PLNpost-7week-3

In an article called “Missing the Science of Teaching” written by; Diane Carmen it was saying how the subject of science seems to be ignored these days. Even though Science isn’t my favorite subject I can really understand where she is coming from. Sometimes we treat science as if it is an extra class.

Science is actually a really important subject to learn, even if you don’t plan on becoming a doctor, or a scientist. In my E.R.E class it seems as if we do more math than in my actual math class! Don’t we think math is important? In labs we always have to do a write up and explain what we saw and so on. Isn’t language arts a big part of our education too? So why do we think that science is just an “extra” class that is for some reason required to be in the curriculum?

In this statement here I think the author makes some really good points;

“O'Brien said that many Colorado kids had little or no science instruction in
elementary or middle school, "so it was no surprise when they would sit down
with a high-school counselor and say, 'No, I don't want to be doing science."'
We let 14-year-olds determine our future and created an epidemic of
scientific illiteracy in the process.
Now some of those once
science-challenged 14-year-olds are teachers, so it's no surprise that many
educators believe science can't be integrated into reading and math instruction.
"If the teachers are feeling allergic or uncomfortable or unsettled about
their own scientific knowledge, sure they will say, 'That's something we can
scuttle,"' O'Brien said. "At this point what we need is science education for
teachers." ”

The first thing she points out is that if we don’t make science seem important and the teachers don’t care, then the students won’t care either. Why should they? They already have teachers telling them that it’s not an important subject. But what happens when they want to get into a college and major in architecture. But in middle school and high school their teachers told them they wouldn’t really need science unless they wanted to be a scientist, well what about now? Then what is that kid going to do , either to back and learn science like it means something, or I guess try to find a different career choice.