Friday, November 14, 2008
In Praise of Chemistry!?
MSNBC reports on a new Museum in Philly dedicated to giving you a "new reason to take another look at a subject you may have vowed never to revisit after final exams."
As such, I believe its study should be encouraged. But alas.... And so we are reduced to building museums and trying to "popularize" science, to "increase its accessibility." In other words, we lower the bar when one of the great roles science can play in our educational system and our society is to raise it.
What's really sad is these efforts rarely work. This will, as one of the founders says, become, "a gathering place for people in the sciences to see where they came from, what their own specialties evolved from." And the occasional young person, already vastly interested in science will have that interest fortified and focused by a facility like this. But in my experience, such things rarely, if ever, manage to capture the imagination of the general public.
I wonder if we would not be better off by focusing our resources on what I would call "pre-science" education. We need to return to teaching facts and objectivity - logic and reasoning. Now we teach expression and discovery - which are good things, but only when built on a foundation that can restrain it inside useful boundaries.
When I was a child I dreamed of doing chemistry to invent Dr. Jekyll's formula for real, though I always knew I would be a super-hero with my power, not a bad-guy like Hyde. When I grew up and actually studied chemistry, I discovered such was impossible, but there were many wonderful things I could do inside the reality.
We need to begin to show people the boundaries of reality.
Technorati Tags:cheistry, study, education
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As chemical and molecular innovations — from nylon to plastic to cosmetics — transformed modern life, genomics and nanotechnology discoveries could dramatically transform the future. The Chemical Heritage Foundation's ambitious renovation and expansion of its historic headquarters is working to show the dynamic — and exciting — ways that chemistry came to be, where it's been and what might be in store.Science in general and chemistry especially, have long enjoyed lousy reputations. At the risk of sounding elitist, most people find it too difficult to bother with. Now I disagree with that analysis, it is not any more or less "difficult" than any other field of study. But, unlike most other fields of study, science demands objectivity. It is, at least in the basics, all about facts. To be sure, people paste their worldviews and prejudices on top of it, and argue for them in the "name of science," but science itself, particularly high school and undergrad science, is all about the facts - perhaps the last great bastion of fact in academia.
As such, I believe its study should be encouraged. But alas.... And so we are reduced to building museums and trying to "popularize" science, to "increase its accessibility." In other words, we lower the bar when one of the great roles science can play in our educational system and our society is to raise it.
What's really sad is these efforts rarely work. This will, as one of the founders says, become, "a gathering place for people in the sciences to see where they came from, what their own specialties evolved from." And the occasional young person, already vastly interested in science will have that interest fortified and focused by a facility like this. But in my experience, such things rarely, if ever, manage to capture the imagination of the general public.
I wonder if we would not be better off by focusing our resources on what I would call "pre-science" education. We need to return to teaching facts and objectivity - logic and reasoning. Now we teach expression and discovery - which are good things, but only when built on a foundation that can restrain it inside useful boundaries.
When I was a child I dreamed of doing chemistry to invent Dr. Jekyll's formula for real, though I always knew I would be a super-hero with my power, not a bad-guy like Hyde. When I grew up and actually studied chemistry, I discovered such was impossible, but there were many wonderful things I could do inside the reality.
We need to begin to show people the boundaries of reality.
Technorati Tags:cheistry, study, education
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