Medieval Teaching Methods

 
John Hawks posts a reference to an article in MacLeans magazine about undergraduate teaching. John supports a style of teaching that emphasizes "hands-on" experience over learning about theory [The Problem with Stem, A reason for practical genomic education].

Like many critics of education, John thinks that traditional lectures are old-fashioned and inefficient. I tend to agree with him on this point—we can do a much better job of education in a classroom setting. However, I part company with many critics who go overboard in rejecting traditional lecture formats as a way of communicating information. For example, I note that this style is readily accepted in many other contexts. John Hawks gave a talk last week n Madison that I would love to have attended [I would so go to this if I were in Madison]. There are all kinds of other public lectures that people pay good money to attend—we filled an auditorium when PZ Myers acme to town. Traditional lectures are very common at scientific meetings because nobody has figured out a better way to hear what an expert has to say.

The death of lectures has been greatly exaggerated.

How to Do Good Science

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was a very smart American physicist who's words are often quoted ... for good reason.

Here's one quotation where he describes how good scientists should behave. It's a point I make in my class on scientific controversies and it's worth emphasizing because so many modern scientists ignore it.

Feynman is specifically referrring to "cargo cult science" but his advice applies to a lot of of modern biology as well.

There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in "cargo cult science." It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

Richard Feynman, "Cargo Cult Science" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Think about Feynman's words next time you read a paper on the importance of alternative splicing, the disappearance of junk DNA, or anything about evolutionary psychology.

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The Death of Universities

 
Bill Gates thinks that universities are about to become obsolete [Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web].

"Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world," Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. "It will be better than any single university," he continued.

This is nonsense on many levels. First, who's going to determine whether any given lecture is the "best lecture in the world?" Second, why will it be online? (Most professors don't want to put their lectures online.) Third, who says that listening to a lecture is the only thing that a university has to offer?

One particular problem with the education system according to Gates is text books. Even in grade schools, they can be 300 pages for a book about math. "They’re giant, intimidating books," he said. "I look at them and think: what on Earth is in there?"

According to Gates, our text books are three times longer than the equivalents in Asia. And yet they’re beating us in many ways with education. The problem is that these things are built by committee, and more things are simply added on top of what’s already in there.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am a textbook author. That means I have more of a stake in this debate than Bill Gates. (Of course, it also means that as a textbook author and a university professor, I'm probably more of an expert than the former chairman of a software company.(1))

When they are well done, a textbook is like the best lecture you could ever get. If you want to learn about evolution, for example, then you could hardly do better than reading EVOLUTION by Douglas Futuyma. I can't imagine any series of online lectures that could compete with a such a good textbook.

Textbooks are collaborative affairs that undergo considerable review by experts before publication. Most online lectures are the work of a single individual and they have not been reviewed for accuracy.

The most important goal of a university education is to teach student how to think and a major component of that process is critical thinking. Unfortunately, sitting in front of your monitor reading a lecture is not the best way to learn how to think and it doesn't give you any practice in critical thinking. There's a reason why students need to interact with other students and scholars in a university setting and it's very sad that people like Bill Gates don't get it.

On the other hand, if Gates is correct then it might be a really good thing for universities. The standing joke among professors is that universities would be wonderful places if only we could get rid of the students!

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John Hawks seems to be quite sympathetic to the Gates stupidity [Bubbling through college].

1. How did we ever get ourselves into the situation where executives from for-profit companies are thought to be experts on education? They are not. They are just about the last people on Earth I would ask for advice on university education.

An Educational Lunch

 
Last week, before leaving for Halifax, I had lunch with David Schuller (a Monday's Molecule winner) and Deb Breiter. They were in town for a meeting of crystallographers.

We talked about biochemistry education (among other things) and it was fun to hear the perspective of someone who teaches introductory biochemistry at a smaller college in the mid-west. (Deb is head of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Rockford College in Illinois.)

The issues she faces are very different than those at a big school like the University of Toronto. Naturally we talked about textbooks and, after scolding her for not using my book, we debated the merits of various introductory biochemistry textbooks. (She has used several different ones and is very knowledgeable on the topic.)

Part of the debate revolves around differing approaches to teaching introductory biochemistry. There are many variations but I like to think of two main ones that I refer to as the "Evolutionary Approach" and the "Fuel Metabolism" approach.¹ Keep in mind that these are just broad categories used to illustrate some points about how to teach biochemistry.

The Evolutionary Approach to biochemistry emphasizes universal concepts that apply to most organisms. It concentrates on comparative aspects of biochemistry and on explanations of where things come from. This approach will almost always include lectures on photosynthesis and will almost always try to explain how metabolic pathways evolve.

In the Evolutionary Approach, the fundamental pathways of lipids, carbohydrates, amino acids etc. are the biosynthetic ones and not the degradation pathways. Some concepts, like the idea of essential amino acids, are relegated to footnotes. Human biochemistry is treated as a specialized version of the big picture and the fundamental concepts are taught first using simple prokaryotic examples.

The Fuel Metabolism Approach is quite different. Here the emphasis is on human biochemistry and almost everything is treated as a potential fuel before its biosynthesis is discussed. Photosynthesis isn't covered in such a course and the biochemistry of bacteria is usually not mentioned. This is the kind of course that's geared for students who are interested in their own metabolism and (it is thought) for pre-medical students.

In the Fuel Metabolism approach, students will learn that gluconeogenesis isn't very important and that there's a big difference between essential and nonessential amino acids. They will learn that the carbons in fatty acids can rarely be converted to carbohydrates. They will study transcription, translation, and DNA replication as they occur in mammals and they usually won't be exposed to the prokaryotic versions of information flow.

I think that the Evolutionary Approach to biochemistry is superior to the older Fuel Metabolism approach. In part, this is because the Evolutionary Approach encourages a "big picture" view of biochemistry where the ideas are more important than the facts. In contrast, the Fuel Metabolism approach encourages the learning of specific pathways since, by and large, it is confined to discussing mammals.

On the other hand, the Fuel Metabolism Approach may be more appealing to students because they are more concerned about themselves than about other species. Furthermore, it lends itself to discussions about diet and nutrition and these are hot topics that attract students.

I learned a lot from Deb Breiter. One of the most important things was that teachers like her get together from time to time to discuss how to teach chemistry/biochemistry. The meetings I attend are dominated by people who write textbooks and run BAMBED (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education) and we don't have much contact with many of those on the front line. (Don't get me wrong, most of us at those meetings are also teachers, it's just that we tend to forget that the vast majority of biochemistry teachers aren't even aware of some issues.)

Deb belongs to a group called the "Midwestern Association of Chemistry Teachers in Liberal Arts Colleges" (MACTLAC). The MACTLAC 2009 Annual Meeting is at Hope College in Michigan on Oct. 16-17. It would be fun to attend—I wonder if they allow interlopers?

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1. Many textbook authors refer to the Fuel Metabolism Approach as "rat liver" biochemistry but I won't mention that here because it sounds like I'm taking sides.

Education and Science vs. Religion

 
As far as I'm concerned, the proper teaching of science involves explaining that it is a legitimate and powerful way of knowing based on evidence and rationalism. The scientific way of knowing conflicts with the vast majority of religious beliefs. In other words, the proper teaching of science is a threat to almost all religions and, in that sense, it encourages skepticism at least, and non-belief at best.

In most countries that fact isn't a problem but in the USA there's a problem. If the proper teaching of science promotes a "religious" point of view, namely atheism, then science can't be taught in public schools. It's fun to watch the contortions that many atheists have to go through in order to escape the obvious conclusion.

Andrew Brown (not an American, I might add) points out the problem [on being told by PZ ...]. I agree with him just as I agreed that Michael Ruse was making a valid point at the recent Center for Inquiry conference [Wherein Michael Ruse Avoids My Questions].

Jerry Coyne tries to get around the problem by concentrating on the teaching of evolution (just the scientific truth) and not "science" [Andrew Brown makes another dumb argument for accommodationism]. I think this is disengenuous but I do agree with Coyne that Andrew makes a silly case for accommodationism.

Coyne says,

Actually, we teach evolution because it’s a wonderful subject, explains a lot about the world, and happens to be true. And yes, it’s likely that teaching evolution probably promotes a critical examination of religious beliefs that may lead to rejecting faith. But teaching geology, physics, or astronomy does that, too.

This seems to contradict his main argument since it implies that teaching science does, indeed, lead to rejecting religious beliefs. But, wait a minute, he goes on to say that ..

In fact, education in general leads to the rejection of faith. (Statistics show that the more education one has, the less likely one is to be religious.) Should we then worry about teaching physics, astronomy, or indeed, allowing people access to higher education, because those “promote” atheism?

No, we shouldn't "worry" about that but it would be foolish to deny it. The essence of the scientific way of knowing is evidence, rationalism, and also one-mindedness and skepticism. We need to teach that to our children. To deny that this is inimical to faith-based ways of knowing is to deny the obvious.

Should we constantly be looking over our shoulders because the courts may catch onto this?

Maybe you should, if you live in America. The evolutionist side in America has put a high value on winning court cases based on rather arcane legal arguments—who, besides lawyers, cares about the Lemon test? If the bad guys decide to fight back in the courts by challenging the teaching of proper science then watch out. I've heard there are a lot of lawyers in America.

Speaking of lawyers, John Pieret has an opinion on this subject [Science, Philosophy and Law].

Teach only the science and the "problem" evaporates. Any tendency to reject faith because of the teaching of the science is what church and state scholar Kent Greenawalt has called "spillover effects," which do not render the teaching unconstitutional because they are not a "primary effect" of it.

If I understand him correctly, the teaching of Intelligent Design Creationism is unconstitutional because its "primary effect" is to promote religion. The teaching of evidence based rationalism (i.e. scientific reasoning) has as its primary purpose the destruction of superstitious beliefs but the fact that this includes religion is just a "spillover effect."

Wouldn't it be ironic if American courts ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach children how to think?

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Would You Get a Baccalauréat if You Were a Student in France?

 
French high school students must obtain the baccalauréat if they are to have any chance of getting into university. Almost all teenagers have to write the nationwide standardized tests at the same time. About half of them pass.

Everyone has to write the philosophy exam, which was held yesterday. Charles Bremner tells us what questions were on the exam [Stress test for France's young philosophers]. You have four hours to answer one of the questions. How would you do?

If you were in the economics and social science stream, the questions were ....

1. What is gained by exchange?
2. Does technological development transform mankind?

If you were one of the science students the questions were ....

1. Is it absurd to desire the impossible?
2. Are there questions which no science can answer?

If you were in the literature stream the questions were ....

1. Does objectivity in history suppose impartiality in the historian?
2. Does language betray thought?

To me the questions indicate that France expects more of its potential university students than we do in Canada. We used to have standardized province-wide exams in Ontario but they were abolished 40 years ago. As far as I know we never had a test that everyone in the entire country had to write.

I don't think such a test has ever been popular in the USA.

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[Hat Tip: Uncertain Principles: Answers Matter More than Questions]

Like this is going to happen

 
Normally A.C. Grayling makes a lot of sense and I enjoy reading his columns in New Scientist. Today's column is an exception: Universities should flag up which websites to trust.

Graying rightly points out that the internet is a mixed bag of mostly crap interspersed with the occasional website that makes sense at a level beyond kindergarten. His solution?

The lesson is that to make best use of the internet as an educational resource, its content has to be audited for reliability, and a system of classification introduced. Given that the internet is already the main resource for students, the need is urgent. I suggest that an international consortium of universities should set up panels to audit the worth of websites, endorsing those that are reliable. They should not censor, nor comment on matters of opinion - the price we pay for the internet's open democracy is the rubbish it contains. But they should authoritatively identify worthwhile sites, and warn of factual error when it occurs. Without such expert monitoring, the internet will increasingly be a problem rather than a boon, and limited in educational value.

Can you imagine a panel of Professors from different universities agreeing on which websites are reliable and accurate?

It might work for blogs. We all know which blogs to select, don't we?

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Evolution in Ontario Schools

 
The United Church Observer comments on the deficiencies of Canada's education system when it comes to teaching evolution Where's Darwin?].

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” wrote the late Ukrainian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who found evidence for evolution by studying the genetic varietals of fruit flies. To most scientists, Darwinian evolution is the unifying principle of biology, as solid and significant as Newtonian gravity or Copernican heliocentrism. But you wouldn’t guess it from its place in Canada’s school system.

In all but one provincial science curriculum, evolution is relegated to a single unit in a Grade 11 or 12 elective course taken by a sliver of each graduating class. It would not be a stretch to say the majority of Canadian high school students graduate without ever encountering Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

The situation in Ontario is a little more complicated than this statement suggests. There's plenty of opportunities in Grades 1-8 to learn about diversity, change and adaptation but unfortunately it's true that the word "evolution" isn't mentioned [The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8: Science and Technology, 2007]. I'm told by several teachers that they frequently talk about evolution even though it's not specifically mentioned in the curriculum guidelines. It would be much better to put the fundamental concept of biology in the provincial curriculum.

Evolution is only covered specifically in Grade 12 Biology [The Ontario Curriculum Grades 11 and 12: Science]. As mentioned in the United Church of Canada article, this course is only taken by a small percentage of students in Ontario high schools.

The curriculum looks pretty good (see below). I wonder how it compares with the curricula in typical American high schools? Does anyone know?

The fact that this material is required in Grade 12 Biology suggests that high school science teachers will probably be familiar with the basic concepts of evolution and I'd be surprised if it doesn't get brought up in other courses. After all, the same teachers that teach Grade 12 Biology are often teaching other courses as well.

The fact that the Province of Ontario curriculum is so strongly supportive of evolution in the Grade 12 curriculum indicates that the government doesn't have any doubts about the validity of evolution even though they may be a bit wishy-washy about mentioning it in the primary grades.

Evolution
Overall Expectations
By the end of this course, students will:
• analyse evolutionary mechanisms, and the processes and products of evolution;
• evaluate the scientific evidence that supports the theory of evolution;
• analyse how the science of evolution can be related to current areas of biological study, and how technological development has extended or modified knowledge in the field of evolution.

Specific Expectations
Understanding Basic Concepts
By the end of this course, students will:
– define the concept of speciation and explain the mechanisms of speciation;
– describe, and put in historical and cultural context, some scientists’ contributions that have changed evolutionary concepts (e.g., describe the contributions – and the prevailing beliefs of their time – of Lyell, Malthus, Lamarck,Darwin, and Gould and Eldridge);
– analyse evolutionary mechanisms (e.g., natural selection, sexual selection, genetic variation, genetic drift, artificial selection, biotechnology) and their effects on biodiversity and extinction (e.g., describe examples that illustrate current theories of evolution, such as the darkening over time, in polluted areas, of the pigment of the peppered moth, an example of industrial melanism);
– explain, using examples, the process of adaptation of individual organisms to their environment (e.g., explain the significance of a short life cycle in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria populations).
– formulate and weigh hypotheses that reflect the various perspectives that have influenced the development of the theory of evolution (e.g., apply different theoretical models for interpreting evidence).

Developing Skills of Inquiry and Communication
By the end of this course, students will:
– outline evidence and arguments pertaining to the origin, development, and diversity of living organisms on Earth (e.g., evaluate current evidence that supports the theory of evolution and that feeds the debate on gradualism and punctuated equilibrium);
– identify questions to investigate that arise from concepts of evolution and diversity (e.g.,Why do micro-organisms evolve so quickly? What factors have contributed to the dilemma that pharmaceutical companies face in trying to develop new antibiotics because so many micro-organisms are resistant to existing antibiotics?);
– solve problems related to evolution using the Hardy-Weinberg equation;
– develop and use appropriate sampling procedures to conduct investigations into questions related to evolution (e.g., to determine the incidence of various hereditary characteristics in a given population), and record data and information;

Relating Science to Technology, Society, and the Environment
By the end of this course, students will:
– relate present-day research and theories on the mechanisms of evolution to current ideas in molecular genetics (e.g., relate current thinking about adaptations to ideas about genetic mutations);
– describe and analyse examples of technology that have extended or modified the scientific understanding of evolution (e.g., the contribution of radiometric dating to the palaeontological analysis of fossils).

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[Hat Tip: John Pieret "Refried Great Northern Beans" who loves finding examples where other countries are as bad as his. ]

Science and Public Relations

 

I have come to this conclusion: the greatest tragedy of public polity, in science and without, in the democratic nations, one that looks very likely to me to be the major proximal cause of the ultimate failure of democracy, is the invention of public relations.

Read more from John Wilkins at Spin versus framing: the tragedy of PR.

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FOX vs NPR

 
Canadian Cynic recently informed us of an American college professor who claims that his conservative students are smarter than his liberal students.

A bit of background. Peter Schweizer published an article in the National Post where he took issue with the widespread belief that liberals in America are smarter than conservatives. Apparently, George Bush has a higher IQ than other presidential candidates and got higher grades in school [The arrogance of uneducated liberals].

Popular culture has greatly contributed to the myth of ignorant conservatives and enlightened liberals. One study by a group of academics found that by examining 124 characters in 47 popular political films spanning five decades, liberals were routinely depicted as “more intelligent, friendly and good” than conservatives.

The arrogance of some liberals in this regard is astonishing. You don’t even have to be highly educated yourself to complain about how uneducated conservatives are. Michael Moore, college dropout, travels all over Europe talking about how “idiotic and uneducated” conservatives are. He also said: “Once you settle for a Ronald Reagan, then it’s easy to settle for a George Bush, and once you settle for a George Bush, then it’s real easy to settle for Bush II. You know, this should be evolution, instead it’s devolution. What’s next?”

Sounds about right to me.

One of the commenters (jdcarmine) on the National Post website chimes in with ...

Wonderful! I am a college professor and this is even more stunning when comparing liberals and conservatives. For example, last semester none of my liberal students had even the foggiest notion where Iran was relative to Israel and none could find the West Bank on a map. None knew where China and Russia were relative to the Middle East. But...All the conservative students knew these basic facts which made it easier for conservatives to discuss the significance of the Iraq war whereas the liberals could only spew platitudes about it.

Now here's the fun part. Canadian Cynic quotes a study done some years ago by WorldPublicOpinion.org [Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War] They asked about three misconceptions concerning the war in Iraq: (1) there were links between Iraq and al Qaeda; (2) weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq; (3) world public opinion supports the US invasion of Iraq.

They then compared the number of people who believed none of these misconceptions with their source of news. This is an indication of the politics of the people in the survey. People who watch FOX news are assumed to be more conservative that those who get their information from NPR. Here are the results ...
I think Canadian Cynic has a point. Sure, this doesn't prove that conservatives are stupid and liberals are smart, but it sure says something about gullibility and it's reasonable to assume that there might be a correlation between that and intelligence.¹

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1. I get most of my American news from CNN. I guess that makes me about average in intelligence. My main concern is that watching Larry King and Lou Dobbs will make me dumber than I am already.

Spring Is in the Air

 
The days are getting warmer and the snow is melting away. Spring is the time when a young person's fancy turns to .... poster presentations.

Every year at this time the lobby of my building fills up with poster presentations from undergraduate courses. Today it's the turn of a course called HMB322H "Human Diseases in our Society." This course is part of our "Human Biology" program. One of the assignments in the course is to shadow a health care professional (usually a researcher) and report on the kinds of things he/she does in a typical week.

The posters are supposed to explain the research/professional activity. Grades for the assignment are based on the quality of the poster as well as the explanation given by the student as the judges question them about their project.

The idea behind this assignment is to make 3rd year students familiar with the activities of a health care worker and provide them with an opportunity to practice their skills at presenting their findings to fellow students.

The Human Biology program¹ is run by a colleague of mine, Valerie Watt, and I'm a big fan of the innovative ideas she's trying out in the courses. Not all of them are going to work but at least she's trying to find new ways of teaching. The students I talked to seemed pretty excited about their shadowing experiences.

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1. I'm not a fan of the program, especially the sub-specialty called "Health & Disease" that these students are taking. I don't think that's an appropriate area of concentration for an Honors B.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto. I'd prefer to have them concentrate on basic fundamental science.

US High School Dropout Rate

 
According to the University of Minnesota, the high school dropout rate in the USA is close to 25% [U of Minnesota study finds that US high school dropout rate higher than thought].

University of Minnesota sociologists have found that the U.S. high school dropout rate is considerably higher than most people think -- with one in four students not graduating -- and has not improved appreciably in recent decades. Their findings point to discrepancies in the two major data sources on which most governmental and non-governmental agencies base their findings.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) is widely used by governmental and non-governmental sources -- from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to the White House -- to report high school dropout rates. The CPS paints a rosy picture, showing dropout rates at about 10 percent in recent years and declining some 40 percent over the past generation. On the other hand, measures of high school completion based on the National Center for Education Statistics’ Common Core of Data survey (CCD) paint a darker picture, with high school completion rates holding steady at about 75 percent in recent decades.

Here's the important question that everyone seems to ignore: What is the optimal high school dropout rate? Surely it shouldn't be zero because that would be setting the bar too low. It probably shouldn't be 50% because that sets the bar too high. What should it be, assuming that lack of ability to complete high school was the only reason for dropping out?

If we're interested in keeping students in high school by addressing those other reasons for dropping out, then how will we know if we're succeeding unless we establish the minimum dropout rate? Is 25% good?

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[Photo Credit: "Joining nationwide demonstrations, high-school students in Valparaíso [Chile] take to the streets on May 30 [2006] to protest proposed changes in Chile's public education system." Eliseo Fernandez—Reuters /Landov (Encyclopedia Britanica Online)]