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Jennie -
My point was not that we should just take away dogma and permit the vacuum to be filled with whatever people wanted, but that we should completely rethink the teaching of a bolus of content through rote learning, and replace it with teaching kids how to think, deepen their understanding, and master asking questions and seeking answers. We are trying so hard to turn out encyclopaedias rather than thinking adults that we completely miss the opportunity to teach them the most important things, which, indeed, aren't even things.
Stephen Miles Uzzo, PhD.
VP, Science & Technology
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, NY 11368 USA
V +1.718 595.9177
F +1.718.699.5227
On Apr 13, 2012, at 9:21 PM, Jennie Dusheck wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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>
> I've been reading this conversation with interest, but I seem to have lost the thread somewhere. As far as dealing with concerted efforts to prevent students from being taught about evolution (or for that matter climate change), what are you all saying about positive attitude, etc? I get the feeling, I'm not following at all.
>
> Stephen Uzzo says the problem is that science is presented in school as dogma (just as religion is in other venues) rather than as a process of asking and answering questions. Fair enough. But given the number of things we want students to learn, it's difficult for even the teachers most capable of teaching science as process to teach without resorting to dogma--whether the alphabet, spelling, time tables, F = ma, or even, ironically, the Central Dogma of genetics. Which topics are dogma and which are to be examined critically (by 11 year olds)? There isn't time for students to critically examine even a tiny fraction of the things they are expected to learn--even if they all knew how.
>
> And there's another danger lurking here. For the average American, if something's not dogma then it's "just a matter of opinion." That's the default response of people about anything that smells of controversy. And that frankly doesn't get us anywhere. If we say evolution is not dogma, we don't want people to go home thinking it's just a matter of taste, like anchovies on pizza. I'm not advocating teaching science as dogma. But I recognize that that's mostly how things are taught and not by accident. Is evolution going to be the one topic that's not taught as fact? Are we afraid to say it's a fact?
>
> Jennie Dusheck
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