How [not] to teach science

I was thrilled to be able to go to the San Francisco Academy of Sciences homeschool day. It promised both a reduced price and fewer crowds.

We had been to the Academy one time since it opened. The crowds were so thick we couldn’t see the exhibits. Downstairs in the aquarium, we were in a standing-room-only crowd — literally. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other adults, while miserable children squirmed in between us.

This time, I was looking forward to actually seeing what we were supposed to see last time! In two ways, my expectations were fulfilled: We paid a fraction of the usual price, and the attendance was sparse. We actually got to walk into the rainforest exhibit, which usually has long lines, with approximately 25 other awestruck people. It was really gorgeous, a marvel of modern engineering and an experience worth having.

Then we visited the rest of the museum.

I’ll start with this disclaimer: I love modern museum architecture! I love the air and the light, and I think the buildings themselves are marvels. Not only do they push the envelope on aesthetics, but they also show what sort of engineering is possible for other, more modest buildings. The Academy building is lovely. Its living roof is inspiring.

However, there is one thing that designers of modern, airy museums seem to forget: All that air displaces content. Not outdated, old-school museum content that we were happy to do away with, but real, solid content that inspires, teaches, and excites us. The Academy suffers terribly from this “displacement by air.”

We have been studying evolution and Charles Darwin in our homeschool, so I went to the Academy website and found some curriculum on the evolution of Galapagos tortoises that tied in with their evolution exhibit. It looked great. Supposedly at a middle school level, the teacher was expected to introduce evolution to the students beforehand, then have them study the tortoises at the exhibit and postulate the reason for their different body structures. My children and I, after a satisfying lunch at the cafe with friends, went and applied ourselves to the task.

Luckily, the way we entered the exhibit, we got to the tortoises last. We enjoyed looking at the array of finch specimens in jars. We had read about how important the study of finches was to Darwin’s theory, and it was cool to see them there side-by-side. We watched a video in its entirety — it was about the history that the Academy has with the Galapagos Islands, from rapacious Victorians grabbing specimens at will to modern conservationists working with others to save this place for future generations of study.

My 8-year-old got caught by the video game where you use a virtual net to catch as many insect varieties as you can. I suppose something was learned there — by me. I honed my skills at getting an 8-year-old away from an “educational” video game!

Then the tortoises: In case you don’t know, here is what science is supposed to be. You observe, experiment, record, and then form theories. You test your theory through more observation, experimentation, and by publishing your work for others to debate and prove or disprove on their own.

Science at the Academy, however, goes like this: Ask the students a question, have them ponder it with no access to data or experience on which to form a theory, then tell them the answer. Science at the Academy is simply received wisdom.

We did what we were told: My kids recorded their observations about the models of tortoises up on the walls. They recorded the island each one was pointing to as its island of origin. Then we read a plaque that explained why the tortoises differ in their body structures, though they all share a common ancestor and live so near each other. The plaque offered us received wisdom, with no data, nothing to observe, nothing to argue against. This isn’t science, and it certainly doesn’t ask middle-school students to flex their analytical abilities. My 8-year-old looked at the plaque, read it, and shrugged. “Well, duh,” seemed to be her reaction. “That’s it?” was mine.

A friend of mine who was very fond of the old Academy of Sciences remembers that they had a great collection of minerals that the kids could really interact with. No more. However, there was a docent out on the floor as we were leaving, and by chance, she had a display of minerals. I pointed out my friend’s lament and she responded with enthusiasm. “I know!” she said. “We docents have been telling them that they have to put the collections back out. But there’s no room.” She glanced around the enormous, light, airy space around her.

It seemed sort of funny. But it’s not. Our science has become their easily digestible tourist trap. Our homely building full of wonder and experience has been turned into a must-see-once destination for people who educate their children elsewhere. Or perhaps it’s for people who don’t care about education at all. “Maybe it should be called, ‘The Lobotomy of Sciences,'” joked one of my correspondents.

One concern about homeschooling that educated people often express is, “How are they going to learn science without a laboratory?”

We can do more science in our house with kitchen chemicals, rocks picked up in random locations, and the forest in our backyard than they can do with $500,000,000. Sad.

To be continued: My hopes and fears for the new Exploratorium.

Receive notifications of my posts: Visit my website to find out how to sign up to receive communications from me. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of this blog (see upper right).

I am a Cat Mother

At first, I didn’t really want to believe it. I tried to ignore it, but it didn’t go away.

I suspected it had something to do with Tom’s visits. He comes by occasionally when I have an itch that needs scratching. Sometimes he just comes for companionship, which to him means arguing over the end of a can of tuna.

It figured he would be the cause of this.

I wasn’t one of those expectant mamas who do everything for their kittens: I didn’t get plenty of exercise and fresh vegetables. For me, it was lollygagging and munching on putrid mouse meat the whole way through.

But when they were born… Ah, that was something I didn’t expect. There they were, two little sticky, stinky warm bundles squirming and nosing at me.

I fell in love.

Who wouldn’t? Flesh of my flesh, right? I’d known some cat mamas who loved that smell so much they ate them, but I resisted the temptation. I knew that you can’t have your chopped liver and eat it, too.

I did what any good mother does: I groomed them and fed them and loved them more than I’d thought possible.

As they grew, they became more fun. I’d playfully bat them off me when they climbed on my back, and join in when they were having a tussle.

It would have been idyllic if it hadn’t been for our next door neighbors, the Tigers.

Tiger Mom had two girls of her own, and every time I saw them, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. The little Tigers had piano lessons, tap dancing lessons, and school every day. Tiger Mom groomed them perfectly so there never was a whisker out of place. She had perfect little kittens, but how she complained about them!

Of course, as soon as the kittens came, Tom scatted off to greener pastures. Who could blame him? Raising kittens took a lot of energy, and cut into his sun-bathing time. I was OK with being a single mom, but the site of Mr. Tiger returning home every evening from his gainful employment rankled me. I felt like his very presence was accusing me of being a bad mother.

Oh, I have to admit not everything made me jealous. I would never make my little rascals wear those restrictive bell collars. I wanted them to grow up free and beautiful, to enjoy their kittenhood as kittens, not as little, stressed-out adult cats, always searching for the best hunting-grounds.

I also really liked my kittens. Little Tom was just a perfect little version of his daddy, but without the confusing stripes. Mittens was not some simpering girl-kitten. I knew she’d always be able to hold her own. When we were alone, living our homeschooling lifestyle, everything seemed just fine.

But when they invited me over, oh, it was hard. Mrs. Tiger would always tell her girls to perform for us. The piano, the tapping, the perfect mouse pies. Even if they were bought at the pet food store, they were just perfect. My kittens? Well, I can say this. They are happy. Tiger girl #1 would play the piano; Tom would dance on it.  Tiger girl #2 would tap-dance. Mittens would play with her toes and trip her. Mrs. Tiger was never happy with her girls, but I thought mine were just about all right.

Mrs. Tiger always wanted to know my opinion about schools, as if I knew anything about that. “We homeschool,” I’d remind her, and she’d look at me with those crossed eyes like she was about to pass out, and not from bliss. She’d ask me, “But what about their future? How will they get into college? How will they get to the top of their profession?”

I told her I figured that Mittens would do OK. Her mom (a.k.a. me) could teach her everything she needed to know about living off the land (a.k.a. hunting for our food, as the Great Cat in the Sky intended us to do). I told her that I figured Tom would be a scoundrel like his father, but if I loved his father, well, I guess I could love him, too.

Then Mrs. Tiger pulled out her best argument: “What about retirement?”

I swear I probably must have gone cross-eyed myself then. Retirement? Since when did Mr. and Mrs. Tiger know anything about retirement? I have to say that my lifestyle of lying in the dappled sunshine under a bush made me better-prepared for that eventuality.

“Well, Mrs. Tiger,” I said, not wanting any bad blood between me and my neighbor. “I figure I’ll depend on the old cat’s maxim: Wherever you go, that’s where you are.”

Mrs. Tiger looked fit to bust her belly flap. (Not that she had a belly flap; cats like her never do.)

“I guess this is why housecats will never dominate the new economy,” she sniffed.

Then she turned and yowled at her girls, who had joined mine in playing the piano by dancing on the keys. Her girls immediately jumped to the floor, sat, and folded their tails neatly around their front paws. My two continued to make their joyful noise.

Good parenting is all in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead…

Oh, bless the man who wrote that song. (Harold Arlen, by the way.) It serves as a theme song for so many days in my life.

My kids and an unknown sailer in front of bookshop, Halloween probably 6 years ago. They were in costume, but I don't think he was!

The first time was when Richard Nixon’s obituary appeared in the paper. I didn’t mean to think ill of the dead, but I went around unconsciously singing that song until at some point, I wondered, Why do I keep thinking of that song? Oh.

Today it’s for the announcement that Border’s is going into Chapter 11, and they are closing their Santa Cruz shop.

Now, Border’s was my hometown bookstore when I was a kid. We lived rather far on icy Michigan roads from Ann Arbor, where Border’s had its one and only store, which had a three-legged dog named Tripod as its sentinel. However, not having anything like Border’s in our town, we adopted it, and Ann Arbor, as our own.

The original Border’s was very much like Bookshop Santa Cruz is now. It had two levels, with the upstairs open to the downstairs like a very large porch. I remember leaning over the banister, looking down at all the people who loved books. In my small town, I was weird. At Border’s, I was one of the book-loving crowd.

Fast-forward to the 21st century and Border’s was the second chain to move onto Pacific Avenue and take on our venerable Bookshop Santa Cruz. The first chain had been Crown, which opened a Super Crown directly across the street from Bookshop with a public declaration that they were there to kill our thriving local store. I remember walking down Pacific Ave. on a Friday night and peering into the fluorescent, metal and plastic interior of Super Crown. Occasionally a tourist or two would be in there, but otherwise, it was dead. The entire chain went belly up, and left Bookshop a thriving local store.

Border’s was more of a threat. Based on the original Border’s, the chain version had everything but the three-legged dog. Friendly, low-key lighting, wooden shelves, lots of books for intellectuals. It was designed to draw people like me away from Bookshop. I didn’t go. Apparently a lot of other people didn’t, too.

But a lot did. In responding to an e-mail from someone who will miss Border’s big selection, I laid out my reasons for not missing Border’s. Here they are:

Hi everybody — Just want to point out that you can order any book you want from Bookshop’s info desk or online on their website: http://www.bookshopsantacruz.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp . The website is pretty cool in that when you get to the shipping screen you can choose “in store pickup” — you get the convenience of Amazon.com married to the fun of going to your local bookstore.

From a publisher’s POV (I used to publish poetry books), I’ll tell you something about these big chain stores where “you can find everything you want.” Here’s how they do it: They put in huge orders from publishers whose books they know they won’t sell. They do it to pack the shelves and so that if someone is looking for something obscure, they’ll be so impressed that they found it. However, the books are not actually going to sell, and in their agreement with the publishers is the agreement that the publishers have to take back *all* of the books, no matter what condition they’re in, and refund *all* of the money! So publishers get these huge orders, have to fulfill them in order to keep up the relationship with the chain bookstores, and then end up getting most of the books back, often in unsellable condition.

Local bookstores can’t do this. All they can do is stock the books that they know will sell, plus some that they hope will sell, plus supporting their local authors and publishers even though they know they might not make their investment back in dollars. Then they can make ordering easy and convenient. But they simply can’t buy every book that you might want. Neither can Amazon.com. The way Amazon does it (as in, the way they screw publishers) is that they make publishers *pay* to have their books stocked with Amazon. No, the publishers of best-sellers don’t pay, but everyone else does. That makes Amazon look great, because they can ship anything within 24 hours. But it’s a false economy: the publishers sometimes don’t even make enough on Amazon to pay the storage fees.

One of the reasons that chains are failing is that they overstepped their bounds. They targeted thriving local bookstores like Bookshop and tried to put them out of business by investing in having lots of books at dirt-cheap prices. Both the lots of books and the dirt cheap prices would have stopped immediately had Bookshop gone out of business. First Crown tried it, and they went belly-up. Now Border’s tried it and they are going belly-up. They were trying to compete dishonestly in a market that, thankfully, more often than not (at least in places like Santa Cruz), rewards honest old salesmanship.

No, I’m not the least bit sad that Border’s is going away. But I’m not sure that this spells success for Bookshop. In an economy like this we all need to be vigilant about supporting those businesses we don’t want to lose. So many of us are pinching pennies and wondering where that extra bit of money we pay our local store goes. Why can’t they have the same prices Border’s did?

I hope my little rant above answers that question. If you want to read a more in-depth rant about why we need to pay a little more to keep businesses in our community, visit a previous blog entry, Talking the Talk, Clicking the Click.

Private/public choice revisited: high school

One of my correspondents let me know that my private/public school piece a few days ago, though it was written with families with younger children in mind, was very helpful to her in thinking about the high school choice for her son.

In many ways, the issues are the same. But then again, you’re talking about a teenager, so it’s complicated in a whole different way.

Here are many of the issues that have come up in talks with parents and teachers of high school students:

The social fit

High school is a time of great social growth for most kids. How they grow, though, is completely different. Some kids are really going to thrive in that big high school scene: football games, lots of different cliques, numerous choices for both academics and electives. These kids feel constricted, socially and/or academically, in small private schools.

Other kids, however, find these teen years to be sensitive and introspective ones. The last thing they care about is being in a big school with lots of excitement. They’re happy being in a class of 15 kids in a small school where everyone knows them. They’re willing to trade variety for stability. Or perhaps they have one keen interest that a smaller school serves well.

In either case, though, our local schools provide a variety of public and private options. For big schools, you have all our major public high schools plus a few larger private ones that have similar social scenes. For small schools, not only can you find private schools, but there are also small public programs in Live Oak and Santa Cruz City Schools that you should look into.

The intellectual fit

By high school, it should be pretty clear which direction your child is headed in academically. Of course, we all have the ability to change midstream, so your non-academic artist could suddenly be turned on by biology. But in general, it’s probably pretty clear what your child’s academic abilities and interests are at the moment. It’s really important to communicate with your teen about this. You might think that your straight-A student belongs at an academically intense school like Pacific Collegiate, but she might reveal to you that she prefers a more laid-back atmosphere. You might think that it’s healthier for your child who has grown barefoot and happy to continue on a less academic path, but he might have his sights fixed on a more competitive, college-prep education.

Most of our big public schools offer a wide range of classes. They also have specialties. I’m writing right now about innovative public school programs and found out that the Santa Cruz High Schools have a really cool program where each high school hosts a different “academy” that focuses on a different discipline. This might be enough to entice your child away from your local school, or even from the private school she’s attending.

Our private schools tend to be smaller and thus will not offer such a wide range of classes and activities. If the school is doing its job right, it will make it clear whether it’s the right place for your techie-minded math kid, or whether a different high school would be a better fit. Some schools have very strong programs in one discipline but don’t have the staff or funds to offer much in another.

How much time is there in a day?

I know someone whose two children go to a very competitive local high school. I asked her whether they were going to accompany her to some event and her answer should have been predictable: “Are you kidding? They’ll be doing homework!”

A great question to ask your teen is, “How important is it that you have extra time to pursue non school-related activities?”

A great question to ask a potential school is, “How much homework do kids in your high school get nightly?” Also, “How flexible are your teachers when working with a student who has an important non-school focus such as performance or competition that may interfere with homework?”

If your child is satisfied with school as his main outlet, then perhaps a homework-heavy routine isn’t a problem. But a fair number of students who have passions that their schools don’t fulfill find themselves better suited by a school program that offers more flexibility.

Don’t forget “home”schooling!

Homeschoolers generally laugh when people say that they shouldn’t be homeschooling their teens because they can’t teach them higher level math or science. These days, very few homeschooling teens spend much time being taught by their parents at home. A lot of them find that they’re more successful studying independently or through online courses. Others attend community college for their core courses, which offers them access to great, cheap instruction and lots of time to pursue other interests. I know plenty of families who weren’t homeschooling families before but have realized that their teens are happier and better educated now that they can put together their own schedule and get out into their community rather than being stuck on a school campus all day. (The Yahoo Group Homeschool2College can help you learn more about this if you’re concerned about whether or not your teen will be able to get into a good university: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homeschool2college/. Also, local educator Wes Beach just wrote a concise and well-reasoned letter to the Sentinel on this issue.)

My oldest is twelve, so we’re just on the horizon of this part of schooling. If you have any other suggestions, please leave comments below!

Jewish storytelling, for free!

Mrs. Katz and Tush
Mrs. Katz and Tush is one of our favorites

We are a completely secular homeschooling family. However, we are also trying to walk that tightrope of raising our children with a Jewish cultural identity. This was much easier for my husband’s parents to do, given that they were raising him in Brooklyn and New Jersey. But out here in California, our kids are affected more on a daily basis by surfer dude culture than they are Jewish culture!

Years ago when my daughter was in preschool, we found out about a wonderful program through the Harold Grinspoon Foundation called PJ Library. This is a free program for Jewish children in which they receive a picture book (or sometimes a CD) on Jewish themes every month.

This has been a wonderful program for my daughter, who treasures her library and reads and rereads the books. They are really great stories, mostly not explicitly religious, about Jewish culture, families, stories, and themes. We’ve actually found a few new favorites in these books which I’d recommend to anyone, Jewish or not.

To learn more, visit PJ Library at http://www.pjlibrary.org/. To sign up for the program, e-mail [email protected].

Now available