never see or hear about phenotypes, alleles and homology ever, outside of their biology class. Whereas 100% of the general population eat and drink and have sex (probably, maybe not 100%), become diseased, grow old and die.
What biology should be teaching is how to eat and drink better for our health; how to have sex better for our and our child's health; what political, technological, and economical factors are involved in helping people become more fit, what may become of us, biologically, as we age from 1 - 13, 14 - 25, 25 - 60, and 60 to death; issues in gerontology; and how to deal with death and grieving.
Are they biology? Not all exactly in the exact scientific nomenclature of sciences, but nothing in life is compartmentalized into neat, clean, mutually exclusive categories. There are political, economic and technological factors involved in almost everything in life. Rather than teaching about alleles and phenotypes -- knowledge and understanding that is useful probably only to a select few involved in molecular biology, a field that a person might decide to enter into soon after college -- we should be teaching students pertinent items related to biology. And the most pertinent item for almost all students is themselves.
We should be teaching hygiene, pharmacological and metabolic effects of injesting things. We should teach nutrition and improving one's health. Explain how exercise affects bone and muscle growth as well as reduction of body fat. If we do, we will firstly have kids knowing things that will be useful to them for the rest of their lives no matter whether they become molecular biologists or wall street financiers or baseball players or even drugged out stoners living in the streets. Secondly, because it's pertinent to the kids, it will involve and interest them more and make them want to learn the subject, thereby helping them get a better grade. Thirdly, some of this information is crucially lacking among our citizens and people really ought to know such items.
Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, schools taught the vanguard of knowledge. What is known now as basic algebra was, back then, a new way of thinking to solve problems. Biology was novel back then because people thought god made everything and nothing has changed since Adam and Eve. People learned them not because they wanted to become knowledgeable (well, that was a secondary benefit), but because they wanted to know these things to succeed in life. We need to return to that incentive: teaching kids how to succeed in life. Part of succeeding in life is to not do biologically stupid things and unnecessarily shorten one's life. There is so much that we can teach and re-teach about basic biology related to human and humanity that it would cover six or ten years of learning. We don't need to push the vanguard of learning what alleles are.
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