Category Archives: Education

Just Do It?

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The question asked at incoherently scattered ponderings: Why would anyone want to get a PhD in sciences?

[T]he bottom line is that 10 years later non-PhD path can provide on the order of 0.5 million more in earnings than the PhD path. And one could argue that the career options after completing PhD and 1 or 2 postdocs are still quite bleak.

No, a PhD doesn’t get you more money. What it tends to get you is interesting work — there are opportunities that become possible with a doctorate that won’t be there without treading that path.

Hopscotch in the Minefield

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Teaching evolution — and, by the sound of it, doing a good job — in Florida. He realizes that if the science sounds dogmatic he’s lost before he even starts.

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash

When Florida’s last set of science standards came out in 1996, soon after Mr. Campbell took the teaching job at Ridgeview, he studied them in disbelief. Though they included the concept that biological “changes over time” occur, the word evolution was not mentioned.

He called his district science supervisor. “Is this really what they want us to teach for the next 10 years?” he demanded.

In 2000, when the independent Thomas B. Fordham Foundation evaluated the evolution education standards of all 50 states, Florida was among 12 to receive a grade of F. (Kansas, which drew international attention in 1999 for deleting all mention of evolution and later embracing supernatural theories, received an F-minus.)

Just Don't Make It So They Blow

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Sucky Schools – How To Repair Our Education System

Lots of good stuff.

Our schools are fact-junkies. We teach students thousands of useless facts that will be forgotten as soon as the next exam is over. Hell, usually they’re forgotten even before that, and then you see students cramming late into night, only to forget it all within 48 hours. How’s that for effective use of everyone’s time.
[…]
Standardized testing is like a black hole that sucks up and annihilates any learning it gets close to. It bends the very fabric of curriculum and students’ time.

via sciencegeekgirl

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

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Are we science-savvy enough to make informed decisions?

Let me guess: no. I mean, really, is this a gimme or what?

Seventy-six percent of Americans say presidential candidates should make improving science education a national priority, according to a national Harris Interactive survey of 1,304 adults in November and December. Results were released this spring.

But only 26% believe that they themselves have a good understanding of science. And 44% couldn’t identify a single scientist, living or dead, whom they’d consider a role model for the nation’s young people.

So at least some of those possessing marginal scientific literacy recognize that science education is important.

It boils down to this — if you can’t make the informed decision yourself, then you’re going to fall for whoever can lie most convincingly. And I think that accomplished liars have an advantage.

There is also a link to a quiz, which looks like the NSF Science and Engineering Indicators quiz. Unfortunately, we are told

10 or 11 right: You are a geek!

Maybe some small part of the problem is that basic science competency is being identified as geeky, though somehow I doubt that USA TODAY is the arbiter of cool amongst today’s teens.

Udate: commentary at Physics and Physicists

Deadman's Curve

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Matt discusses the disaster of grades in The Final Countdown

I just finished grading three problems worth of the final exam (the other two TAs are taking care of the rest), and I think the exam can be safely described as a debacle. It was a disaster. The scores haven’t been tallied up yet, but I think there’s a good chance the mean score will be within one standard deviation of zero. And, I dunno, about 4 or 5 standard deviations away from 100.

One mitigation technique I’ve mentioned before is to have a database of questions, so that you know the expected results, but this doesn’t necessarily work well in a university environment, and doesn’t apply here as it was already noted that the exam was made from scratch.

But there’s another option. I’ve taken and TA’d several classes where grades were neither curved, strictly speaking, nor were graded on a standard “90 and above is an A” basis. The professor who taught the class for which I TA’d pointed out that the students had a hard time adjusting to the concept that the average score was going to be about 50, since they had never encountered that system before. When it first happened to me as an undergraduate, the professor put it rather succinctly — why bother asking a lot of questions that everybody can answer? If 65 is the lowest passing score, then you’re asking a whole bunch of points worth of questions that don’t demonstrate adequate knowledge of the material. The idea was to cut out 50 points of that and add in questions that do require “passing” knowledge to answer and adjust the grading accordingly. The exams were much more complete in testing comprehension, since you could ask more questions about a particular topic. It’s not unlike the strategy taken during oral exams — asking questions until the target can’t answer them anymore. That’s when you’ve tested the depth of knowledge and comprehension.

Those Not-So-Good Old Days

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Via Physics Buzz, The things I didn’t believe in graduate school

Graduate school is a hazing ritual, designed to make sure you really truly want to be allowed through the gates into the Ivory Tower. Those who don’t want it hard enough, generally can’t make it through the gauntlet of tests, homework sets, research walls and periodic failures of weather, equipment, software, satellites, and sometimes all of the above. (I experienced all of the above.)
Nonetheless, there are certain things I deeply miss. Today for some reason, I have both journal clubs and observing on my mind. These are two things I never really realized would go away to the degree that they have, and I feel like an entire part of my life was amputated when I wasn’t watching.

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What I hadn’t realized in my return to academia was how little time life as an academic would leave me to just learn. As a graduate student, I remember being aware that the journal clubs were only occupied by postdocs and graduate students. Our advisor (the faculty member who said to us – go off and form a journal club!) would ask us for summaries of what we learned. I hadn’t realized this was his way of identifying cool new papers rather then his way of checking up on us. I remember noticing that the seminars on various sub-fields (stars, galaxies, planets…) were often empty of faculty, with everyone only showing up for the weekly out of town colloquium speakers.

I concur about a lot of the assessment of grad school. It doesn’t just boil down to being smart — obviously there’s a threshold there, but being stubborn enough to slog your way through it all is another component. I almost packed it in at one point, at the point right after my best friend died, the IRS started hassling me (because the grad school “forgot” to tag my fellowship as such, so the IRS assumed it was self-employment income, and claimed I owed them $1500) and then my advisor reminding me that 40 hours a week doesn’t cut it in grad school. Yeah, I know, I’m a little distracted at the moment.

We tried starting up a journal club at work a few years ago, but it didn’t last. It’s not just academia that leaves little time for other pursuits. One thing I’ve noticed is that in the six months I’ve been blogging I’ve been more aware of other research and have done more journal reading than in the last several years.

The Importance of Being Earnestly Stupid

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The importance of stupidity in scientific research

I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We
had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science,
although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school,
went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major
environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned
to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she
said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years
of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.
I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and
her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered
me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science
makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. So
used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel
stupid. I wouldn’t know what to do without that feeling. I even
think it’s supposed to be this way.

My immediate reaction was that, technically, ignorance and stupidity were being mixed here — experience and intelligence aren’t the same thing, but it’s not always apparent which is which. But I understand the sentiment — as soon as you figure something out, you move on to something new that you don’t know. Isn’t that one of the draws of doing science? Of learning, in general? I like getting my “fix” of somethingnew, whether it’s a solved problem or some new topic. One of the usual side effects of studying science is an awareness of all that there is that we do not know. If that make you feel stupid, well, so be it. It’s also a side effect of working with a lot of smart people, but that’s also a great way of getting that “fix” I like.

Other commentary at Science to Life, Blog Around the Clock, FemaleScienceProfessor, Counter Minds, and probably elsewhere, as I imagine this is making the rounds.

Good Talk, Bad Talk

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Thoughts on Conferences at Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat

The second case was a conference where the only requirement for approval was an abstract. I realize that some of the more “cutting edge” conferences proceed this way so that people can present their latest results. I don’t like them, however, because many people seem to have worked up to the last minute on the project and not seem to have give much thought to the actual talk.

There’s another option? I thought all data for talks were obtained in the last few days before the conference.

This was brought on by a list of things not to do while speaking in public (which, if a strict grammarian I know had her way, would include “Not starting a sentence with the word ‘hopefully.'”

More Intellectualism

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Some good followup to the whole why-are-math-and-science-such-small-portions-on-the-plate-of-intellectualism and all of the tangents (too math-y? juxtaposed topics, perhaps?)

Fear and loathing in the academy and Assorted hypotheses on the science-humanities divide at Adventures in Ethics and Science. A lot to chew on (or gum, if you are so inclined)

The best reason to learn something is that learning it is a fun thing to do with your brain. Learning math and science can make your brain just as happy as learning humanities and arts, so who wouldn’t want to be an intellectual omnivore?

Indeed.