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- By Phillip Brownlee
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24 Comments
In the thread, “Is Corkins Leaving the Building?” Apophis said, in response to my suggesting he take a science-learning sabbatical”:
“Like I said this morning heartlander, my students need me in the classroom. I can not affect theirs lives if I do not teach.”
I’m going to respond here: How do you teach science if you don’t get your hands working in science and learn science by doing it?
I know I had a pretty good scientific background when I saved people’s lives. If I hadn’t been scientifically knowledgeable, this would not have happened. For example, take a 64 year old man whose aorta has ruptured. What are you going to do? Or a 35 year old nighttime rattlesnake collector who gets bitten on his right forearm, which looks like Popeye. Or a 40 year old with pancreatic failure diabetic who comes into the ER in coma. Or somebody who has 50% third-degree burns and 40% second-degree burns. What are you gonna do folks? Unless you know a heckuva lot of science, these people are dead.
For life-saving science, we rely on an implicit idea of a coherent system. Is it intelligently designed, or a product of random chance? It’s a judgment. To say that teaching the latter is “science” while teaching the former is “religion” is a false dichotomy.
Take Darwin, a brilliant guy. You bring to him a woman who is in a state of a postpartum hemorrhage. Or she has given birth to a 28 week old infant. What do you do, Charles? “I dunno. Death is inevitable.” Read “The Voyage of the Beagle”. Did Darwin save anybody’s life? No he did not. He himself was sick for much of the 5-year voyage. Did he know how to cure himself? No.
So Darwin was ignorant of biological science.
Outlander – and your point is? Alot of brilliant people are not doctors. Alot of brilliant doctors I have worked for are not particular smart in practical things. So, again, what is your point?
After a conversation had continued for a time one night, the man I was talking to said “You are a polymath!”. I did not know what he meant, so I asked, he said that I was someone that knew a little about a lot. I would guess he was right as I do tend to constantly learn about a wide range of things.
But I do know the ultimate knowledge, “One will never know everything in just one life time”.Yes I have met people that could explain and practice higher levels of knowledge, but could not even figure out how to charge a flat tire. When I told my best friend I was taking a job as a school custodian, something he had done in the past. He told me not to do it, that I would meet some of the most book smart people yet they are stupid, and he knew how I handled stupid people. That I can be as diplomatic as a bulldozer sometimes as he put it. He was right, one of the few people that truly knows me.
But some things are so important, so detailed that there has to be a specialist, for a mistake would not simply be a matter of tearing it apart again and starting over. There are a number of things in life that are just one chance to make it right. Be it with an illness or a child’s education, I loved school until the day my second grade teacher made fun of me in front of the entire class. Once that happened school became a torture camber for me until graduation day.
Stupid is as stupid does. I wonder how many professional people really are that smart or did they just happen to be the people who are book smart and can pass the tests?
“…if you don’t get your hands working in science and learn science by doing it?”Posted by: heartlander | November 23, 2006 at 02:21 AM
With biological sciences, engineering sciences and etc. this is probably true more than most sciences because the things that needed to be learned requires a mix of interaction and rote learning.
Learning the fundamentals of some things does not require a PhD or a Doctor of Medicine or a Doctorate of anything. Chemistry and Physics are examples of those types of subjects. For advanced theoretical learning and advanced topics yes, but not for learning the fundamentals.
I used to administrate Advanced Trauma and Advanced Cardiac Life Support Courses for Physicians.
…talk about your nervous and inept learners. It’s a wonder how some of those ‘Docs’ ever made it through Medical school.
Back to the point of learning sciences. There are many routes to become proficient as a teacher. One can have all the education they can have and the inability to teach because they cannot translate the fundamentals of the science to the average student.
Some of the best teachers I’ve ever had the privelege to learn from, never got to the Doctorate level.
Knowing one’s subject matter, motivation and the ability to translate what is in your mind to the student are the most important things when it comes to teaching.
Up early bashing public education again I see heartlander. It’s great to see that you are focusing your bile toward me:”In the thread, “Is Corkins Leaving the Building?” Apophis said, in response to my suggesting he take a science-learning sabbatical”:
“Like I said this morning heartlander, my students need me in the classroom. I can not affect theirs lives if I do not teach.”
I’m going to respond here: How do you teach science if you don’t get your hands working in science and learn science by doing it?”
For the record, I DO know how to do science and my job is to teach student’s how to do “do science” as well. I stand behind my statement that my students need me in the classroom, with them. It does my students NO good if I’m up in Alaska (as you suggested) doing some biology research project. Does that thought sound appealing to my professional side, yes (especially if the research was more geology oriented), but my job is to teach science NOW. How can you dispute this? I know you will find some convoluted argument to attempt to make me look bad. That is your way. That is the way of the anti-public education elitist.
It is too bad that heartlander insists upon living in the past. His past career, his past conflicts with public education, etc. The guy is stuck. Therapy might be an alternative for him.
heartlander,remember the scientific principle of parsimony – the simplest, sufficient explanation is the best. I would recommend in the interest of parsimony, that you simply post “Darwinian evolution conflicts with my religious beliefs, and therefore I am opposed to it.” – See, simple – no need for convoluted exercises in intellectualization or rationalization; no need to bring up Kuhn’s _Stucture of Sientific Revolutions_ – which was a good book, but not especially germane to our subject at hand.
To quote Tom Lehrer:
It is so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it… (from the song “New Math”)
Happy Thanksgiving…
Apophis, scientist-teachers need to get their batteries recharged periodically. Maybe you could spend 4 weeks next summer in the Grand Tetons, then 4 weeks the following summer at Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii (which have been undergoing a continuous slow eruption for the last twenty years–it’s really awesome), learn to scuba dive and explore atolls and barrier reefs. Wouldn’t these experiences enrich your classroom teaching? I think taxpayers should fund things like this, to advance science education.
Natural selection may be in the process of becoming irrelevant, at least for human biology. In Darwin’s era, couples had many children, with high mortality rates before adulthood. (Of Darwin’s own 10 children, 3 died–30% mortality rate.)
But in modern societies, most people tend to have 1 or 2 children. (Interestingly, liberals in American reportedly have fewer children than conservatives, on average.) So in the developed world, the generation of new mutations in human progeny for natural selection to work on has been greatly diminished.
Liberals in America have fewer children because they know when it is the time to pull out.
Conservatives stay the course.
WSClark -that last one was priceless. :-)
I just couldn’t resist….
So in the developed world, the generation of new mutations in human progeny for natural selection to work on has been greatly diminished.Posted by: heartlander | November 23, 2006 at 01:49 PM
What is this crap, heartlander? Polemics? Or just more evidence that you’re posting out of an old man’s sentimentality here?
Whatever it is, this is meaningful IF AND ONLY IF there is a reproductive barrier between the two worlds. There obviously is not.
It used to be the job of scientists to see the obvious IFF relationships. You’re either slipping or you’re displaying the same kind of weepy idealism that Bush displayed in attacking Iraq — and that I’ve seen you attack viciously here on this very site.
Do you tend to become boring only during holiday season, or is time to begin skipping over your posts?
Inquiring minds want to know because life’s too damn short for treacle.
Pedant…………you just have to feel sorry for heartlander, he is just out of touch with reality.
No, heartlander is obvioulsly a very brilliant man. He and I are on the same side of most political topics.
He just has blind spots when it comes to evolution and public education. I have mine and he is entitled to his. As I post above, I wish he would simplify and be more direct in his postings about his blind spots.
Where did Paul F. Rossell go?
Steven–
Rosell has to spend a certain amount of time sleeping in a casket partly filled with earth from his native Transylvania.
Too much time in the sun and he’ll have to start drinking human blood again . . .
BTW, Stanley Karnow, the guy that wrote the definitive history of the Vietnam War, is chewing up and spitting out George Bush’s justifications on the Iraq War tonight on “The News Hour.”
It gets replayed later tonight.
It’s so rare to hear the obvious truth get told on a major TV channel.
Also, one of the guests points out that the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq Wars have all followed the same pattern of popular support.
Thus, the reich-wing excuse that “the media only show the bad things” is proven irrelevent.
Tivo it–it’s worth seeing.
Changing subjects, I received a postcard in the mail about Councilman Carl Brewer announcing his press conference next Tuesday to declare his candidacy for mayor. Going up against the current mayor, of course. What are people hearing, thinking about this race?
Kelly: Regarding the non-partisan Wichita city elections coming up, I think the following are up for election: Mayor Carlos Mayans and city council persons, Sue Schlapp and Paul Gray. I don’t think Councilman Carl Brewer is up for election so if he runs for mayor and loses, he would continue to be a city councilman. If he wins as mayor, his council position would have to be somehow filled.
I don’t know how non-partisan council positions are filled when vacated. In the case of non-partisan positions, political precinct committee people would NOT make this selection. I suppose the situation is provided for in the legislation or city ordinances that changed the Wichita city government to the city council arrangement from the previous city commission arrangement.
Remember, here in Wichita up until about six years ago, the governing body was, I believe, five city commissioners who elected the mayor for a one year term from their five members. That’s how Bob Knight got elected a number of times, probably by a 3 to 2 vote.
While the city is at it, new rules should be incorporated limiting the power of the city manager and giving more of this power to the mayor. As it is, the mayor has virtually no special powers … he can’t even hire his own secretary, the city manager does this.
As a result, Wichita is run by the various out-of-town “hired guns,” not by the wishes of Wichita citizens. That’s why Wichita and Sedgwick County citizens are being billed for a $250,000,000.98 for an unneeded, unwanted downtown white elephant ice hockey arena that no one wants or plans to use for long (plus delicious snacks at taxpayer expense for the pro-arena folks.) And real important civic needs are being swept under the rug.
I think new citizens and new thinking are needed on our Wichita city council. There must be interested citizens here in Wichita who could and would step up to run for these important city council positions. So IMHO, once again as with the county commissioners, I say — VOTE NO INCUMBENTS!
JWink – I understand the anti-incumbent sentiment, but I’m not sure the contest shaping up between Mayans and Brewer is the best place to play that tune.
This City does not have a coherent, unified vision of itself, or what we want to be as a community. The reason for this lack of vision is that the current mayor is inept, dysfunctional, and primarily concerned with his own well-being. Previous leadership left a lot to be desired as well. The same is not true of Brewer, who is not looking for, or needing, a job. He is also a leader, but knows the value of being a team-player.
I think we need to analyze this situation carefully so that we do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
“hired guns”? Would you prefer that the mayor appoint his cronies (qualifications be damned) into positions of major responsibility?
While the mayor is greeting visitors and smiling for the camera, the ‘hired guns’ are doing the job of managing a pretty large enterprise with over 3,000 employees.
Knowing that the Beagle does no investigative reporting — where can one go to get the contribution records for local candidates running for city and county offices? I was told to advocate to advocate for something — not against something (you can accomplish more by providing solutions to problems)