Re: The Culture Wars Go to High School

On 04 Aug 2005 12:34:34 -0500, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Joyce Reynolds-Ward <jrw@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On 03 Aug 2005 20:09:17 -0500, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@xxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Joyce Reynolds-Ward <jrw@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> >> Relate the use of oral tradition as related to stories to a high
>> >> school chemistry textbook. Then tell me that you can comprehend a
>> >> high school chemistry textbook without previous formal scientific
>> >> instruction.
>
>> >On the first, dunno. On the second, actually I think so. But then it
>> >was written for people mostly not me, who needed easing into it a lot
>> >more. But I'd had good earth science and biology classes before
>> >chemistry, so it might have depended on stuff there (though the
>> >biology wasn't a prereq).
>
>> But...you had previous formal scientific instruction (the earth
>> science and biology) which introduces you to scientific method and so
>> on.
>
>I was familiar with that *long* before it ever came up in school.
>
>That may be having a strange effect on this discussion, generally. I
>suspect most of us were familiar with a lot of things *before* we got
>them in school, and that may have caused us not to notice their
>occurrence in school, too.

That's a big factor (and one we tend to underestimate until we run
into people who haven't had that kind of outside exposure in their
lives).


>I think the earth science class was the best of the three, really,
>even though the chemistry teacher was very good.

Earth science is cool. My son missed it in public school because they
did it when he was at parochial school--and the parochial school's
science was woefully inadequate. However, he did a year of 4-H
geology project work, and that really made up the difference.

I still want to do a 4-H geology club! One of my favorite college
science classes was Geology of Oregon--which, of course, focused
heavily on the John Day fossil beds and the Cascade volcanoes (this
was just before Mt. St. Helens blew, so the focus was on Crater Lake
instead).

jrw

.

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