The books that bind

Last week, I guided my COMM 85 class through small group discussions.

COMM 85, Issues in Science Communication, uses the philosophy, sociology, and nature of science to critique how science is covered and reported. We don’t assume that simply giving correct information will solve problems. Instead, we examine the world that surrounds the many different publics that comprise what is often perceived as a homogeneous audience. We challenge assumptions of knowledge deficiency, reliance on scientific information, and blind obedience to authority.

The class is designed for discussion, and I always start the semester with the students’ experiences with science in their formative years. Recently, these meetings have become less about nostalgia and more about therapy.

Our discussions have been laced with snorts, sneers, and sarcasm. In our latest activity, I required students to bring copies of their elementary or high school science textbooks, which show the last encounter many students have with science if they don’t choose it for their senior high school track or college major later.

We didn’t do fact-checking. Instead, we looked at how different parts of government-distributed textbooks represented science. The end-of-chapter assessments reflect what students are expected to do with the knowledge presented. The photographs provide a glimpse of science in the real world. Content in special boxes or sidebars represents how educators want students to see science outside the flow of the text.

Our discussions ran for two meetings, and, sadly, I had to cut them short to give way to new topics. What the students found was eye-rolling—and the findings reveal why our many publics are so disengaged from the act of questioning itself.

Most of the textbooks featured white male scientists: their work, their discoveries, images of their faces. Some textbooks used real-world examples of science that hardly matched everyday realities: a spa to illustrate heat, snow to talk about the weather, generic word processor images to show the sun and stars.

The assessments focused on regurgitating information: fill in the blank, pick a letter, choose an answer. Even supposedly fun assessments were all about dressing up information so that it could be remembered better.

Write a jingle, make a song, unscramble the letters, search a word—the students groaned at the pathetic attempts at humor. They had all been subjected to some version of an inane activity once upon a time, they told me. They didn’t remember science as a field, but they remembered science class as ridiculous.

Such assessments were useless, our discussion uncovered, because songs and word games didn’t introduce children to the practice of science. They simply reinforced the idea that science was all about memorization.

“The textbooks make science feel exclusive,” a student said, “It’s just for rich, white people, and all we need to do is repeat what they say.”

“It’s like the government doesn’t care if we learn,” another spoke, “They just put things in a textbook for the sake of saying they did something.”

“Maybe our schools think that students are stupid,” another added, “They just have to make jingles because that’s all they know how to do.”

Later, in our in-class written essays, some students used our readings to explain what kind of teaching helped them learn better. For one student, her high school textbooks felt stifling, but her teacher exemplified the cultural border-crossing that characterized good science education. Her teacher encouraged debate, made students figure out how to set up their own experiments, and pushed students to ask questions and be curious.

The teacher respected the students’ ability to think and engage with difficult materials. There was space for creative output, but it wasn’t pushed on students as a means to memorize better. The assessments were a space for students to ask questions, to debate what the knowledge meant in a complex world.

Science became a space for critical thinking, questioning, and discovery—because that’s what science is. Not some static body of information, but a practice in flux, of constant asking.

When called to discuss, speak their minds, or think through difficult concepts, my students fell in love with science again—the science they had known as children who had not yet been schooled in mere compliance.

There is so much to change in our country’s education system, but it does not mean only correcting texts or pushing more information. The problem is deeper than a lack of knowledge. It’s noble but misguided intentions that lead students to feel like mere spectators in their education. It’s poorly designed education materials telling students that they are not welcome in the halls of intellectuals.

That school is only a task to get over with. That thinking is optional.

The problem is a government that demands compliance while encouraging everyone to call it discipline—that calls for unity when all it means is blindness.

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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu

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