The Link #26 - Confessions of a Science Teacher

I would like to share my concern for the teaching and future of my subject, and to outline the basis for the way I would proceed should I have the opportunity to teach again.

I taught physics to exam level at Brockwood Park School for 18 years. By ‘exam’ I mean the standardised national advanced school-leaving test. In the UK this is called the A-level, taken at age 18. Despite most of my students passing the exam, I finished teaching with a very strong feeling of dissatisfaction with my classes. It was true that I was getting a little stale with teaching the same content for so many years, but it was not that that was bothering me. Although I had a good relationship with the students in and out of class, and I was basically happy with my contribution to the school as a whole, something was wrong in class.

Partly it was the students’ lack of engagement with the subject and their consequent lack of understanding, and partly it was my feeling that, even for those students who were engaged, I had failed to convey what relevance beyond passing the exam studying a subject like physics might have. Besides the small minority who went on to study the subject at university, most students after the exam would, I felt, very quickly forget what they had accumulated, even what they had understood. They may have enjoyed the class to some extent, but they were basically turned off the subject, which would then be pretty much a closed book for them after they left school. Of course, they don’t need physics to go on to lead creative lives with integrity and, for most, the specialised knowledge they learned will be irrelevant to earning a living and dealing with the issues of life.

I tried to rationalise the situation to myself by saying that in my class they might simply be accumulating knowledge for an exam, but outside the class, through other activities within the school, their education would be more to do with the intentions as set out by Krishnamurti. I saw my classes as part of a pretext that allowed students to be in a meaningful school community set in beautiful countryside. This vision was all right as far as it went but, ultimately, it was a source of fragmentation and fuelled my dissatisfaction. When I left Brockwood, I resolved not to teach physics again unless I could understand how to teach it more meaningfully. I thought about teaching General Studies instead. Then I came across an article in which Dorothy Simmons (Brockwood’s first principal) is quoted as saying, “You teach what you know but educate what you are,” and I was happier with the important ‘education’ I may have been involved in through my direct contact with students.

For young people in the UK, there is a general trend away from the study of physics, maths and chemistry (but not biology, interestingly). Students are voting with their feet. If, by doing this, they are saying that the subject as taught in schools is not relevant to their lives, is not attractive to study or not inspiring them, then I understand and agree with

them. This trend may not be the case in other countries, but I feel that it does point to a basic issue with these subjects. I have come to think that my subject needs a complete rethink, a re-creative effort and reinvention as a discipline. Otherwise, it may experience a terminal decline (a number of UK universities are closing their maths and science departments due to lack of students).

To reinvent a discipline might sound daunting, but the solution may well lie with what K described as “the true scientific mind” in his book On Education.

all teachers should be aware of the hidden curriculum of their subject

To pursue this we need to look at the curriculum of the subject, which, as articulated in the exam syllabus, has the implication – sometimes called the hidden curriculum – that science is its content; in particular, that physics is its formulae, laws and theories. This content has not changed much in decades. However, science at its most meaningful is a creative human process, and education that leaves this out takes the heart out of what the subject could be. The emphasis on content detracts from what I call the ‘process values’ of the true scientific spirit, which K valued as “an attitude to the world,” such as clarity of perception, precision in observation, factual objectivity, an open questioning outlook, intellectual clarity and rational thinking.

The emphasis on content can also lead to a distorted and confusing implication that scientific knowledge has a fixed and final relationship to nature, rather than being an evolving, limited representation of it that in some areas works extremely well. This, in turn, may lead to a view that that knowledge has been proven to be true because it works, and that all a scientist does is to follow the procedures robot-like, preferably in a white coat, to get results.

Another implication of the hidden curriculum is that knowledge has meaning without a context, as the formulae and laws, etc. are often presented in a vacuum. However, without a context, knowledge becomes isolated statements with no meaning as a human endeavour; they are then understood superficially, as just a bunch of words or equations. The only meaning being conveyed is that they need to be remembered for the exam. Consequently, many students have no idea that a science class could have more significance than this. I think female students in particular find this aspect of science unattractive.

All of this inhibits the creative flow of a young mind, and sooner or later that is registered by the student; for the majority, their minds are deadened to the study of physics. All teachers should be aware of the hidden curriculum of their subject. Otherwise, they may, unwittingly, be passing on false and damaging implications such as these.

It is relatively easy to see all of the above, but to do something different with an exam class on a Monday morning (or Friday afternoon, even harder!) is another matter. I have sometimes wondered if it is even possible, and how the K schools might have been different had it been made clear from the beginning whether exams should be taken or not, all teachers should be aware of the hidden curriculum of their subject especially in science subjects with their large knowledge content. Now that the schools are established, it would be difficult to drop exams; those in responsibility would see it as too risky. At Brockwood, however, we did manage to drop the national GCSE exams, those taken at age 16.

The compromise with K’s intentions that exams appear to demand is an issue that has to be addressed. So, how would I address it now? I would rewrite the syllabus in digestible quantities and in terms that students can understand and work with. I would supply them with one of the many competent textbooks that treat the knowledge content they need. And I would teach only those students who are willing to learn the knowledge content largely by themselves. Students would need support at first, particularly the weaker ones, and, although they would probably resist, it is a study skill that they should learn anyway. For students to learn how to learn is by no means a new idea. In fact, I think most teachers at K schools come to it fairly early on. K often emphasised the importance of learning for its own sake (another process value). However, for me it would now have a new urgency, because if students can do this, then I can teach the process values, the heart of the subject.

I would find ways for the process values to manifest in simple tasks. For example, an accurate measurement of the period of a simple pendulum requires care and precision; the detailed characteristics of interference patterns can be observed with, or without, systematic objectivity.

I would also work on the issue of context, in terms of process values, such as the historical background to the knowledge content. For example, who were people like Newton and Einstein, what were their strengths and weaknesses as human beings, their successes, failures and the mistakes they made that, by the way, do not diminish them as great scientists? What about Copernicus and Galileo and the prejudice and difficulties they faced after proposing that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the solar system? Then there are the questions that they, Kepler and Newton had in their minds when they made their discoveries; and the insights from which the discoveries emerged. Newton’s gravitation law, for example, contains the insight of Galileo and Kepler that the order in nature can be expressed mathematically, a mystery that remains unexplained to this day. Topical ethical and environmental issues, such as using nuclear energy in response to global warming, could also be included, as could the lack of clarity and prejudice that caused the Chernobyl and Challenger disasters.

Covering these topics in class would not make the teaching easier, neither would it mean less work for the teacher. But some such change is necessary to meet the concerns expressed above and for science to be the creative, relevant and meaningful activity, for both teacher and student, that it should be.

Colin Foster, 2006