Science autobiography

Science and thinking

As I look back at my science education, I realize that I really learned very little science in elementary school and high school. The fact that I studied science for approximately twelve years and brought away just a few bits of knowledge is amazing. How could I study science for that many years and learn hardly anything? The answer to this question lies in the way that I was taught to think about science.

The first science that I remember is studying the dinosaurs. This was in first or second grade. I cannot remember exactly what we did with the dinosaur lesson, but I do remember learning their names, although I could not tell you them today.

In third grade, we had a science textbook. I don’t remember what was in the book, but I do remember the teacher making us read it out loud in class. Everyone was expected to read one paragraph, and we went through the rows until we had finished the chapter. I hated this, because I was deathly afraid of reading out loud in class. Since I had this great fear, I would always county the paragraphs and the people in the rows ahead of me to figure out what paragraph that I would have to read. Then I would read it over and over in my head until it was my turn to read. Needless to say, I learned very little, if anything, about science, this way.

Probably the most frequent experience I had with science in elementary school was worksheets. We probably did a thousand of these worksheets, in which we had to fill in the blank with the appropriate word or short answer. The worksheets were quite easy and often I did not even have to read the chapter to do them. All I had to do was look through the chapter, and find the sentence that matched the sentence on the worksheet.

My first real learning of science took place in fourth grade. We were learning about the rainbow and our teacher taught us that we could use the mnemonic acronym Roy G. Biv to remember the colors in the rainbow. Still to this day I remember this, however, I don’t remember anything else we learned about the rainbow.

In sixth grade, I was required to be in our school’s science fair. Every year we had a different fair at our school (Art, Science, and the Talent Show). All fifth through seventh graders were required to participate in these fairs. I remember agonizing over what I should do for my project and thinking, “I don’t know anything about science, how can I possibly create a science project?” After much anxiety and with a little help from my sister, I decided to do a poster on the human ear. My sister helped me draw a picture of the ear and I also made note cards of all the parts of the ear and what they did. I won first place on this project; however, I’m not sure how much I really learned from it. I suppose that I did learn what the parts of the ear looked like, but I didn’t really learn what the parts of the ear did, because I simply copied this information from the books that I had.

When I think about this a little more, I realize that it reflects the way that I was taught to think about science. After countless worksheets and questions that required simply copying the answers from the book, I learned that this was the way to get good grades in science. However, I never learned how to critically think about science and really, I never learned how to “learn science.”

In seventh and eighth grade science was memorization. We were required to memorize all of the bones in the body and many other things. Science was not hard for me in seventh and eighth grade, because I learned how to play the game. I was good at memorization. I had been doing it since first grade; I could play that game. However, my memorization skills did not help me to retain knowledge. They also did not help me to think critically about science.

As I entered high school, I found that the focus on science was very much the same as it was in elementary school. If I memorized what the teacher wanted me to remember and completed the busy work, I would do fine.

As I look back over much of my experience with science, I can see why science was not especially interesting to me. I can also see why I didn’t learn much science in school. I simply never learned how to critically think about science.

Today, I am fighting the way I “think” about science. Even in college, I fall back into my old way of “learning.” It is just easier to memorize facts than actually learning the material, and sometimes it is the only way to study for a test because there is simply no time to really learn the material. This sounds terrible, but it is reality.

It seems that the real problem with my science education and perhaps the science education of many other students, is that I was never taught to think critically about science. Today we expect students to know more about science than ever before. However, if we don’t change the way that students think about science, then they may never learn any real science. We need to push students to think, only then will they really learn science.