From: Kniestedt@aol.com
Subject: Piner's Mars Simulation: A Plug
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 21:45:36 -0400 (EDT)
I'm a student at Piner High School in Santa Rosa, California. The school is divided into learning communities and this year my community, C-TEC (science-based curriculum) with the help of mentors like Bob Albrecht, participated in a two-week simulation on Mars exploration. Regular classes were suspended for those two weeks, and some called our efforts a waste of time. But I'll tell you, today when Pathfinder touched down, it was so amazing to be able to linguistically comprehend even the barest fraction of the physics involved with the mission. I had thought space-based engineering was exclusive to an ingenious faction of society to which I don't belong. I had no idea that creative thinking and new ideas were as much an essential part of the process as extensive knowledge of physics. There was actually a pole in my seventh grade science class in which a teacher asked how many students thought that physics was related to space exploration. I didn't raise my hand. I had been "taught" by my english-major mother that physics was just a bunch of pullies and levers. The problem is not that we kids don't want to learn science or that we find it boring, it's that we don't have the confidence in science that we have in, say, english and history -- subjects to which we are exposed thrugh discussion every day. We can turn on the TV and Walter Cronkite will explain for us the causes of the Cold War. How often can a child turn on the TV and learn about how an airplane flies? We don't understand it automatically, and consequently we tend to give up on science more easily. Don't let us take the back door out. Talk to us about science. We learn through reading and discussion. Give us material to read, discuss science with us. If anyone has any suggestions about how to submerge yourself in science at the high school level (emphasis on physics) when your over-weening intuition and, unfortunately, thourougly-humanities-genes aren't acting in your favor, I really would be grateful for you to back channel suggestions. Thanks. Mariah MacDonald Piner High School