Throw Away That Science Book! Enlightened
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Throw Away That Science Book! “Errant Texts” and “Where’s the Book?” by Janet Raloff, in Science News (Mar. 17 & 24, 2001), 1719 N St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Don’t know much about history, Advancement of Science, project director Don’t know much biology. George Nelson says, “Even if the science had Don’t know much about a science book, been 100 percent accurate, students still Don’t know much about the French I took. wouldn’t learn from these books, because the instruction [in them] was inadequate.” Often, Those memorable lines from Sam Cooke’s legions of facts were crammed into the texts, with “Wonderful World,” that golden oldie from little to connect them. 1960, could well be the anthem of American The middle-school textbooks are typically students today, to judge from the grades they put together by an editor working with contri- regularly get on international tests in science butions from contract writers who often have lit- and math. U.S. fourth graders did poorly in tle control over the final product. And the 1996, and four years later, as eighth graders, results are less likely than high school and col- they did even worse, trailing their counter- lege science textbooks to be vetted by profes- parts in 17 other countries. Ironically, a big part sional scientists. of the problem may be that very science book One exception to the dismal rule, Raloff they don’t know much about. found, is Introductory Physical Science (1999, A recent study of the dozen physical-science seventh rev. ed.), written by a team of scientists textbooks most widely used in American mid- and science teachers, and warmly praised by text- dle-school classrooms found them riddled with book critics. Originally brought out by errors, reports Raloff, a senior editor at Science Prentice Hall in 1967, the book “briefly News. Reviewers, led by John L. Hubisz, a became a top selection for eighth- and ninth- physicist at North Carolina State University in grade classrooms,” Raloff says. Since the early Raleigh, compiled a list of mistakes 500 pages 1990s, it’s been published by co-author Uri long. “Diagrams often did not display what the Haber-Schaim’s firm, Science Curriculum. text or caption indicated,” Raloff says. “Some- But the book doesn’t sell well enough to have times a book asked questions that were impos- made Hubisz’s study of the top dozen. sible to answer—either because it offered too lit- Some science educators want to get rid of tle information (for example, the values for the middle-school textbooks entirely, says two dimensions when the student needed to Raloff. Larry Malone, a curriculum devel- compute volume) or because explanations oper at the University of California’s necessary to solve a problem wouldn’t appear Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, and for another couple [of] pages or even chap- others favor having students learn scientif- ters.” Scientific principles were often depicted ic principles and methods of analysis by or defined incorrectly. working together on investigations of hypo- But errors of fact are just part of the problem. thetical oil spills, epidemics, and the like. Summarizing a 1999 study of 10 texts sponsored Students, they hope, would then be singing by the American Association for the a different song. Enlightened Architecture “X-Ray Architecture” by Ken Shulman, in Metropolis (Apr. 2001), 61 W. 23rd St., New York, N.Y. 10010. For four years, Bill Price, a lecturer in the Price’s quest began when he was director of University of Houston College of Architecture, research and development for the Office of has been working on an invention that could be Metropolitan Architecture, the Rotterdam architecture’s next cool thing, dramatically firm of avant-garde architect Rem Koolhaas. changing the way buildings (and other things) “Could we make the concrete translucent?” look and function: translucent concrete. Koolhaas asked at a meeting about a concert hall Summer 2001 95 The Periodical Observer the firm was designing. “Koolhaas may have translucent concrete “seems to breathe light like been the first to utter the words,” notes the sun breaking through winter ice.” Shulman, a Metropolis contributing editor, “Price believes his material could be “but there’s no question that it’s Price’s baby.” used in construction as well as for design Price began a systematic analysis of con- objects: bathtubs, toilets, tables, even lamps crete to find out which of its elements—aggre- and lampshades,” Shulman writes. But gate (usually crushed gravel), binder (custom- many questions—about thermal dynamics, arily cement), reinforcement (normally steel seismic stability, and other crucial mat- rods), and form—or which combination of ters—remain. Tests so far are promising, elements, could best be made to transmit light. Shulman reports, but large-scale applica- He came up with a translucent concrete made tions may be many months, even years, from a crushed-glass aggregate and a plastic away. The cost of the new material is likely binder; for reinforcement, he also turned to to be high: perhaps five times greater than plastic. The initial samples of translucent con- that of traditional concrete. But the price may crete appeared two years ago. Lit from under- be right if Price is right about the promise neath, says Shulman, a sample poured block of of see-through concrete. Farewell to Linguistics? “The End of Linguistics” by Mark Halpern, in The American Scholar (Winter 2001), 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., 4th fl., Washington, D.C. 20036. In today’s wars over English usage, strict elucidating the laws that govern an order of constructionists battle a growing corps of lin- nature.” guistic freethinkers, who take an “anything But linguistics has not lived up to its early goes” approach to language. After all, these promise, Halpern maintains. Since the 19th cen- anti-authority folk say, language is a living, tury, “no great new principles have been for- growing thing. Why fetter it with artificial rules mulated, no epoch-making discoveries have and regulations? been announced.” Not that linguists have not Rubbish, says Halpern. “Language is not liv- been busy on all sorts of interesting projects: ing, not growing, and not a thing; it is a vast sys- “Some are in effect anthropologists, gathering tem of social habits and conventions, inherited linguistic data from remote peoples”; others, fol- from our forebears, and showing every sign of lowing linguist Noam Chomsky, “try to find being an artifact rather than an organic ‘deep structure’ behind language’s façade”; still growth.” It changes—but it does so “when we others study how children learn to speak, or try [emphasis added] change it, and the metaphor to teach apes or whales the basics of human lan- that makes it autonomous only obscures our real guage. But there’s no sign of the “comprehen- task, which is to consider just how and why we sive and unified theory of language” that change it.” would have cemented linguistics’ status as a “nat- What has given that metaphor of language ural” science. as a natural and autonomous creature such What does the future hold? Halpern pre- influence? In large part, Halpern believes, the dicts that linguistics “will be broken up, and its culprit is the failed science of linguistics. The fragments annexed” by related disciplines, “as modern discipline began with much fanfare geography has been.” Good riddance, as far as in the 18th century. Sir William Jones’s recog- he is concerned. The English language can nition in 1786 of the relationships among only benefit if the educated public, led perhaps Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit led to the idea of an by writers and philosophers, regains authority Indo-European family of languages. And lin- over the way it is spoken and written. “In the guistic scholars’ subsequent efforts to identify hands of its most skillful users rather than in other such relationships and families were so suc- those of its academic observers, the language will cessful that in the late 19th and early 20th cen- take on not an independent life, but the dignity turies, linguistics seemed well on its way to and efficiency of a tool shaped and wielded by becoming “a science—a discipline dedicated to its proper masters.” 96 Wilson Quarterly.