I love technical terms. They can be more specific than simpler descriptions. I think the best example of this I've seen is in the Upgoer Five comic from xkcd. (https://xkcd.com/1133/). Look at the description of what's in the lowest tank: "That stuff they burned in lights before houses had power." That's not very specific. Is it whale oil? Candle wax? It's actually kerosene, but there's no way of knowing that just from the diagram.
But! It's only useful to know it's kerosene and not whale oil if you're already familiar with kerosene. The danger of technical terms is that you find out the name for something and you feel like you know what it is. What fuel does the first stage of the Saturn V use? "Kerosene." What's kerosene? "Ummm...it's the fuel in the first stage of the Saturn V!" If you just memorize the word, you won't know that this is a flammable material commonly used in lamps and lanterns before electricity. This is why we like to emphasize names for things that relate to what our students are already familiar with. We don't want them just to know the "official" labels. We want them to have vivid pictures in their mind about what the thing is like, how it works, what its role is. "That stuff they burned in lights before houses had power" isn't specific enough to point someone to the right substance, but it gives you more information than a word you've never heard before.
There are still some benefits to learning the technical term: you can communicate information about the Saturn V fuel to someone who does know what kerosene is. And you can look up kerosene and find out more about it. (In my opinion, this is the real reason to teach technical terms: it makes searching easier!)
I think only non-botanists would get offended by you referring to flower parts and bees by animal sexual anatomy names. My college botany prof was like, "Botanists love to talk about sex! Get a bunch of botanists in a room, that's all we talk about!" It's exactly the metaphor I used to teach flower anatomy last year because my kids know their body parts and because, personally, I think it's really hard to memorize all those science-y names. It's more important to know what the parts do, first. On the other hand, plenty of non-botanist's children do and always will take SiW, so, eh, you made a mistake and learned. That's great! It's a real downer is when we fail to learn from our mistakes. This is the level we should measure success from.
I'm a bit late to the party here, but working in teaching sometimes does that to you.
Fun versus serious, intuition versus abstraction and many other things should not be opposites if you do your teaching properly. Like Yin and Yang in the westernised version of Taoism, they complement each other, and both are worse off if you try and take one away.
One of my favourite texts on education is the 1923 "The Rhythm of Education" by A.N. Whitehead. There's some dated language in there, but the main concept is that education for each topic and subject has to progress through three stages in order: romance, precision, and generalisation. You can think of mythic/romantic, philosophic and ironic in Egan's terms and you don't lose much in this analogy.
Whitehead says that "Education must essentially be a setting in order of a ferment already stirring in the mind: you cannot educate mind in vacuo ... It is evident that a stage of precision is barren without a previous stage of romance: unless there are facts which have already been vaguely apprehended in their broad generality, the previous analysis is an analysis of nothing. It is simply a series of meaningless statements about bare facts, produced artificially and without any further relevance."
The Science is WEIRD curriculum seems particularly good at cultivating the necessary romance so the children are prepared for the precision when it comes (which is not surprising since Egan was well aware of the problem Whitehead was warning about). Does it matter if children can label the pistil in a diagram of a flower under exam conditions? If they want to become biologists, it probably does. But it also matters that they don't get bored with biology-as-memorising-facts and they don't forget the material again immediately after the exam. And they should probably spend some time looking at real flowers too! And for all the children who don't want to become biologists, they'll still carry a bit of knowledge about flowers in the back of their mind or be able to say things like "the green in plants is how they absorb sunlight to help them grow" without being able to spell chlorophyll or write down the balance equation for photosynthesis.
My own background is I read a lot of "not serious" popular science, maths and physics books (Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" and "Big Bang" come to mind, many others whose titles I've forgotten because I got them out of a library once). Earlier still I read "The Way Things Work" about as soon as I was able to read at that level. I think that both helped push me to do a maths degree (with some mandatory physics thrown in) and made me much better prepared to approach some of the abstract concepts because I had an idea why these were important and the stories (and people) behind them. Did you know that most of Galois' mathematical work comes from notes he hastily scribbled the night before he died in a duel?
Making science weird and wonderful will do a lot more to help children approach the mathsy stuff when it comes - and maybe even help them enjoy it - than whatever our schools are doing at the moment.
I would encourage everyone reading this to look up the last ever Calvin and Hobbes comic. If we can grow that sentiment in the next generation, we've done our bit to leave the world slightly better than we found it.
Maybe you need an "It depends..." here too? Asking about "required topics" sounds to me like the parent is concerned with whether their child will be able to pass some sort of third-party assessment test, in which case the "Science is Weird" curriculum may (not) be fit for purpose. But if that's the case your answer is "No, because we think the tests are Doing It Wrong™️".
> [W]e unpack the double-slit experiment: a photon goes places that only a wave could get to, but when it arrives, we always see it as a dot.
If I can be forgiven a moment of pedantry, that description doesn't sound correct to me. In the double-slit experient a single photon is presented with two slits; it can only go through one of them. But the receiving device on the other end displays an interference pattern, which only makes sense if the photon is a wave passing through both slits simultaneously. And, IIRC, if you put a detector on each slit you _don't_ get that effect, because you're observing the system and collapsing the wave function.
It's easy to confuse "all the complex terms each field uses are necessary because of the nuance when you get into the details" with "it's always better to use the correct term". As always, it's about context.
I fully agree that understanding the ideas and what's actually happening in reality is more important than knowing the words to use. Sometimes the terminology helps, sometimes it hinders. I'm super on board with plant testes and vagina metaphors.
Just today, I have had 3 video FB calls with people (complete strangers) who have asked me about Science is Weird when I make a post about how much I love it. How much my kids are loving it. Why? Because they just are not quite sure how it works. While the set up seemed quite clear to me, it is not clear to a lot of others. So... it is kiiiind of about marketing. Biggest example is they are not really clear that say.. Lesson 1 The Universe, is actually set up to have 4-5 days of learning/work inside of each of the 5 lessons. They really want to know how to "set up" what to do with what lesson, as it were. I have been getting out my own kids notebooks and explaining it (and telling them to do the trial lessons). I also answer their questions about "does it really cover everything?". So yes, then I explain how it only has odd/niche initial names and all the Egan things. WHY AM I DOING THIS???? Because I want you to succeed. Not because you're going to build an empire, but because this is going to be so good for education. ALL kinds of children. Not just the ones with a label of some sort or another (though it will help a lot of them most of all). It can't succeed if people don't know about it, nor understand what is going on. I do not have the solution except to say that presenting (yes, marketing) needs a shift. People who get hooked on SiW, (and once they "get it" they are SO DANG EXCITED!) will feel a level of trust to try other things that may (will) come. The strictly strictly people are going to have to deal with themselves. Getting these ideas and pedagogy into the hands of the people requires a little marketing. The people want to see a scope and sequence. They want to see some semblance of a "daily/weekly schedule". Not everyone of course, but a LOT OF PEOPLE! They do want to see that 36 week thing. You can have the title. A complete page of the "why its called that" and the method behind the madness , AND a scope/sequence/loose schedule is going to go a long way for the parent, caregiver, teacher, whatever is happening.
I love technical terms. They can be more specific than simpler descriptions. I think the best example of this I've seen is in the Upgoer Five comic from xkcd. (https://xkcd.com/1133/). Look at the description of what's in the lowest tank: "That stuff they burned in lights before houses had power." That's not very specific. Is it whale oil? Candle wax? It's actually kerosene, but there's no way of knowing that just from the diagram.
But! It's only useful to know it's kerosene and not whale oil if you're already familiar with kerosene. The danger of technical terms is that you find out the name for something and you feel like you know what it is. What fuel does the first stage of the Saturn V use? "Kerosene." What's kerosene? "Ummm...it's the fuel in the first stage of the Saturn V!" If you just memorize the word, you won't know that this is a flammable material commonly used in lamps and lanterns before electricity. This is why we like to emphasize names for things that relate to what our students are already familiar with. We don't want them just to know the "official" labels. We want them to have vivid pictures in their mind about what the thing is like, how it works, what its role is. "That stuff they burned in lights before houses had power" isn't specific enough to point someone to the right substance, but it gives you more information than a word you've never heard before.
There are still some benefits to learning the technical term: you can communicate information about the Saturn V fuel to someone who does know what kerosene is. And you can look up kerosene and find out more about it. (In my opinion, this is the real reason to teach technical terms: it makes searching easier!)
I think only non-botanists would get offended by you referring to flower parts and bees by animal sexual anatomy names. My college botany prof was like, "Botanists love to talk about sex! Get a bunch of botanists in a room, that's all we talk about!" It's exactly the metaphor I used to teach flower anatomy last year because my kids know their body parts and because, personally, I think it's really hard to memorize all those science-y names. It's more important to know what the parts do, first. On the other hand, plenty of non-botanist's children do and always will take SiW, so, eh, you made a mistake and learned. That's great! It's a real downer is when we fail to learn from our mistakes. This is the level we should measure success from.
I'm a bit late to the party here, but working in teaching sometimes does that to you.
Fun versus serious, intuition versus abstraction and many other things should not be opposites if you do your teaching properly. Like Yin and Yang in the westernised version of Taoism, they complement each other, and both are worse off if you try and take one away.
One of my favourite texts on education is the 1923 "The Rhythm of Education" by A.N. Whitehead. There's some dated language in there, but the main concept is that education for each topic and subject has to progress through three stages in order: romance, precision, and generalisation. You can think of mythic/romantic, philosophic and ironic in Egan's terms and you don't lose much in this analogy.
Whitehead says that "Education must essentially be a setting in order of a ferment already stirring in the mind: you cannot educate mind in vacuo ... It is evident that a stage of precision is barren without a previous stage of romance: unless there are facts which have already been vaguely apprehended in their broad generality, the previous analysis is an analysis of nothing. It is simply a series of meaningless statements about bare facts, produced artificially and without any further relevance."
The Science is WEIRD curriculum seems particularly good at cultivating the necessary romance so the children are prepared for the precision when it comes (which is not surprising since Egan was well aware of the problem Whitehead was warning about). Does it matter if children can label the pistil in a diagram of a flower under exam conditions? If they want to become biologists, it probably does. But it also matters that they don't get bored with biology-as-memorising-facts and they don't forget the material again immediately after the exam. And they should probably spend some time looking at real flowers too! And for all the children who don't want to become biologists, they'll still carry a bit of knowledge about flowers in the back of their mind or be able to say things like "the green in plants is how they absorb sunlight to help them grow" without being able to spell chlorophyll or write down the balance equation for photosynthesis.
My own background is I read a lot of "not serious" popular science, maths and physics books (Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" and "Big Bang" come to mind, many others whose titles I've forgotten because I got them out of a library once). Earlier still I read "The Way Things Work" about as soon as I was able to read at that level. I think that both helped push me to do a maths degree (with some mandatory physics thrown in) and made me much better prepared to approach some of the abstract concepts because I had an idea why these were important and the stories (and people) behind them. Did you know that most of Galois' mathematical work comes from notes he hastily scribbled the night before he died in a duel?
Making science weird and wonderful will do a lot more to help children approach the mathsy stuff when it comes - and maybe even help them enjoy it - than whatever our schools are doing at the moment.
I would encourage everyone reading this to look up the last ever Calvin and Hobbes comic. If we can grow that sentiment in the next generation, we've done our bit to leave the world slightly better than we found it.
> Do we cover the required topics?
Maybe you need an "It depends..." here too? Asking about "required topics" sounds to me like the parent is concerned with whether their child will be able to pass some sort of third-party assessment test, in which case the "Science is Weird" curriculum may (not) be fit for purpose. But if that's the case your answer is "No, because we think the tests are Doing It Wrong™️".
> [W]e unpack the double-slit experiment: a photon goes places that only a wave could get to, but when it arrives, we always see it as a dot.
If I can be forgiven a moment of pedantry, that description doesn't sound correct to me. In the double-slit experient a single photon is presented with two slits; it can only go through one of them. But the receiving device on the other end displays an interference pattern, which only makes sense if the photon is a wave passing through both slits simultaneously. And, IIRC, if you put a detector on each slit you _don't_ get that effect, because you're observing the system and collapsing the wave function.
It's easy to confuse "all the complex terms each field uses are necessary because of the nuance when you get into the details" with "it's always better to use the correct term". As always, it's about context.
I fully agree that understanding the ideas and what's actually happening in reality is more important than knowing the words to use. Sometimes the terminology helps, sometimes it hinders. I'm super on board with plant testes and vagina metaphors.
and as an aside to *1 Typical Minnesota. SO SCANDI! Lagom in the USA
Just today, I have had 3 video FB calls with people (complete strangers) who have asked me about Science is Weird when I make a post about how much I love it. How much my kids are loving it. Why? Because they just are not quite sure how it works. While the set up seemed quite clear to me, it is not clear to a lot of others. So... it is kiiiind of about marketing. Biggest example is they are not really clear that say.. Lesson 1 The Universe, is actually set up to have 4-5 days of learning/work inside of each of the 5 lessons. They really want to know how to "set up" what to do with what lesson, as it were. I have been getting out my own kids notebooks and explaining it (and telling them to do the trial lessons). I also answer their questions about "does it really cover everything?". So yes, then I explain how it only has odd/niche initial names and all the Egan things. WHY AM I DOING THIS???? Because I want you to succeed. Not because you're going to build an empire, but because this is going to be so good for education. ALL kinds of children. Not just the ones with a label of some sort or another (though it will help a lot of them most of all). It can't succeed if people don't know about it, nor understand what is going on. I do not have the solution except to say that presenting (yes, marketing) needs a shift. People who get hooked on SiW, (and once they "get it" they are SO DANG EXCITED!) will feel a level of trust to try other things that may (will) come. The strictly strictly people are going to have to deal with themselves. Getting these ideas and pedagogy into the hands of the people requires a little marketing. The people want to see a scope and sequence. They want to see some semblance of a "daily/weekly schedule". Not everyone of course, but a LOT OF PEOPLE! They do want to see that 36 week thing. You can have the title. A complete page of the "why its called that" and the method behind the madness , AND a scope/sequence/loose schedule is going to go a long way for the parent, caregiver, teacher, whatever is happening.