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Monday, November 04, 2002 |
Science Textbooks not by the numbers
The problem? Science textbooks riddled with errors, such as:
•A map showing the equator running through Texas and Florida, when it's actually about 1,500 miles south.
•A discussion of sound that says humans cannot hear below 400 hertz. But 47 notes on a piano are below 400 hertz.
•Details of the Statue of Liberty, explaining her "bronze outer structure." The statue is copper.
•A picture of the Statue of Liberty with the torch in her left hand. It's in her right hand.
•Pictures of prisms bending light the wrong way.
•Periodic tables not updated years after new elements have been added.
•A compass with East and West reversed.
•Chemistry formulas and physics laws that are so "simplified" they are completely wrong.
This is one of the few articles, though, that I've read that gets to the bottom of the issue, of why the US seems to lag behind other countries in science (and other) teaching: we attempt to educate everyone:
"Other countries are only educating their best and brightest," said Driesler. The student who is going to work on a farm or in the family store is long gone by eighth grade in Japan or Singapore," he said.
That's why educators in the United States believe the curriculum and texts have to serve a wide range of students -- from the brightest to the least gifted, Driesler said.
The "mile-wide, inch-deep" curriculum also is the result of the differing demands of thousands of different school districts. With only a handful of major U.S. textbook publishers, Driesler says none could stay in business if they put out a different book for every state. That's how books grow to 700 or 800 pages, because Iowa might require a section on corn, Florida a description of aquifers, and Texas a chapter on oil and natural gas.
"No publisher is ever rejected for too much content," said Driesler. But they will be rejected if they don't cover almost all of the curriculum requirements of a school district.
Not to mention, in many places educators now are encouraged to give "equal time" to superstitions and myths about the origin of the earth and its life under the guise of something stupid called "intelligent design."
9:16:29 PM Permalink
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Coulee City
Coulee City Washington, during the building of the Grand Coulee Dam. From the fantastic American Memory Project. Along the Columbia River in Washington there are I don't know how many dams, built from the 30s to the 60s. Near most of these dams there rose small boom towns created by the Federal dollars streaming into the state to pay for the dams. Lots of construction workers, like my father, travelled up and down the river, working on the dams and the roads that supported the growing population (which grew because of the cheap power from the dams and the cheap power they produced, all on tax dollars). Lots of those towns -- I grew up downstream from Coulee City, but they include Bridgeport, Vantage, George, Rock Island, and others -- grew up and then sort of faded away, not become ghost towns but never growing, either.
So why am I writing this, anyway? I don't know. This picture reminded me of pictures of my home towns from my youth. Woody Guthrie wrote about the Grand Coulee and the country very well.
Well the world owns seven wonders as the travellers always tell.
Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well.
But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair land.
That King Columbia river and the great Grand Coulee Dam.
She come up the Canadian Rockies where the crystal waters glide,
Comes a-roaring down the canyon to meet that salty tide
From the great Pacific Ocean to where the sun sets in the west,
That big Grand Coulee country in that land I love the best.
9:06:45 PM Permalink
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New York Public LIbrary Picture Collection
The Picture Collection Online is an image resource site for those who seek knowledge and inspiration from visual materials. It is a collection of 30,000 digitized, public domain images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923. It consists of images of New York City, Costume, Design, American History and other subjects.
8:58:32 PM Permalink
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Bin Laden Associate Is Killed in Yemen. U.S. forces killed a top associate of Osama bin Laden in Yemen who is a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer Cole, a U.S. official said. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
So murder now is the official policy of the US Government. Well, at least now we're admitting it. Doesn't make it right, though.
8:31:00 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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