What Science Teaches Us

Science stands alone as an extraordinary intellectual invention, it helps to neutralize our human tendency to see only what we expect to see.  The scientific process creates experiments to establish a clear connection between cause and effect.  Science cancels out our prejudices, groupthink, tradition, pride, and dogma.

The importance of science cannot be over stated.  Students of science not only learn to abandon ideas when new evidence is presented they also learn to practice intellectual honesty.  This intelligence simply means that when confronted with new evidence they can admit that far from knowing more they suddenly know a lot less.  Science allows us to live in the mystery, to be in the quest of knowledge. 

Schools have not embraced the study of science.  Many of us persist in believing what is most comfortable instead of what is evident. Evolution and climate change are two examples and still hotly debated despite evidence to the contrary. 

Schools need to start early to capture the minds and imaginations of their students. The timeline from Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton to Einstein demonstrates a group of individuals who rejected the easy familiar conclusions to explore the unfamiliar ones. 

I propose that science be taught in much the same way that literature is.   Instead of teaching just the facts present the big picture and the excitement that made the big leaps possible.  In this way students can learn to love science and not to fear it.   For many in schools both teachers and students the study of science has an elitist attitude.  Classes like chemistry and physics cannot be reserved for only those considered smarter.  This idea is damaging to students and to their understanding of science.

Our students are surrounded by technology but yet have little understanding of how we got here.   In our daily lives we arrive at our beliefs usually though a patchwork of opinions, prejudices and personal experiences.  Most of us would be hard pressed to trace the source of these beliefs in any rigorous way.   Creating a population of scientists gives our future generations a tool to allow examination and reason to form their beliefs. 

Encourage your students to constantly ask “why.”  Asking the difficult questions is what leads to discovery.