I was struck today by the similarities between two essays encouraging interdisciplinary science education. These excerpts are both worth the read, but if you’re in a rush, just compare the parts in bold. The first:
General science education, often an afterthought, needs to be reconsidered, because scientific literacy is more important than ever. It’s not just essential to being a competent citizen who can understand, for example, why hydrogen fuel cannot solve energy shortages, or that a child who swallows a pencil lead will not get lead poisoning. Science is also critical because it is blending with the other realms of human knowledge.
One example is deep history— the study of the peopling of the earth, the diversification of languages and cultures, and the transition from foraging to farming and civilization. Deep history, popularized by Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, is unifying the timeline of biological evolution with the timeline of human history and culture. Another example is the sciences of human nature, such as cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology. They are illuminating the mental processes that go into creating and appreciating art and that drive the social contracts underlying economic and political systems. …
Conventional introductory courses will not impart the necessary appreciation. Though knowledge itself increasingly ignores boundaries between fields, professors are apt to organize their pedagogy around the methods and history of their academic subculture rather than some coherent topic in the world. Science courses should thus be organized around content rather than discipline: the physical universe, rather than physics or astronomy or chemistry; living things, rather than biology; the human mind, rather than psychology or neuroscience.
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. …
And the second:
As I look at the news, I see many new breakthroughs in science taking place. I read in books and magazines about new concepts in the fields of psychology, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, art. The one characteristic that most of these developments hold in common is that they pull together ideas from completely separate fields. Just look at how technology has permeated other realms of intellectual study. Computerized medical devices have led to new information about how our bodies work, and what we have learned about DNA has given us a better look at how we evolved, and this in turn has helped us understand past societies and cultures and the future of our own way of life. Computers have helped us study fractals, chaos theory, and complexity, which has given new insight into patterns in nature, raised many interesting questions in the fields of mathematics, quantum mechanics, and especially philosophy, and has given us an entire new type of artwork and psychedelic Dead posters. …
The way our system is set up now, we have courses divided up into discrete subjects…and none of these are integrated with each other. Therefore students grow into the habit of keeping what they learn in each of the classes separate in their minds. They are not encouraged to do as much holistic thinking as they would be in the real world. …
Imagine some of these courses, and look at what kinds of fields they could encompass: Medicine–biology, chemistry, technology, ethics, legal study; The Mind–psychology, sociology, history, biology, neuroscience, philosophy… Architecture–engineering, social planning, art. How about an entire course where the students start to design a city? That could combine architecture, engineering, environmental science, transportation, sociology, history, politics. A course in designing a school could combine architecture, behavioral analysis, teaching, psychology involving how we learn, economic problems, public safety. A course in designing a space station would entail learning about technology and computer programming, aerospace engineering, structural engineering, economics, domestic and international politics, medicine, psychology, physics, astronomy.
…the students may learn the material even better, for it becomes infinitely more interesting when it is actually applied to something, and all of the classes will reinforce each other’s subject matter. …
Amazing, isn’t it? Apart from their identical theme, I found five specific points matched very closely in phrasing and placed in the exact same order.
The first article was written by Steven Pinker and was published in Slate today. The second was written by me in 11th grade and was published in my school paper in May of 1995. Looks like you’re a little late to the game, eh Pinky?
Ok it’s an old theme in educational reform. Neither Pinker nor I built this bandwagon, but we’d sure love it if everyone jumped on.
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