I for one am very interested in the Socratic parenting course!
On direct instruction, you only have to meet a child who has taught him/herself to read to realise that at a minimum, direct instruction is not necessary for all kids.
An invaluable read for those who want to raise kids who can think... and for those who believe in helping kids chart their path to becoming mature adults.
Your pendulum anecdote brought back memories of similar explorations to nowhere in my own schooling. Clearly, it is absurd to expect that students, let along average K-12 ones, will rediscover for themselves (in a few hours! from first principles!) key theories or formulas that took the world's collective genius centuries to articulate. Still, I do believe there is room for students to think for themselves in science class.
The pendulum exploration provides a neat example. Instead of distributing pendulums for students to aimlessly toy with in hope they intuit something, and instead of just handing them step-by-step instructions for an experiment to conduct (or jumping straight to formulas), the teacher could stimulate inquiry that gets to the heart of the scientific method.
But, before even getting to methods, the class needs to be motivated. Here we have the device underlying one of the great, disruptive inventions of the last millennium! The story of the pendulum clock touches on the enlightenment, industrial revolution, intellectual property and even the divergence in technology between East and West. Yet, pendulums were introduced at my high school without context or excitement. My classmates and I could be forgiven for assuming this was a mesmerizing toy with all the practical importance of the lava lamp. Imagine if a science lesson on pendulums was preceded by reading an accessible book on the history of time keeping. There could be many thought provoking discussions, even Socratic ones, about what was gained and lost with more precise, democratized time-keeping. (As an aside, I was never once assigned to read a book in science or math class. I don't recall even reading an actual scientific paper in its original form). There are so many possibilities on this topic to engage students.
Back to a better approach to the lesson. Stick a pendulum in front of the class, and introduce a clear objective: I want to learn the rules that govern the motion of pendulums. Then moderate a detailed, semi-structured discussion on how to design experiments to learn these rules. [Alternatively, you could write down Galileo's pendulum claims from his original papers (e.g., the period is independent of the weight) and orient the discussion around how to design experiments to accept or reject his claims.]
• What outputs are you trying to measure to characterize a pendulum's motion?
• What properties of the setup could matter for the motion and thus you should vary?
• What hypotheses do you have?
• What are the steps of your experiment?
• What is your data analysis plan?
Just as your students use Socratic dialogue for a humanities topic in class to organize their thoughts and hone their arguments before being assigned to write an essay, students could discuss the design of a scientific experiment, then sit down and individually write their test plan (within a taught framework). Afterwards, they execute their experiments and report back their findings. They would be encouraged to attempt to put their findings in mathematical terms*. The experiments can be followed by a discussion of what the group has collectively learned thus far about pendulums, how their initial hypotheses fared, and how to improve their experimental designs.
The typical science class "inquiry" focuses on merely executing preset experiments and writing up reports, rather than the design of experiments or meaningful discussion of the results. This is unfortunate, because asking the right questions and devising experiments to test hypotheses is a critical scientific skill that should be at the heart of student lab time. At best, today's students are training to be lab techs not scientists. There is some value in experiencing the execution of experiments - mostly in reflecting on the impact of measurement error and considering the efficiency required to get large sample sizes for a given test design. Of course, these practical lessons are what is usually glossed over in science class. Students just focus on getting the "right numbers" out of their experiment.
*Pendulums are cheap, they are dead easy to use and no one ever destroyed their science lab with a pendulum, so I can see how a naïve educator might see it as a perfect middle school apparatus. But, the "so what" of pendulums is the math behind the motion, which requires algebra to express. I would question the utility in studying them until that mathematical foundation is established.
I for one am very interested in the Socratic parenting course!
On direct instruction, you only have to meet a child who has taught him/herself to read to realise that at a minimum, direct instruction is not necessary for all kids.
Great! Email benjamin@socraticexperience.com expressing your interest and he'll put you on the list!
Thanks! Have done!
An invaluable read for those who want to raise kids who can think... and for those who believe in helping kids chart their path to becoming mature adults.
Thanks!
Your pendulum anecdote brought back memories of similar explorations to nowhere in my own schooling. Clearly, it is absurd to expect that students, let along average K-12 ones, will rediscover for themselves (in a few hours! from first principles!) key theories or formulas that took the world's collective genius centuries to articulate. Still, I do believe there is room for students to think for themselves in science class.
The pendulum exploration provides a neat example. Instead of distributing pendulums for students to aimlessly toy with in hope they intuit something, and instead of just handing them step-by-step instructions for an experiment to conduct (or jumping straight to formulas), the teacher could stimulate inquiry that gets to the heart of the scientific method.
But, before even getting to methods, the class needs to be motivated. Here we have the device underlying one of the great, disruptive inventions of the last millennium! The story of the pendulum clock touches on the enlightenment, industrial revolution, intellectual property and even the divergence in technology between East and West. Yet, pendulums were introduced at my high school without context or excitement. My classmates and I could be forgiven for assuming this was a mesmerizing toy with all the practical importance of the lava lamp. Imagine if a science lesson on pendulums was preceded by reading an accessible book on the history of time keeping. There could be many thought provoking discussions, even Socratic ones, about what was gained and lost with more precise, democratized time-keeping. (As an aside, I was never once assigned to read a book in science or math class. I don't recall even reading an actual scientific paper in its original form). There are so many possibilities on this topic to engage students.
Back to a better approach to the lesson. Stick a pendulum in front of the class, and introduce a clear objective: I want to learn the rules that govern the motion of pendulums. Then moderate a detailed, semi-structured discussion on how to design experiments to learn these rules. [Alternatively, you could write down Galileo's pendulum claims from his original papers (e.g., the period is independent of the weight) and orient the discussion around how to design experiments to accept or reject his claims.]
• What outputs are you trying to measure to characterize a pendulum's motion?
• What properties of the setup could matter for the motion and thus you should vary?
• What hypotheses do you have?
• What are the steps of your experiment?
• What is your data analysis plan?
Just as your students use Socratic dialogue for a humanities topic in class to organize their thoughts and hone their arguments before being assigned to write an essay, students could discuss the design of a scientific experiment, then sit down and individually write their test plan (within a taught framework). Afterwards, they execute their experiments and report back their findings. They would be encouraged to attempt to put their findings in mathematical terms*. The experiments can be followed by a discussion of what the group has collectively learned thus far about pendulums, how their initial hypotheses fared, and how to improve their experimental designs.
The typical science class "inquiry" focuses on merely executing preset experiments and writing up reports, rather than the design of experiments or meaningful discussion of the results. This is unfortunate, because asking the right questions and devising experiments to test hypotheses is a critical scientific skill that should be at the heart of student lab time. At best, today's students are training to be lab techs not scientists. There is some value in experiencing the execution of experiments - mostly in reflecting on the impact of measurement error and considering the efficiency required to get large sample sizes for a given test design. Of course, these practical lessons are what is usually glossed over in science class. Students just focus on getting the "right numbers" out of their experiment.
*Pendulums are cheap, they are dead easy to use and no one ever destroyed their science lab with a pendulum, so I can see how a naïve educator might see it as a perfect middle school apparatus. But, the "so what" of pendulums is the math behind the motion, which requires algebra to express. I would question the utility in studying them until that mathematical foundation is established.