Subject: Carl Sagan and our discussion
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Wed 05 Apr 2000 - 08:15:35 MEST
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 16:15:35 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Carl Sagan and our discussion
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I would like to invite you to read with me through a passage from Sagan's
book 'The Demon-haunted world', 1996. I wonder what kinds of thoughts and
emotions will go through our minds and what will the passage leave us
with?
"My parents were no scientists. They knew almost nothing about science.
But introducing me simultaneously to scepticism and to wonder, they taught
me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the
scientific method. [..] I wish I cold tell you about inspirational
teachers in science from my elementary or junior high or high school days.
But as I think back on it, there were none. There was rote memorization
about the Periodic Table of the Elements, levers and inclined planes,
green plant photosynthesis, and the difference between anthracite and
bituminous coal. But there was no soaring sense of wonder, no hint of an
evolutionary perspective, and nothing about mistaken ideas that everybody
once believed. In high school laboratory courses, there was an answer
that we were supposed to get. We were marked off if we didn't get it.
There was no encouragement to pursue our own interests or hunches or
conceptual mistakes.In the backs of textbooks there was material you could
tell was interesting. The school year would always end before we got to
it. You could find wonderful books on astronomy, say, in the libraries,
but not in the classroom. Long division was taught as a set of rules from
a cookbook, with no explanation of how this particular sequence of short
divisions, multiplications and subtractions got you the right answer. In
high school, extracting square roots was offered reverentially, as if it
were a method once handed down from Mt Sinai. It was our job merely to
remember what we had been commanded. Get the right answer, and never mind
that you do not understand what you're doing. [] My interest in science
was maintained through all those school years by reading books and
magazines on science and fiction.
College was the fulfilment of my dreams: I found teachers who not only
understood science, but who were actually able to explain it. [] In an
introductory science class, Ptolemy's view that the Sun revolved around
the Earth was presented so compellingly that some students found
themselves re-evaluating their commitment to Copernicus. [] I've always
been grateful to my mentors of the 1950s, [] But as I look back, it seems
clear to me that I learned the most essential things not from my school
teachers, nor even my university professors, but from my parents, who knew
nothing at all about science, in that single fa-off year of 1939."
(Sagan, 1996: 3-5)
Re-reading this passage after Sagan's book had been shown to me by one of
our postgraduate students, I thought: what is the task of education? Is it
to instill knowledge or to instill the need for knowledge? How can this be
done in ways that do not leave this goal to a chance of having parents
capable of so doing? Talking about technology: sure it can facilitate
things. Question is though: how can we tell what is it that it does
faciliate?
Ania Lian
ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2
please, check my IFETS-site:
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2/lists/ifets/ifets.htm
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