What on earth is wrong with school science lessons?

whyamihere

I have recently spoken to two people around 13/14, one my sister (who's at a grammar school), the other my girlfriend's brother. Neither of them believe in the moon landings. Even when I explain that their arguments are right (showing evidence where necessary) they stick to the belief that we never went there blindly (showing complete ignorance of the scientific process).

I want to know what they're being taught. There's something surely very wrong if they can get to that age and still be so stupid.

Other things they don't believe in:
The big bang (acceptable as they were coming from a philosophical, religious viewpoint)
Slipstreaming (yes, really)

I despair.

stephenballantyne

How weird. Are all science teachers conspiracy theorists these days? I never realised there was a conspiracy regarding slipstreams though :?

The big bang (acceptable as they were coming from a philosophical, religious viewpoint)

Hmm... Not really an acceptable reason not to believe in the big bang. Just a further reflection of believing things "blindly (showing complete ignorance of the scientific process)"

whyamihere

Well, yes. What I meant from that was that I can see where the viewpoint comes from. The lack of belief in the moon landings just makes no sense to me though.

Regarding the slipstreams, I don't think that's a conspiracy. I'm pretty sure he's just stupid.

chuckcork

You don't say why they don't believe in things, though of course being cynical about information presented through the media wouldn't be hard. Alistair Campbell, now there is someone who could say all kinds of things that are perfectly factual, but I personally wouldn't, well not so much not believe a word of what he says, but trust it, because pretty much anything he says is so slanted, biased, open to interpretation and so on, that it cannot be taken at face value.

And the problem with the modern media, which is where most of us get our information about the world, can be narrowed down to discerning between facts and opinions.

E.g.
Moon landings didn't happen, it is all a consipiracy. Opinion.
Moon landing happended, there is documentary evidence to prove it and a couple hundred kilograms of moon rock brought back for testing. Fact.

A more notorious example:
Blair misled parliament about WMD's. Opinion (according to Campbell), Fact to the rest of us.
Blair stated what he though was the truth about WMD's, crossed his heart and sent squaddies of to die. Fact according to Campbell). Opinion to the rest of us, who just think he was a lying bastard looking for an excuse for a war.

How do they square that particular circle?

In the first case, any proof will be read as how good the conspiracy was and the extent they went to to cover it up.

In the second, well AC has claimed often enough to have been cleared by succesive enquiries answering questions that weren't actually asked, that believing anything he says is practically impossible. The man is a politician through and through, he merely has to be in a room to change the nature of reality. I think Terry Pratchett would describe it as the P-effect, which is distortions of reality that occur around politicians? Kind of like gravity, the further away you are from one the less of an effect it has.

Now the other difficulty is in modern society you also get bizarre things which many take as being real, and not just as entertainment, like say astrology and the Daily Mail. When both are presented as being other than what they are, which is to say fiction, and with many people taking them as being real as well, then is it any suprise that children come across as being manifestly stupid? Maybe they are just overly cynical?

Either that or just undereducated. Can any of claim for that matter to understand how a computer works, or a car?

redddraggon

Jake151 wrote:

Really when ur in years 7-9 it ent that interesting as year 10 +11 u get into the real science like the structure of the atom

They lie......they don't teach the real structure of the atom until at least A level.....

Most of GCSE science is a lie

Jez mon

Calm down dear, loads of people go through a conspiracy theory phase! They aren't that old yet either, I really didn't know much till I started my GCSEs, now I've done A-levels I know slightly more, but still not a lot! Now I'm doing a Mech Eng degree and am realising just how little i know!

chuckcork

If you are a terry Pratchett fan you'll knwo of the concept of "lies to children", which extends to "lies to arch-chancellors" and on to "lies to wizards"

Parsnip49

For a start, calling it "science" is a problem - it should be taught as biology, chemistry and physics.

They dont teach the proper structure of the atom because we dont know the proper structure of the atom - string theory or whatever they find out at CERN is the best we've got

nasahapley

There's been some good points raised in this thread IMO. While I find the lack of knowledge of fairly basic (i.e. GCSE-level) science in the general public pretty frustrating, I can't get too worked up about it because most people don't need to know this stuff for their daily lives, and nobody could ever understand more than a tiny fraction of mankind's scientific knowledge anyway.

What worries me is that a lot of people apparently don't understand the scientific method of gaining knowledge and for discerning between what is 'true' and what isn't. I sense a tendency among a lot of my humanities graduate mates to think that two mutually contradicting views of the world can both be 'true', so long as the two people in question are sincere in their beliefs, irrespective of any evidence one way or the other. This discounting of the scientific method makes it easy for cranks to pass off their 'pseudo-science' (I'm thinking about a lot of the stuff 'nutritionists' and alternative therapists offer up) as 'proper' science (hypotheses, evidence, double-blind trials and all that stuff). It also allows unreason to become a virtue and makes it easy for people to take a woefully misguided view of the world; on the one hand you've got the teenager not believing in the moon landings, big bang or evolution, which on it's own is fairly harmless, but at the other end of the scale you've got god talking to George Bush/Sarah Palin while they're in charge of a nuclear arsenal.

Phew! Science, religion and politics in one post, this is a bit heavy.

ps. If anyone says that 'science is just another form of religion', as my aforementioned humanities chums have been known to say, I shall scream.

Big Red S

They're at the age where (they feel) they know enough to be able to 'know' the prevailing opinion of something is wrong.

Everyone goes through it - it's when you have discussions with your friends about how it'd be so much easier to make this or that work that much better, and it's silly that the designers didn't know.
Secondary school's sometimes really good for inflating kids' egos as to how much they know and understand, and it's a really valuable thing to do. The consequences can be amusing, but rarely long-lasting.

'coure, it'd be nice if the over-estimation of their understanding was in areas of science rather than opinion, but we can't have everything.

Jon G

whyamihere wrote:

I have recently spoken to two people around 13/14, one my sister (who's at a grammar school), the other my girlfriend's brother. Neither of them believe in the moon landings.

I suspect a lot of this sort of belief, or cliamed belief, is not really a simple case of ignorance of science. There is also the issue of a fairly normal teenage wish to rebel and to be different (also seen in socially excluded adults, who are also often keen on conspiracy theories).

Given the way in which science is perceived as being associated with authority (it is done by grown-up experts, it is used by powerful people, it is funded by govt & business, etc) denying scientific claims, especially in ways which exasperate adults as this did you, becomes a convenient way of showing rejection of authority without suffering any uncomfortable consequences such as stopped pocket money or a night in the cells.

OffTheBackAdam

Jake151 wrote:

I'm 16 and still in school (last year of secondary) and they do teach slip streaming in GCSE science they talking about areo dynamics and all, The big bang they say is true as you can tell how far a star is by measuring the amount of red light that is given off and that the star is always getting further away as the red light shifts to that end of the spectrum each time you would measure it, this proves in a sense that the universe is constantly expanding as, as it expands the things in it need to fill the space that has been made by the universe expanding.

Really when ur in years 7-9 it ent that interesting as year 10 +11 u get into the real science like the structure of the atom and all very fun

hope that helps

Pity they don't teach you how to write properly.
I hope that the teaching of Big Bang theory and red-shift due to the doppler effect is a bit better than the way you've tried to explain it.
You're also confusing the "Big Bang" with "Steady State" somewhat, by the sound of your last statement.
Sadly, science, like all things in education, is being dumbed-down.
Interesting to know what they're teaching about atomic structure, I doubt if it even touches on spd hybridisation!

Jez mon

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

Jake151 wrote:

I'm 16 and still in school (last year of secondary) and they do teach slip streaming in GCSE science they talking about areo dynamics and all, The big bang they say is true as you can tell how far a star is by measuring the amount of red light that is given off and that the star is always getting further away as the red light shifts to that end of the spectrum each time you would measure it, this proves in a sense that the universe is constantly expanding as, as it expands the things in it need to fill the space that has been made by the universe expanding.

Really when ur in years 7-9 it ent that interesting as year 10 +11 u get into the real science like the structure of the atom and all very fun

hope that helps

Pity they don't teach you how to write properly.
I hope that the teaching of Big Bang theory and red-shift due to the Doppler effect is a bit better than the way you've tried to explain it.
You're also confusing the "Big Bang" with "Steady State" somewhat, by the sound of your last statement.
Sadly, science, like all things in education, is being dumbed-down.
Interesting to know what they're teaching about atomic structure, I doubt if it even touches on spd hybridisation!

That's a bit harsh there Adam. a) This is a cycle forum not an exam, he's just giving vague ideas about Red Shift, etc b) if we're going to expect exacting standards, then it's the Doppler effect, not the doppler effect

Finally, complaining that education has been dumbed down is pretty pointless, young poeple can't do anything about it, it's tremendously frustrating to hear every man and woman telling you that your grades are worthless. But in the long run it just makes you look jealous of youth...

chuckcork

Jez mon wrote:

It's tremendously frustrating to hear every man and woman telling you that your grades are worthless. ...

Really?

How about having a degree that because it isn't from an EU university isn't recognised, so you can't get qualified in the UK...when people from the latest group of accession countries, who at a practical level don't qualify either, don't have to bother with it because of some shite about grandfather rules?

Now that is frustrating!

Richard_D

I think it was Myth Busters that very effecivly debunked the Moon landings did not happen conspiracy. The usual conspiracies relate to the waving flag, illumination of the shadowed side of the lunar lander and the darkened sky. Each in turn was effectvely explained.
The other one that is worth a try is the corner cube reflectors. Several of the Apollo missions left corner cube reflectors on the surface of the moon to reflect laser light shone from earth to measure the distance between the moon and the earth. It would be highly inprobable for only Apollos sites to have the necessary reflectivity.

As an aside this is what frightens me about Sarah Palin a prolife creationist as the vice president of the US backing a president already in his 70's and distinctly likely not to survive to term if elected.

timdanaher

Some good points here... nasahapley, your post certainly hits the mark.

Have you read Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World?

If not, I think it'd be right up your street.

The chapter about The Sokal Affair is particularly illuminating!

another jacko

Sadly, science, like all things in education, is being dumbed-down.

Oh dear - someone always trots out this old chestnut.

Education is NOT being dumbed down. It is, however, over-assessed so there is too much teaching to assessment. Ironically this is partly as a consequence of trying to prove that it is not being dumbed down!

The dumbing down argument usually goes something along the lines of 'kids these days don't know who the wives of Henry VIII are and can't recite Hamlet's soliloquy so they can't have had as good an education as in my day'. However, my kids know infinitely more about computers, quarks and the greenhouse effect than I was ever taught at school. In fact none of those things existed when I was at school. My kids have also had far more development of skills in research, enquiry, critical thinking and evaluation - again not concepts that were anywhere in my school curriculum - My generation, in the good old days before 'dumbing down', spent our schooldays cramming our exercise books full of disjointed dictated and copied 'facts' about useless stuff that we learned for a few hours and promptly forgot as soon as we left the exam room. Brilliant.

If we want to put new things into the curriculum, some old stuff has to go - but it's NOT dumbing down.

OffTheBackAdam

Dumbing down is recognisable by the steadily increasing number of high grade "passes" and the reduction in the mark needed to "pass" these exams.
By the way Universities complain that their newest intake of students lack the necessary knowledge to undertake their studies. That's nothing new, one may add, as when I started Uni in 1979, all those who hadn't taken A-Level Maths needed to do take a term's course to bring their math's abilities up to the level needed for our Chemistry degree course. The Head of Department noted the decline in math's abilities of the students compared to those admitted a few years previously.
Luckily I'd taken A-Level maths (Didn't point out that I hadn't passed it :oops: )
As for what's being taught about the Greenhouse Effect, well, that's a nice can of worms.

another jacko

Dumbing down is recognisable by the steadily increasing number of high grade "passes" and the reduction in the mark needed to "pass" these exams.

No - the steadily increasing number of high grade passes is because (a) teaching standards have improved immeasurably and (b) students work much harder than they used to. I'm not aware that pass marks have been reduced, just that more people are reaching them.
There has always been an element of 'norm referencing' in setting grade boundaries, For example an A level I taught in the early 90's had a range of subject option modules that students could choose from. In order to have the same proportion of students getting each grade across all modules the A mark, for instance varied between 43 and 72. I think this must be fair as it reflects the differing levels of difficulty of each module, not that students who take the harder module are necessarily more stupid.

By the way Universities complain that their newest intake of students lack the necessary knowledge to undertake their studies.

This is a difficult one.

How far is it the role of schools to prepare students for University when less than half of them will take that route when they leave?

To a large extent the focus on preparation for Uni already does a great disservice to less able students. For example, many kids leave primary school with a reasonable level of functional numeracy (for their age). When they get to secondary school the focus shifts from numeracy to maths. Universities have an enormous influence over the maths syllabus which they need to develop the skills they want for potential maths undergraduates. In the process many kids get confused and alienated and lose what numeracy they had to start with and attainment levels fall off.

As soon as anyone, like Tomlinson, proposes a change the 'dumbing down' charge is levied and government backs down. Tomlinson's proposal, by the way was that all kids study numeracy and only when they have reached the level of functional numeracy required for adult life do you start to introduce them to more abstract and complex Maths concepts. At the moment we bring Maths in across the board from just 11 years old whether kids are ready for it or not, the Tomlinson methodology is to remove it from age and relate it only to ability to progress. Okay, so fewer kids will get low grade Maths GCSEs but the numbers getting high grades wont change. A great many more people will leave school with the skills to work out their pay packet or that they are being ripped off by salesmen.

There's a similar principle to literacy too. Let's make sure everyone can read a safety instruction, a phone book or a newspaper before we confuse them with the obsolete language of Austen and Shakespeare, however pure and beautiful it might be.

Big Red S

another jacko wrote:

Dumbing down is recognisable by the steadily increasing number of high grade "passes" and the reduction in the mark needed to "pass" these exams.

No - the steadily increasing number of high grade passes is because (a) teaching standards have improved immeasurably and (b) students work much harder than they used to. I'm not aware that pass marks have been reduced, just that more people are reaching them.
There has always been an element of 'norm referencing' in setting grade boundaries, For example an A level I taught in the early 90's had a range of subject option modules that students could choose from. In order to have the same proportion of students getting each grade across all modules the A mark, for instance varied between 43 and 72. I think this must be fair as it reflects the differing levels of difficulty of each module, not that students who take the harder module are necessarily more stupid.

The fact that more students get an A now than they did ten years ago is surely an indication that an A is now an easier grade to get than it was ten years ago.
Whether this is down to a dumbing down of the exams, an increase in the intelligence of the students or a more effective system of teaching them is mostly irrelevant - an A grade in any given subject is not as valuable now as it used to be. To regain its value, it must become rarer and therefore harder to attain.

another jacko

an A grade in any given subject is not as valuable now as it used to be. To regain its value, it must become rarer and therefore harder to attain.

This depends on whether you are measuring against an absolute standard or a relative standard.

If you want to know who the most able 10% are you have to manage the grade boundary to maintain its rarity so that you only give an A to the top 10%.

If, however, you want to know all the people who have intelligence at level X (however you define this) you maintain a fixed grade boundary and accept that, over time, if people get better at developing and demonstrating their intelligence there will be more and more of them.

Alternatively you could go back to how we used to maintain rarity of high levels of achievement by only giving a decent education to the wealthy and making working class kids leave school at 15.

For most purposes, the only exception being those elite universities who want to identify who the top few percent are, having more people who can demonstrate higher levels of skill and competence is surely a good thing. Let's celebrate it, not call it 'dumbing down'.

Cunobelin

whyamihere wrote:

Well, yes. What I meant from that was that I can see where the viewpoint comes from. The lack of belief in the moon landings just makes no sense to me though.

Regarding the slipstreams, I don't think that's a conspiracy. I'm pretty sure he's just stupid.

Anyone who has grown up with Bush and Blair is going to be very cynical about official claims and quite rightly so - with anything Nu Labour does a healthy dose of cynicism is essential!

chuckcork

Cunobelin wrote:

whyamihere wrote:

Well, yes. What I meant from that was that I can see where the viewpoint comes from. The lack of belief in the moon landings just makes no sense to me though.

Regarding the slipstreams, I don't think that's a conspiracy. I'm pretty sure he's just stupid.

Anyone who has grown up with Bush and Blair is going to be very cynical about official claims and quite rightly so - with anything Nu Labour does a healthy dose of cynicism is essential!

Nu Labour didn't start it, anymore than that Major government minister feeding his child hamburger to 'prove' that British beef was safe did.

Dissemblation has been around for Millennia I think. Maybe a difference is it being part of (un)official government media strategy in the past few decades, style over substance etc, where if they haven't convinced you of some point they want to make, they haven't sold it well enough.

Aka Spin?

Big Red S

another jacko wrote:

an A grade in any given subject is not as valuable now as it used to be. To regain its value, it must become rarer and therefore harder to attain.

This depends on whether you are measuring against an absolute standard or a relative standard.

If you want to know who the most able 10% are you have to manage the grade boundary to maintain its rarity so that you only give an A to the top 10%.

If, however, you want to know all the people who have intelligence at level X (however you define this) you maintain a fixed grade boundary and accept that, over time, if people get better at developing and demonstrating their intelligence there will be more and more of them.

Alternatively you could go back to how we used to maintain rarity of high levels of achievement by only giving a decent education to the wealthy and making working class kids leave school at 15.

For most purposes, the only exception being those elite universities who want to identify who the top few percent are, having more people who can demonstrate higher levels of skill and competence is surely a good thing. Let's celebrate it, not call it 'dumbing down'.

But you don't want to just employ anyone who's got an intelligence level of X. You want to employ the person who did best. That's a relative scale, and calls for some granularity in the grading which is lacking when such a huge proportion of people attain any given grade.
Else we might as well just have a pass or fail at each point where we grade people.

synchronicity

You see, we live in an age where children have to stay aloof. I wouldn't be at all suprised if they thought the moon landing was a photochop.

unclemalc

" Tomlinson's proposal, by the way was that all kids study numeracy and only when they have reached the level of functional numeracy required for adult life do you start to introduce them to more abstract and complex Maths concepts. At the moment we bring Maths in across the board from just 11 years old whether kids are ready for it or not, the Tomlinson methodology is to remove it from age and relate it only to ability to progress. Okay, so fewer kids will get low grade Maths GCSEs but the numbers getting high grades wont change. A great many more people will leave school with the skills to work out their pay packet or that they are being ripped off by salesmen. "

That is a brilliant point, 'maths' being the bugbear of many many kids over the years.
Having been in education all my life, and as someone who is now seeing both the great lack of simple arithmetical ability in undergraduates, and the equal inability of the non-student population of the same age to know the most simple facts (OR use common sense) I despair.
In science teaching the basic facts are the same as they always were. Its just that more is known about the world we live in so there is less room for the old fashioned stuff "like wot we did...". Likewise there is far more choice in other subjects that relate to how we live now and so 'old-fashioned' subljects are less popular. You can easily see that in terms of
i) the basic scientific knowledge current science undergraduates have and
ii) the far fewer kids choosing to learn 'old-fashioned' science subjects.
My main fear is that the schoolchildren/students we are turning out now are the 'middle'management' of tomorrow. There are already signs in society that people in responsible postiions, charged with duties that directly affect the general public, are totally incapable of seeing how stupid some of their decisions are.

And no, I do not regularly read the 'Daily Mail'.....

OffTheBackAdam

another jacko wrote:

Alternatively you could go back to how we used to maintain rarity of high levels of achievement by only giving a decent education to the wealthy and making working class kids leave school at 15.

We should go back to the Grammar schools.
My Grandfather was in the Royal Navy, worked his way up to Chief Petty Officer, after discharge, worked for a company making electrical fittings, my Grandmother was a housewife. My father was encouraged to learn at school, to better himself. He managed to get into the local Grammar school. The local oiks used to bully those who went to that school, so as well as getting himself eductaed enough to become a teacher, he had to run fast enough to escape the mob chasing him and punch hard enough to lay out the fastest of the mob.
My maths teacher at school started life as a coal miner, he went to night scool to get the qualifications he needed to become a teacher.
Were either of them or their families rich? No.
The exams are dumbed down, how much is now course work? Far too succeptable to manipulation, be it by teacher rewriting it to boost the school's
league table results or by parental coaching or blatant plagiarism.
The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English falls, those being taught English aren't taught how to spell, poor spelling's ignored for marking.

Patrick1.0

Conspiracy theories are always the best. At college we had a guy come in talking about the 911 conspiracy. His theories were all so far-fetched and ridiculous when put into proper context but everyone was hanging on his words save a few of us. There were serveral occassions where I attempted to explain to him the concept of a building that "pancakes" and how in the case of the twin towers - where the central column is made up entirely of air - explosions out of the buildings' sides were quite acceptable. He persisted with his theory of demolition even when I put it to him that it requires enormous amounts of the explosives to be planted in specific points to bring down a building a 100th of the size of the twin towers. Yet somehow, despite the security, the thousands of people who worked in the towers, nobody saw the agents serenely dotting each of the floors with explosives and the connecting wires.

Not only this, when I put it to him and everybody else present, that when viewed from any angle and however many times, the towers collapsed from the top down, not from the bottom as is consistent with buildings being collapsed with demolition, he refused to contemplate anything further that I wanted to put forward. Our teacher even motioned to silence me from asking any further questions, even though they were polite and entirely reasonable.

I never got to ask my next question: who's paying you to put forward conspiracy theories that you, as an intelligent person, believe in no more than myself? An equally good one would have been: which of your books is coming out next?

Jon G

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

getting himself eductaed enough .... poor spelling's ignored for marking.

The exams are dumbed down .....The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English falls...

The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English falls, those being taught English aren't taught how to spell, poor spelling's ignored for marking.

should read The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English is falling, those being taught English aren't taught how to spell and poor spelling is ignored in marking schemes.

Tourist Tony

...and if standards are not falling/grade inflation is not happening, please explain how someone can get an A* grade in a foreign language without the ability to conjugate the verb "to be".

mr_hippo

Jez mon wrote:

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

Pity they don't teach you how to write properly.

That's a bit harsh there Adam. a) This is a cycle forum not an exam, he's just giving vague ideas about Red Shift, etc b) if we're going to expect exacting standards, then it's the Doppler effect, not the doppler effect

Why do think that it is a bit harsh? Just how difficult is it to write in your native language?
By saying "This is a cycle forum not an exam...", are you implying that the use of 'sloppy' English is alright when you are not taking exams?
You are right in calling this a forum but it is also your showcase - if posters want to parade their ignorance of their native language then it is up to them. They may have something interesting to say but why should I spend my valuable time trying to decipher posts?
Please ensure that your English is correct before correcting others. You need a comma between 'there' and 'Adam', a full stop after 'etc' and, in this case, a full stop to end your sentence!

Jon G wrote:

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English falls, those being taught English aren't taught how to spell, poor spelling's ignored for marking.

should read The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English is falling, those being taught English aren't taught how to spell and poor spelling is ignored in marking schemes.

Should read? Surely you jest! In The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English is falling; 'is falling' refers to what? It can't be 'numbers' because that is plural and so is 'children'. You have 'corrected' 'spelling's' but not 'aren't' - why?
Shall we examine 'The numbers of children gaining GSCEs in Maths & English falls...'? Why is 'numbers' used and not 'number'? 'Number' can refer to a 'group' and 'numbers' to 'groups'; if he were only referring to children who sat GCSEs this year then 'number' would be correct but he is referring to previous groups as well. Now, why ‘falls’ and not ‘is falling’? ‘Falls’ is the present simple tense and can be used for ‘something that happens all the time, or habitually, in the past, present and future’.