Learning to Think Like Leonardo

Learning to Think Like Leonardo

For a preview of where education reform is headed, check this out

Where did the dinosaurs go? How do plants get food? If your child starts asking these questions in kindergarten, he or she has begun the scientific inquiry that will pave the way for the study of science throughout high school. Similarly engaging questions are the hallmark of the standards-setting guidelines being developed by educators involved in everything from math to history of the arts.

Science: In the content recommendations recently drafted by leading scientists and educators in the report National Science Education Standards, scientific inquiry is the key to teaching science in kindergarten through 12th grade. The natural world becomes the textbook, as children observe changes. They can identify sequences of change and patterns – the change from day to night, for example. Teachers supply the connecting facts through demonstrations and discussions. The classroom, as a “community of learners,” relies on students to help each other, collaborating whenever possible to set goals and plan activities and take responsibility for their own learning. At all levels students ought to be able to conceptualize, plan, and perform investigations. For a week-long lesson on sound, for instance, third-grade students design and build a musical instrument. The lesson culminates with a concert.

At the end of an investigation, teachers help students critique their results: How certain are they of their findings? Is there a better way to do the investigation? Should they do the experiment over? What are their sources of experimental error? Under the proposed standards, by the end of high school all students should understand and be able to explain the study of biological evolution, the molecular basis of heredity, interactions of energy and matter, population growth, the role of science and technology in local, national, and global challenges, and a host of other difficult consequences.

Manhattan at night. Photo by Elena

This new content, far from the old spoon-fed fact teaching, is difficult to assess. Tests are discouraged. Teachers are supposed to assess students' depth and breadth of knowledge through their explanations. To carry through their explanations. To carry through with such ambitious change, many teachers may need considerable retraining themselves.

History: No effort to devise content standards has been more fraught with controversy than the recent report on teaching history. In the 271-page National Standards for United States History, Daniel Webster, the famous white male orator isn't mentioned, and Harriet Tubman, the eloquent former slave is. Most history teachers argue that students need to develop a view of history that includes black, women, and Native Americans, even if it portrays a not-so-glorious side of the American story. History, in this recasting, is the story of events, ideas< and places, not a saga populated by great men and just a few good women, as history textbooks have portrayed it in the past.