THere is never, even in a wealthy enviroment, enough time, equipment, or whatever to let students make any more than trivial choices in experimental design
We have art classes in which there’s plenty of time for the students to create artwork. In a similar context there no reason why there shouldn’t be experimention classes that teach students to experiment and give them plenty of time for the exercise.
School wastes massive amounts of time by teaching facts without SRS that get forgotten by the students a few years after they take the class.
Learning the paradigm of experimentation might be more important then teaching the way the periodic table is arranged.
We have art classes...no reason why there shouldn’t be expermentation classes.
In high school, most studio art classes have a lot less time devoted to verbal learning or whatever and much more to practice. Plus mundane art materials are both inexpensive and very safe to use. (and may already be in the classroom. Much can be taught with pencil sketches.) Chemistry (especially with modern-day, possibly excessive safety consciousness) is not, and requires more specialized space and has a hard time admitting of experimental design by students beacause they might design a bad experiment.
I don’t know about mechanical physics. My school had an ‘applied physics’ class meant to go alongside the normal class, in which actual freaking predictions were made but it was more engineering than physics and more shop class than either. Plus the kind of rudimentary stuff made by students such as air cannons and the like tends not to be regular enough in i.e. firing velocity for math analysis to work very well. OTOH, chemistry often isn’t either at the high school level. Damn three-beam balances.
I don’t know how to deal with the issue of governmentally imposed tests that must be taught to. It seems to me that one thing that should be done is to develop a way of testing this sort of thing, but on the other hand there might be
In high school, most studio art classes have a lot less time devoted to verbal learning or whatever and much more to practice.
That’s the point. Setting up real experiments is scientific practice.
Chemistry (especially with modern-day, possibly excessive safety consciousness) is not, and requires more specialized space and has a hard time admitting of experimental design by students because they might design a bad experiment.
I don’t really see the point of most chemistry experiments that I did in school and university. The last batch at a university introductionary chemistry course just showed me that my finger coordination was really bad. Afterwards I learned some card magic to get finger coordination.
We have art classes in which there’s plenty of time for the students to create artwork. In a similar context there no reason why there shouldn’t be experimention classes that teach students to experiment and give them plenty of time for the exercise.
School wastes massive amounts of time by teaching facts without SRS that get forgotten by the students a few years after they take the class. Learning the paradigm of experimentation might be more important then teaching the way the periodic table is arranged.
In high school, most studio art classes have a lot less time devoted to verbal learning or whatever and much more to practice. Plus mundane art materials are both inexpensive and very safe to use. (and may already be in the classroom. Much can be taught with pencil sketches.) Chemistry (especially with modern-day, possibly excessive safety consciousness) is not, and requires more specialized space and has a hard time admitting of experimental design by students beacause they might design a bad experiment.
I don’t know about mechanical physics. My school had an ‘applied physics’ class meant to go alongside the normal class, in which actual freaking predictions were made but it was more engineering than physics and more shop class than either. Plus the kind of rudimentary stuff made by students such as air cannons and the like tends not to be regular enough in i.e. firing velocity for math analysis to work very well. OTOH, chemistry often isn’t either at the high school level. Damn three-beam balances.
I don’t know how to deal with the issue of governmentally imposed tests that must be taught to. It seems to me that one thing that should be done is to develop a way of testing this sort of thing, but on the other hand there might be
That’s the point. Setting up real experiments is scientific practice.
I don’t really see the point of most chemistry experiments that I did in school and university. The last batch at a university introductionary chemistry course just showed me that my finger coordination was really bad. Afterwards I learned some card magic to get finger coordination.