Enlightened Opportunism: An Informal Account of the Elementary Science Summer Study of 1962

Phillip Morrison and Charles Walcott

Educational Services, Inc., C., Watertown, MA

Leyden Note:

This report deals with a review of the first ESS -- elementary science study -- writing conference -- the most wide-open, kid-centered curricula in the world.

It was 56 individual kits or units --- with suggested grade levels. Get a copy of their scope and sequence chart from dr. leyden -- to appreciate the diversity of topics.

The company Educational Services --- later became known as EDC -- educational development center --- and the curriculum folks that sent me to Jordan. Little did i know 30 years ago when the great ESS materials were produced -- that i would be working for EDC. Apparently, they have lowered the standards needed to work for them.
edited by mbleyden

the problem of an introduction to so complex, varied, and growing an activity as the ESS is a most difficult one. The task would have been easier had we formulated a clear, neat simple statement of our objectives -- but attempts to make one was met with rebuttal. probably a more key word than any other is diversity

-- diversity of people,

words,

devices,

objectives and

methods. The matter is too complex for simply putting a curriculum in a nice, neat box.

this summer 70 of us put in about 15 human years of work -- from 1500 years of education background. That is diversity.

Then there is the diversity of students -- 30 million of them in one million classrooms in 3,000 usa counties.

see - the problem of single behavior objects is too much.

and what is the aim of the project?

"One teaches children science, not to make them all scientists, but rather to encourage general scientific literacy in the populous." One aim has to be to encourage children to examine the world - and acquire a desire, interest and ability to continue to analyze, relate and understand it as they go thru life.

then think of the diversity of children in any clasroom - physically - mentally -- economically -- parenting experiences - or lack thereof -- etc.

a diversity of channels is also important. By this, we mean that we include both objects and word or things and symbols. We include the hand and the car and the eye, as well as the mind's symbolic interpretations -- for all 30 million. At any moment in a classroom - how many "channels" are 25 kids using to learn --- and learning to express what they learned thru an equal number of channels.

think if the diversity of subject matter that has to be expressed in a few pages of a book. The use of the printed word was a great achievement - but what about the use of the laboratory in a systematic educational context. So how do we channel all the stuff to the mind?

== to guide us ... we propose a philosophy of enlightened opportunism.'

Leyden note:
quick -- what is the name of this paper you are reading?
Opportunism in the sense that given the context of the child's interest, the child's age, the cost per scholar per year, the level of the machinery which surrounds him in the home, from the tvee to the water faucet, given all these things at which point do we see physical, biological, or other systems which attract attention and which can lead to some growth and understanding and motivation for inquiry. This is the way in which the groups looked for the soft places, the cracks. They looked for the interesting, animals. They looked for the delight of the moving land forming a shadow on the wall. They looked for the bright marble falling thru the tube of liquid and catching the eye. This is the way that one begins. But, starting here, one goes on to try to understand what lies behind the phenomena.

One tries to find a generality that is applicable to other similar experiences. When one has found a generality, tested it against a variety of experience, one has in fact found a scientific principle. But his principle is not the core of the curriculum: it is the fruit.

there are two different ways of organizing the teaching of science.

one is like a tree;

the other like a single apple.

And we suspect that out metaphor is right. that the view of science as an apple or a single package is not a good enuff view. It is too single-minded. It is too compact. In short, it is too simple. The view of science as a tree, with its living complexity, with its branches, some strong, some weak, some growing, some finished, on which there are some remarkable fruits which have been and can be reached thru patiently climbing up the trunk and boughs. This is a more profitable view. In addition, finding one fruit gives us faith that additional fruits are hidden behind the intertwined branches and leave which obscure our view of what is at the top This, we think is a metaphor helpful to our understand of what haw been going on this summer, more helpful than thinking of a core curriculum around which we wrap the evidence and toward which we bore the channels. Our channels are attractive in their own right -- and will naturally lead children to the fruits and major topics of science.

consider the laws of motion
they are tuff things -- not understandable for 1,000's of years -- and it would be nice to have children understand them -- but no one at this writing conference said: the three laws of motion are important and kids gotta know them. Rather, we found one person's idea of studying the motion of animals to be interesting. snail; leech; earthworm; turtle; children; the fly; dragonfly larva and strange animals - auto and jet plane and the rocket, too -- curious organisms -- but organisms of the second order -- parasitic upon men.

now, these organisms all move and the study of real organisms in the real classroom is interesting and fun. There is the opportunism, the interest and the excitement that comes with working with real animals in trying to understand a real problem: how do they move.

There seems to be a common trend -- they all move when some part of the environment receives a push which tends to send it moving in the opposite direction to the organism. All organisms work this way.

== We suspect that this kind of insight into why things move in a diversity of circumstances is a better preparation for the laws of motion than the very clearest formulation in a few succinct sentences or even an excellent lecture demonstration.

Their experience make lectures almost mandatory -- but only after children have learned that when the turtle moves little bits of sand are really thrown up and when the fly flies the air is blown backwards, and when the child walks, the platform moves in the other direction. It is the generality arising form all these concrete experiences which gives rise to the ability to predict, and it is precisely this predictability which gives since its power.

Finally, the time will come for abstracting from all of this a law, and by that time, the law will not be just a few more symbols but will have the possibility of what we call understanding of application to new situations, and above all, one has been motivated to learn the law, BECAUSE it works. It really organizes a lot of the world which you had no reason to expect to be organized.

Consider how long you are on earth --- and the amount of time you spend in science class -- and how can that little time be most productively used in that long time?

Leyden note:

yipes ---- does that sound like Leyden talking about 21,915 days ? And the fact that you will only spend 6.6% of your entire life in an elementary school.

How can we try to implant in students what one might call motivation or interest or readiness or reward, and let the seventy years pile up the inventory.
Leyden note:
 leyden is always talking about 21,915 days -- you're life. That's what this author is saying. Geez -- I thought i had an original idea.
If one could .. plant the seed in the 6 months of total science schooling -- so that it can be nurtured during all of the non- school-science articles.

School then, should not be storage time, but an insightful time, and a time to make motive. We fee, therefore, that this enlightened opportunism is a better than any scheme which might say -- these are important -- learn these. What are some school themes that organize -- unify -- that enlighten.

Can you provide situations that are not structure by the book or the teacher or the child.

They will offer the opportunity for diverse study --

consider this -- the slow -- shy girl who never did much --- but when someone suggested that she should make the largest shadow possible. She had not considered the distances that separate herself from the screen -- and the light source. She accidentally put her hand near the light but instead of looking at the screen -- she looked up at the more- distant ceiling. What she saw was a hand shadow 5 x larger than anyone's. ŇThis somewhat timid child was genuinely pleased by having had this experience."

Now it is obviously not justified to say that this experience did very much for her, but one has the impression that if every week she had a chance for something like this to happen, she might tend to participate and to learn more from the class discussions and activities. This leads to a more general rule -- that if you are successful in a number of new thing then you'll like to do thing that are new -- if you are very much unsuccessful, you probably donŐt even try them. We feel that by having the built-in diversity of the physical situations and not always the use of language one builds in thereby the opportunity for children of greatly varied d interests each to find something for himself he can do well.

Bruner talks about left and right handed ways of knowing and acting.

Leyden note:
 i swear there is very little new in education. Bruner in the '60s talke about this --- and in the 70's people were all aflutter about left brain and right brained "stuff." Same idea -- new name.
The right handed being the clear, rational, deductive, meaningful, purposeful and straight forward --- the left handed is intuitive, the hypothetical; the tentative the playful; the witty; the imaginative and some the wrong.

All of these are ways of knowing.

Doesn't it seem to imply that in the elementary grades there should be many left-handed experience.

Teachers should control the learning environment by setting up a problem to be solves ... more than they control the child.

a final point scientific optimism.

There are two kinds -- one optimism who thinks that problems can be solve -- mostly they can't) since he has chosen to study only those problems which can. She always looks under the lamp post for the lost coin .. since the light is better there. This surely catches the method of science, probably as much as any formal statement.

But we would add another kind of optimism.

We except a great deal from children. We think that a lot of scientific ideas can be grasped by them, provided they take the kind of textural approach that we've talked about. They have been people working here lofty science stuff. These all represent a kind of optimistic view that the standard materials and the standard experience need not span the whole range of the child's experience in since. lastly ---do they ideas work in school and we home ESS was a beginnning.

6/28w/95