|
Email
|
If you enjoy this article, consider making an online donation to support the Global Spiral.
|
| Gaps in Scientific & Religious Education, Part 1/2
Four years ago, I accepted a unique and non-traditional position combining academic research at the University of Chicago with public education & outreach at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. One need look no further than the results of the Third International Math & Science Study http://nces.ed.gov/timss to recognize the pressing need to improve science education in the U.S., and I was ecstatic at the prospect of becoming part of a "new breed" of scientist taking more pro-active roles in general science education.
As a girl growing up in a non-academic, lower-middle-class, all-female household in the 1960s & 1970s, my own motivation to become an astronomer was inspired far more by informal, rather than formal, education, so I am well aware of the enormous potential influence of this mode of learning. Of course, I realized there would be much skepticism on the part of the academic community ("'Real' scientists stay in the ivory tower.") and suspicion on the part of the museum community ("What are THEY [i.e. academics] doing here - why don't they stay in their ivory tower?"), but alas, as a career-oriented mother-of-three, I'm used to living a somewhat schizophrenic life. As it's turned out, the experience has been far more rewarding than I could ever have imagined.
I recently had the pleasure of seeing an exhibit project that I directed come to fruition. What an incredible experience! While it is immensely gratifying to publish one's research in a well-respected journal, consider this: A typical research paper is read and cited by an extremely small segment of the population, and is understood and appreciated by even fewer people, but a 10,000 sq. ft. 3-dimensional exhibit at a major museum has the potential of reaching large numbers of people of different ages, cultures, and backgrounds. I say, "has the potential" because, as I have learned, creating an exhibit that can truly speak to many people of different abilities and backgrounds, is probably one of the most challenging endeavors, and humbling experiences, that an academic can attempt.
At the Adler, the process of exhibit development begins with establishing a team consisting of an astronomer (or an historian of astronomy), an educator, and exhibit designers & fabricators. The astronomer (or historian) directs the project and determines the content of the exhibit. Subsequently, the astronomer (or historian) works with an educator to outline a series of primary and secondary concepts that are to be conveyed in the exhibit in such a way that EVERYONE should be able to learn the "big message", while those people who've had some exposure to the subject should be challenged to acquire a deeper understanding. The first thing you learn in working with educators, exhibit designers and developers, and other museum staff, is that there are a lot of intelligent, creative, non-academic types who know a helluva lot more than you do about many things outside of your field of expertise.
Respecting this is the first step in learning how to interpret your field for people outside of your discipline, whether they are non-academics, or academics in different fields of study.
Most important is the realization that eliminating discipline-specific terminology and jargon does NOT mean "dumbing down". There are few scientific concepts (at least among the "big" ideas of science) that can't be explained to someone outside your field through an appropriate use of analogies. And if you fail, consider first whether the failure might be due to your own insufficient understanding of the concept before writing off the other person as dim-witted!
Too often, science is presented to the public as an observation (or experimental result), with conclusions drawn from the observation, omitting even the most basic reference to the underlying scientific theory and concepts necessary to understand how scientists got from the observation to the theory; in other words, the process of science. At the Adler, we stress the need for explicitly incorporating the necessary concepts to enable visitors to understand for themselves how science works, and how basic concepts such as "light carries information" and "gravity pulls things together", can be applied again and again in describing and understanding the cosmos.
Our major goal is to "de-mystify" science and the feeling that science is inaccessible to non-scientists. Our positions as "academic liaisons", working with teams of people who bring in other talents (not necessarily to create an exhibit), can be used as effective models for other institutions to help improve the lines of communication between scientists and the public.
So where am I going with all of this? I personally see no reason why this "liaison" model couldn't work for other academic disciplines, as well as discussion across academic disciplines. Increasing specialization in different fields might be pictured on something akin to an evolutionary tree, where children and people with little education form the trunk of the tree, and branches signify various levels of specialization in particular fields. Although highly-specialized people may have attained significant honors in their disciplines, it is a sad truth that they often (not always, but often!) have the most difficulty communicating both with the people "at the trunk" and "across the branches", since these are the people from whom they are most distant and disconnected. It is difficult not to notice that much discussion across academic disciplines, for example science and theology, often involves far more "talking past each other" than "talking to each other". It seems to me that some form of "academic liaisonship" will have to be established across disciplines before significant communication can take place. It is truly ironic that there is often such vehement disagreement between people who don't understand enough of what the other person is saying to even identify "what is the same and what is different" - skills that are supposedly nurtured in early elementary school. Sadly, although education gives much lip-service to "inquiry-based learning", individual disciplines are generally taught in a very compartmentalized fashion, with little attention given to the methods used by the discipline, and how these methods compare across disciplines.
I was encouraged by a recent article about an innovative group at the University of Washington that received a $1 million grant from the NSF to collaborate with a group of Seattle-area teachers to rework curricula in history and science in favor of process over product ("Path to process: NSF-funded project to enrich history, science curriculum", by Steve Hill, University Week).
In the new curricula, teachers will ask students to compare and contrast the techniques an historian uses with those of a scientist in order to get at the intellectual processes that underlie both disciplines. Both "talk about an event and a cause and an outcome, but those words mean different things in different contexts."
The idea is that in teaching across disciplines, the point of entry isn't the theme, but a deeper level of helping students to analyze what they are doing when they think and build arguments in history and what they are doing when they think and build arguments in science. In other words, what makes those processes both similar and different?
The P.I. on this project (Sam Wineburg) says "The NSF called this project high risk, high gain. No one at the elementary school level has ever, in all the years of NSF funding, tried to look at multiple subjects across the elementary curricula and tried to exploit their differences and similarities in order to sharpen young children's intellectual capabilities."
What a shame that subjects such as philosophy and comparative religions are not taught at the pre-college level, using a similar technique! If they were, there would, at least, be far fewer people arguing from ignorance - in both science and religion. A few years ago, the journal "Nature" published an article highlighting a survey in which it was found that far fewer "greater" scientists believe in God, at least in any kind of personal God, than "lesser" scientists - where "greater scientists" were defined as those scientists who've been elected to the National Academy of Sciences [1]. The "interpretation" put forth regarding this disparity was that the "greater scientists know better". The absurdity of this assumption-passed-off-as-a-scientific-conclusion would be laughable were it not for the fact that it should be a source of great embarrassment to the scientist who would make such a claim!
Seeking possible alternate explanations in the spirit of the scientific enterprise, let's examine some of the personality traits that are compatible with, if not essential to, eventual election to the NAS, such as a very long-term single-minded pursuit of one's career, often to the exclusion of being actively involved in many other areas of life - family, for example (Now there's a good explanation for the predominance of men in the NAS - few women have stay-at-home-wives!). Is this life-style typically conducive to spending much time contemplating other mysteries of life? Is it conducive to the giving, often self-sacrificing, life-style espoused by many of the great religions? Could it be, just maybe, that personality, life-style, and, yes, even ignorance of other disciplines, combined with arrogance, might contribute to the metaphysical views of some NAS members?
I recall a particular conversation several years ago with a colleague, by coincidence a member of the NAS. The conversation took place in a restaurant following a colloquium. During dinner, there was much discussion about finding the physicist's "Holy Grail" - the so-called THEORY OF EVERYTHING. By the time (alcoholic) drinks had been consumed, a dreamy look came over my colleague's face as he confessed, "What I really want to know is, how does the electron know to obey Dirac's equation?" I repressed an urge to suggest that if he really wanted to explore that question, he was in the wrong profession... As astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees eloquently points out in his contribution to the book "Many Worlds" [2]: "Theorists may, some day, be able to write down fundamental equations governing physical reality. But no physicist will ever tell us what breathes fire into the equations and actualizes them in a real cosmos." For a scientist who begins his article by stating that he was "diffident about contributing to a volume with a theological slant, especially as scientists so often reveal themselves as naive in this arena", Rees seems to have a wonderful sense of the limits of science, as well as a humble approach, from which others could learn.
NOTES:
[1] Edward J. Larson & Larry Witham, "Leading Scientists Still Reject God", in Nature, vol. 394, p. 313 (23 July 1998).
[2] Martin Rees, "Life in Our Universe and Others: A Cosmological Perspective", in Many Worlds, ed. Steven Dick (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press 2000), pp. 61-77.
Grace Wolf-Chase holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Arizona. In 1994, she was married, moved to California to begin her first postdoctoral position as a National Research Council fellow at NASA/Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, and had her first child. Two years and two subsequent children later, she was awarded a University of California President's postdoctoral fellowship at UC Riverside to study the earliest stages of star formation. In 1998, she accepted a "Tenure-Track Equivalent" position combining academic research at the University of Chicago with public education at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. She spends roughly 40% of her time pursuing scientific research in the field of star formation at the University of Chicago, where she is a member of the Research Faculty, and 60% of her time serving Adler as an "Academic Liaison", to help bridge the gap between the academic research community, educators, and the general public. At Adler, she serves as Project Director on exhibit development and sky show production teams, helps develop educational programs, and works with diverse audiences including educators, students, media, and the general public, to help bring the excitement of scientific research into informal and formal education. Her primary research interests are protostars, protostellar outflows, and the impact of outflows on the evolution of molecular clouds.
Did you enjoy this article? ... Your donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
Published 2003.02.23
|
Printer-Friendly |
Email This Article
©1997-2008 Metanexus Institute
www.metanexus.net |
|
|