Some Good News About Science Education

[livius drusus]

There's a neat article in the NYT today about quality hands-on science classes in US high schools. In Science Classrooms, a Blast of Fresh O2 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30angi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th)

Many people wring their hands over the state of science education and point to the appalling performance of America’s students in international science and math competitions. Yet some of the direst noises about our nation’s scientific prospects may be premature. Far from rejecting challenging science courses, students seem to be embracing them.

This year, for example, the American Institute of Physics said that the percentage of high school students taking physics courses was at an all-time high, and that the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the subject had climbed by 31 percent since 2000. Moreover, there are a growing number of “magnet” or “gifted and talented” programs in secondary schools that emphasize science and math.

That bodes well indeed. Hell, I went to an excellent HS, and they didn't even offer physics until after I graduated.

In one biology class last year, for example, Ms. Cascio’s students acquainted themselves with the cell, the nucleus, DNA, proteins, evolution, taxonomy and other bold-faced biology concepts by analyzing meat and seafood products from the supermarket, discovering that, hey, the things that had been sold as scallops were actually pulverized trout pressed into scallop shapes.

How cool is that? Now I want to go back to high school just to turn a high powered microscope at shady supermarket goods. :girlscientist:

[Shelli]

Mucho coolness! :carbon:

[Uthgar the Brazen]

I don't want to go back unless I can be slender and know then what I know now. And I'm still not investigating my favourite snacks, because what I don't know can kill me in my sleep after a delicious evening. :yup:

[Joshua Adams]

This year, for example, the American Institute of Physics said that the percentage of high school students taking physics courses was at an all-time high, and that the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the subject had climbed by 31 percent since 2000. How is this good news? How am I supposed to get a job if this keeps up?

[livius drusus]

:giggle: I think you're still safely ahead of the pack, Joshua.

[biochemgirl]

That is so cool. I could definitely see something like that inspiring kids to go into science fields that may not otherwise have pursued those paths.

I can still remember the exact day in my high school Biology class where the teacher had a DNA demonstration that led me to choose biochem as my major. I still think where would I have been had he not done that demonstration.

[TomJoe]

I think our education system is making excellent progress, especially in the sciences. I think it's all about tapping resources which are available, but aren't always known about. For example, I'm expected to give several presentations a year, to local schools, on what I do ... in an effort to educate the public and expand interest in the areas of agricultural science. For example, I'm putting together a microbiological "class session" together for my sisters 5th grade class which I'll give at the end of this year, or early next year ... and her fellow teachers are already asking her if I can do similar presentations for their classes as well.

[livius drusus]

That is totally kickass, TomJoe. :bow: Oo! You should organize a field trip to study microbes in the wild!

[TomJoe]

That is totally kickass, TomJoe. :bow: Oo! You should organize a field trip to study microbes in the wild!Hell no! Not with 5th graders at any rate. I'd have to be crazy. :loseit: Besides, it takes too much time ... you have to collect the samples and then grow them over a few days to weeks. I'm not sure they'd have the proper attention span for that ... no instant gratification as it were. Which is why (for the most part) I'm bringing already grown demonstrations (except for the hand-washing demonstration ... which will require me to take the petri plates back with me to incubate and then send the results back to my sister when they're grown up).

Though ... I may show them how to make a Winogradsky column, which is something they can really do on their own.

Though, now that you mention it ... I may give them a copy of A Field Guide to Bacteria by Betsey Dyer. It's a great book on "how to do it yourself microbiology".

[livius drusus]

That is totally kickass, TomJoe. :bow: Oo! You should organize a field trip to study microbes in the wild!Hell no! Not with 5th graders at any rate. I'd have to be crazy. :loseit: Besides, it takes too much time ... you have to collect the samples and then grow them over a few days to weeks. I'm not sure they'd have the proper attention span for that ... no instant gratification as it were.
True, true. But I was thinking something along the lines of collecting pond water and look at it wriggle under the microscope. I recall doing something similar at about that age and even though I was the squeamish princessy type back then, I got a huge kick out of it.

Which is why (for the most part) I'm bringing already grown demonstrations (except for the hand-washing demonstration ... which will require me to take the petri plates back with me to incubate and then send the results back to my sister when they're grown up).
What is this hand-washing demo you speak of? A before and after of what lives on their grubby little hands? Because that sounds awesome.

Though ... I may show them how to make a Winogradsky column, which is something they can really do on their own.
Yeees, Winogradsky. My thoughts exactly. :shiftier:

What a Winogradsky column?

Though, now that you mention it ... I may give them a copy of A Field Guide to Bacteria by Betsey Dyer. It's a great book on "how to do it yourself microbiology".
Excellent idea. I am nobody in particular and I approve of this message. :thumbup:

[TomJoe]

True, true. But I was thinking something along the lines of collecting pond water and look at it wriggle under the microscope. I recall doing something similar at about that age and even though I was the squeamish princessy type back then, I got a huge kick out of it.

Well, I'm bringing my labs compound and stereo microscopes, so they'll get to see some wriggling. My lab works with algae and bacteria so they'll get to see organisms swimming around as well as "fixed and stained" organisms. I'm going to spend a little bit of time going over a PowerPoint presentation showing them how microbiology is important for agriculture and why it's a cool thing to want to do. So they'll get to see lots of pretty pictures taken with my confocal microscope as well (but with its $250K pricetag, I won't be packing it in the van and bringing it for demonstrations). I'm debating on bringing some DNA work, so they can see DNA bands on agarose gels ... but that may not have the same sort of "excitement factor".

What is this hand-washing demo you speak of? A before and after of what lives on their grubby little hands? Because that sounds awesome.Exactly. A report recently came out about how Purell alcohol hand sanitizers are not as effective as previously thought when not used in a hospital setting (where you 'wash' your hands multiple times an hour) and how people should really return to the good old fashioned soap and water for a couple of minutes routine. We'll do a swab of their hands before washing, and then after showing them how to properly wash their hands, we'll do another swab ... to show them if they're doing it properly or not.

Yeees, Winogradsky. My thoughts exactly. :shiftier:

What a Winogradsky column?
Read this (http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/anisamples/microbiology/winogradsky.html) (click on "Step Through") and this (http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/e/jel5/biofilms/winogradsky.html).

Essentially it's a way to "do it yourself" in terms of seeing complex microbial communities.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

A field trip to my 'fridge will accomplish much the same thing without the need for all that preparation. And don't bother my cat, or she'll bite you.

[Roland98]

Tom, are you familiar with GloGerm? (http://www.glogerm.com/) It's a neat way to show kids about proper handwashing without the delay in culturing hand swabs. We used it for a county fair study (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no05/05-0790.htm) as well. It's pretty cool stuff...

[biochemgirl]

I'm debating on bringing some DNA work, so they can see DNA bands on agarose gels ... but that may not have the same sort of "excitement factor".


We used to do the Onion DNA Extraction (http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/DNA_extractions.html#onion) demonstration for kids when I was in college. They always seemed to get a kick out of it although I could never stand dealing with the onions.

[Octavia]

In one biology class last year, for example, Ms. Cascio’s students acquainted themselves with the cell, the nucleus, DNA, proteins, evolution, taxonomy and other bold-faced biology concepts by analyzing meat and seafood products from the supermarket, discovering that, hey, the things that had been sold as scallops were actually pulverized trout pressed into scallop shapes.

Ha! That's pretty cool. Something like that happened in NZ recently, where some high school students kicked Ribena's arse over their claims of the level of Vitamin C in their blackcurrent juice.

(I'm pretty amazed at no physics in your school, though, livius.)

The high school I went to had heaps of science. We did some pretty cool stuff in Biology...

*look away now if you're easily grossed out!*




My favourite recollection is the time they brought in (dead) rabbits for us to dissect. They'd been shot by farmers, the bloody pests. Anyway, they had gone into rigour mortis and the only way that we could dissect them was to dislocate all their limbs and nail each paw to the dissection boards (like crucifiction, hee!). Then we discovered that our bunny was pregnant, so we took out the foetuses (foetii?) and dissected them as well.

What can I say? Kids like this sort of stuff. I went on to do biology at university, at least... (although botany, not zoology).

[livius drusus]

Oh man... I would not have responded well to that in my bio class. The formaldehyded frogs were more than enough for me. :shudder:

(I'm pretty amazed at no physics in your school, though, livius.)
It was a small school. It wasn't until the IB was established for a couple of years (my graduating class was the first with full IB diploma recipients) that the school began to offer a lot of variety. Now they have all kinds of classes I never got the chance to take.

[Petra]

How cool is that? Now I want to go back to high school just to turn a high powered microscope at shady supermarket goods. :girlscientist:
A while back, some high school kids discovered that Ribena (which promotes itself as being very high in Vit C) had virtually NO vit c. So they busted the company out, and a lawsuit ensued with Ribena losing. :D

Ribena - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribena)


In 2004, two high school students (Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo) from Pakuranga College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakuranga_College) in Auckland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland), New Zealand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand), conducted a science experiment to determine the Vitamin C levels of their favourite fruit drinks. As Ribena advertising refers to "four times the vitamin C of oranges" they were surprised to discover the levels of Vitamin C were much lower at 22 mg/100ml in the syrup compared with another product 'Just Juice' at 72mg/100ml. After contacting the manufacturers of Ribena, their concerns of "intentionally misleading and quite inappropriate" claims were dismissed and they were told the claim related only to the blackcurrant fruit, not the product.
Their case was taken up by a television consumer affairs show Fair Go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Go) which broadcast the story nationwide on TV ONE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_ONE) in October 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2004). Following further testing, in March 2007 the New Zealand Commerce Commission brought 15 charges in the Auckland District Court against GlaxoSmithKline under the Fair Trading Act. In addition to the misleading representations that the Ribena range "contained four times the vitamin C of oranges" in its advertising and packaging, [6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribena#_note-5) cartoned ready to drink Ribena falsely claimed on the label to have 7mg of vitamin C per 100ml or 44 per cent of the recommended daily intake when it had no detectable vitamin C content.


[....]



On 27 March 2007 GlaxoSmithKline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlaxoSmithKline) pleaded guilty to all 15 charges and was fined NZ$217,500 by Auckland District Court for misleading consumers and ordered to run a series of corrective advertisements and place a statement on its website.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribena#_note-6). Since the court case GlaxoSmithKline has issued a statement on its official ribena website;
Only products in the Ready to Drink category were affected by the Commerce Commission concerns about Vitamin C content information. Until the Commerce Commission began its investigation into some Ready to Drink products, GSK was unaware there was an issue with the Vitamin C information on them. As with the ‘four times’ claim, we took similar prompt action to correct this more than a year ago.

— http://www.ribena.co.nz (http://www.ribena.co.nz/)
GlaxoSmithKline claims of prompt action and being unaware of the issue appear to be in conflict with the claim of the two high school students to have contacted Ribena manufacturers with their concerns in 2004, and a television broadcast of the story nationwide on TV ONE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_ONE) in October 2004. They do not disclose why a product from one of the world's largest food and pharmaceutical companies was falsely labelled when Vitamin C content can be accurately tested by fourteen year olds with school laboratory equipment.






And good news about the state of science in American schools, liv. Y'all had me worried there for awhile. The last thing we need is a superpower that's all superstition, no science!

[Petra]

Ahhh, bugger. Octavia got in before me. I knew I shouldn't have welcomed her in! :glare:

[Petra]

The high school I went to had heaps of science. We did some pretty cool stuff in Biology...

*look away now if you're easily grossed out!*




My favourite recollection is the time they brought in (dead) rabbits for us to dissect. They'd been shot by farmers, the bloody pests. Anyway, they had gone into rigour mortis and the only way that we could dissect them was to dislocate all their limbs and nail each paw to the dissection boards (like crucifiction, hee!). Then we discovered that our bunny was pregnant, so we took out the foetuses (foetii?) and dissected them as well.

What can I say? Kids like this sort of stuff. I went on to do biology at university, at least... (although botany, not zoology).

Zoe told me about dissecting a cow's eyeball when she was still at Dio earlier this year. Because it was all slippery and slimey, her scalpel slipped, sending the eyeball flying across the room and making it stick to the wall like a spitball. :laugh:

[Octavia]

That's fantastic! We had to do the cow eye dissection too, but mine never got airborne.

A missed opportunity, dammit!

[Petra]

Like liv, I only got to dissect a frog, and it nearly made me cry. I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid, but I was far too soft and too easily squicked for it, alas. :(

[livius drusus]

Me too, Pets. :scaredbaby:

[BDS]

Best science class frog dissection scene in a movie: E.T.

[Octavia]

I never got to do any frogs. :(

But then, I probably would have felt more sorry for them than for rabbits. Frogs aren't pests!

[livius drusus]

Chazwozzers are too pests!

[ShottleBop]

My No. 2 daughter teaches 10th-grade biology at a charter school in East LA. Tomorrow, they will catalogue the life they find in a square meter of ground.

[JoeP]

... I was the squeamish princessy type back then

:eyebrow2:

[livius drusus]

:glare: