12th May 2011

Post

Why Aren’t We Teaching Kids Science Properly?

I am perpetually baffled by the public-at-large’s failure to understand the very basics of how scientists go about finding things out. It’s not a particularly tricky concept to grasp and, once grasped, a lot of the misunderstanding about what is actually going on when some bit of science is reported on could be avoided.

Here’s the short, simple version:

  1. A scientist working in a particular field wonders what the solution to a particular unsolved question is. For example: “I wonder how X works?” or in the case of the recent Higgs Boson candidate “I wonder what that odd reading might be.”
  2. Looking at everything that has been found out so far, they make an educated guess. This is called a hypothesis. “I reckon X might work by Y.” And for our Higgs candidate: “I reckon this reading might be a Higgs Boson.”
  3. Then the scientist tries to figure out what all the consequences of their guess being true is. Unless their hypothesis actually makes a prediction that can be tested, it’s not much use to anybody. “If Y is how X works, then A, B and C would also be true.” I’m sure you can follow the Higgs Boson process, by now.
  4. Then lots of people do tests to see if the consequences do in fact work out as predicted, or if the tests contradict the hypothesis. If they contradict, the hypothesis is thrown out. If they support the hypothesis, that means that it becomes more likely it’s true - and more and more likely with each positive test.
  5. Over time, the hypothesis is either refuted and a new one tried and tested, or enough data is gathered to say with confidence that the hypothesis is true. If it’s an explanation of natural phenomena it becomes a theory, supported by evidence.

The even shorter version:

1. Observe, 2. Guess, 3. Predict, 4. Test, 5. Repeat until correct.

And that’s it, really. It’s nothing that the average person shouldn’t be able to grasp from quite a young age, so why don’t I remember this being drilled into my very being at school? Why is it that I had to figure all this out later?

It’s not the whole story, of course. The process of testing itself is quite interesting because they scientists have to be careful not to do anything in the test that would bias the result one way or another. Because the results are often so slight, it is easy to be fooled or just incorrect by chance. Then there’s the publication process, and peer review with all its advantages and potential flaws. Still, all of that can come later - there’s nothing to stop the very fundamentals being taught right from the start.

Yet instead we introduce kids to science by giving them these canned experiments where they already know the result they are looking for instead of encouraging them to make hypotheses themselves. We tell them how to do the experiment rather than giving them motivation to think about the ways their hypothesis could be proven wrong, and how they could go about testing for that. We forget that science education could be about discovery, or at least re-discovery. They learn about the ideas, but they never realise they could be playing with them.