verne Rockcastle
of Cornell University, a giant of a scholar and a good friend, penned some
interesting prose in the Jan l975 issue of Science and Children. Verne was the Consulting Author on the first JHS science books i wrote. For a "tie in" -- read "how did dr. leyden become a teacher ?"
I've edited it just a smidgen ... but the meaning is intact.
and he
also resented my request that his reports of those investigations be thorough &
written in as near perfect style and completeness as possible.
He wanted to do a superficial job, a superficial report. I wrote him a letter,
and I got a really good product from him. A product of which he was proud,
and one that I could use as evidence for assessing his ability.
now let me share a few more comments about my own position ..
to begin, let me say ... I differ from the position of many students on many things ... but after teaching 25 years in a variety of settings ... I have developed the conviction that people often give the impression of knowing more than they really do ... and try to BS their way thru life ...
perhaps this
is because thruout the educational system something less than completeness or
one's best has been accepted as satisfactory.
I am sick and tired of saying, "yes, that'll do," when in fact, it WON'T do.
I am tired of having an auto mechanic work on my car and not fixing the 'bug' he
was paid to exterminate.
I am tired of having something I purchased failed to work because someone was careless with his output.
I am tired of having to read trashy articles in journals because the author didn't think before he wrote.
In short ...
I am fed up with shoddy thinking, workmanship, and performance.
What can I do about this state of affairs ?
to begin,
I cannot let my students cheat on time ... their most valuable commodity that
can be used to improve themselves.
I can help them by sharing some of the little things I have stumbled upon
during the years ... little discoveries and little wonders and little hypotheses.
In sharing, perhaps I can persuade some people to look a little more closely
to question a little more ...
to find
a lot in a little and thus make teaching and living more exciting more
interesting and more efficient.
Then maybe they will not have to stumble as much as I did ... altho some stumbling is enjoyable because it leads to learning ... and an error-free life is boring: nothing dared, nothing failed, nothing learned.
maybe I
can promote genuine scientific investigating at the level of the student so that
he can somehow grasp the thrill of genuine discovery. Very little of what we
learned in science was learned thru our own discovery. It was simply told
to us. And we ... simply believe it. We never questioned "these facts" -- nor
wondered about the processes by which they were discovered.
with the
passage of time I have grown to appreciate what there is to know in life.
There have been times when I had to really dig into and examine something until
it became part and parcel of my intellectual fabric. Of course, I have forgotten
a lot of things. I am still woefully ignorant ... in so many areas of science. But
at least I know how to find out some things. I have learned to scrape, wrestle
with ideas and dig for new ideas. How can you ever teach science if you've
never really wrestled with a problem and felt confused and angry that you can't
find the answer?
Not because you are going to be graded ... but simply because you WANT to know ...
and be a little more aware of some tiny facet of life on earth.
amid all
the mediocrity that surrounds me, there is hope for perfection in a fewthings. Can
I point out these to students and hope they come up with a perfect foto or paragraph
or lesson or something ? Just the processes of achieving perfection ... no matter
how tiny ... should be exciting for them, and give them confidence they can do other
things in their life to the best of their abilities.
I hate to think that some of my students are the ones in the future who will
write the book filled with errors ...
not fix the car properly ...
mess up the order at the department store ...
because they never knew how to
do something well ...
or that they had the ability to do so.
And certainly I don't want them teaching science in a shoddy manner because they think it doesn't matter. It does.
leyden note:
did you catch this statement by the author: I am still woefully ignorant ---
what a joke --
this is someone from whom i have stolen many ideas -- and he is the ultimate teacher
-- about 70 year old
-- runs 10 k's
-- built a log cabin in the adirondack mountains
-- is an amazing naturalist ( life science )
-- but his "formal training" is a PhD in physics from MIT.
-- and when you go to lunch with him you should get one semester hour credit.
He is amazing -- but he says I am still woefully ignorant
-- maybe this is the "drive" that separates good -- nice -- adequate teachers
-- from the great ones.