Science Education
Feb. 27th, 2012 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillWhen I was in middle school, I was in a private middle school. I imagine, things being what they are and especially considering that, no joke, at one point one of my classmates was in Norway for a year because his grandfather was the ambassador, that the science! there was slightly better funded than science! at the average public school.
More to the point, there are some interesting statistics, like: despite Jews worldwide being less than one half of one percent of the population, we hold a quarter of all Nobels. Or: There are a number of programs for training to be things like Rabbis that will not accept applications from people who don't already have "Ph.D." after their name. Or: It is not uncommon for the first American-born generation of Jew to be a doctor or lawyer because in America we can. We take learning seriously, and are encouraged to love it.
On Monday, my pI hosted a talk by a quite famous scientist, about the problem with learning in America. It comes down to the fact that it is really, phenomenally difficult to create a cheap and standardized test which actually tests understanding of concepts, instead of ability to memorize facts. Or, in other ways, machines cannot gauge, well or at all, the ability of a human being to think. And also, of course, that a lot of people don't want to think if they can avoid it. I went, of course, because you can't not go to a talk sponsored by your pI.
It was interesting. It went over newer, technology-based approaches to teaching, and what students can do to hep each other. It went over the widening gap between "stuff you are told to teach in the allotted time" and "stuff you can possibly teach in the allotted time." It went over the problem with teaching students as if they were robots rather than people, with different brain architectures and different ways of learning. So I learned a little, which will possibly help me to be a better TA in the future.
And then I took a picture of our Cute Vietnamese Lab Goddess with the speaker, because she wanted her picture with a famous person.
More to the point, there are some interesting statistics, like: despite Jews worldwide being less than one half of one percent of the population, we hold a quarter of all Nobels. Or: There are a number of programs for training to be things like Rabbis that will not accept applications from people who don't already have "Ph.D." after their name. Or: It is not uncommon for the first American-born generation of Jew to be a doctor or lawyer because in America we can. We take learning seriously, and are encouraged to love it.
On Monday, my pI hosted a talk by a quite famous scientist, about the problem with learning in America. It comes down to the fact that it is really, phenomenally difficult to create a cheap and standardized test which actually tests understanding of concepts, instead of ability to memorize facts. Or, in other ways, machines cannot gauge, well or at all, the ability of a human being to think. And also, of course, that a lot of people don't want to think if they can avoid it. I went, of course, because you can't not go to a talk sponsored by your pI.
It was interesting. It went over newer, technology-based approaches to teaching, and what students can do to hep each other. It went over the widening gap between "stuff you are told to teach in the allotted time" and "stuff you can possibly teach in the allotted time." It went over the problem with teaching students as if they were robots rather than people, with different brain architectures and different ways of learning. So I learned a little, which will possibly help me to be a better TA in the future.
And then I took a picture of our Cute Vietnamese Lab Goddess with the speaker, because she wanted her picture with a famous person.
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Date: 2012-02-29 07:51 am (UTC)(Also, I should probably not be commenting while slightly sloshed.)
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Date: 2012-03-02 04:34 am (UTC)Also, does historical geography count? Because perhaps you could explain why Rome was built on a swamp. And Venice on a different swamp. And Washington, D.C. And Chicago. And Teotihuacan. And . . . okay, look. Why do we keep building cities on swamps? XD
DW isn't letting me sign in!
Date: 2012-03-02 04:59 am (UTC)*heh* The off-the-cuff answer I can think of about building on swamps is that there's a lot of perfectly flat land you don't have to level out, and it's right next to the river so there's water right there for drinking and pulling away the sewage and shipping things around. Chicago WAS settled specifically because you could get from the lake to a river emptying into the Mississippi (and hence the Gulf of Mexico) with a short portage and/or a short canal. It was a geographic gamble!