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In my previous post, I recommended Encyclopedia
of Dinosaurs to Jessica as being written for the "general Public" but
now realize that it uses a lot of terminology that is more common to the
"general" scientific community. (Perhaps I should have
recommended "The Illustrated Book of Dinosaurs" for someone at
her level). I tried to remember just what I knew about evolutionary biology, and
what was taught about dinosaurs when I studied it in High school, and it didn`t
amount to much!
I get a kick out of what some of these high
schoolers come up with as questions. Some of them are trivial, but some of them
can inspire my own sense of wonder (their minds being, as yet , unfettered by
any set standards). It bothers me though to see in some of the questions a lack
of understanding of some basic scientific principles. I.e. the way Caleb Lewis
had a need to know some basic evolutionary facts.
Although I didn`t go into the teaching
profession, I did accomplish my degree, and went through the student teaching,
where I instructed a 7 th grade class in general science, and couldn`t believe
that they were using a text that was 10 yrs old! It seemed as though nothing had
changed since I went to school,...and that`s sad.
Now, it`s all well and good to want to keep the
public "on the right track" by making sure that Information going out
there is scientifically accurate, but if we really want to affect the general
public, we should reach them when they are young. We should make sure they have
the basic science knowledge to make good self-informed judgements as to what`s
"good" and what`s "garbage". We should make sure that the
science curriculum is at least up to date, and at the very least , provide
these kids with adequate libraries! I don`t see why curriculum couldn`t be
organized around the study of evolution in general. It`s the perfect unifying
theme, (did`nt Huxley say that?), and I think it would draw the kids attention
better than memorizing all the parts of a picture of a flower (or other such
nonsense). I have no contact with anyone in education at this moment, maybe some
of you do. Might make for good employment for someone with the background to
design a good science curriculum for various grade levels, and write a couple of
good texts, don`t you think?
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