MythBuster Adam Savage: 3 Ways to Fix U.S. Science Education

[p858snake]

MythBuster Adam Savage: 3 Ways to Fix U.S. Science Education

When Jamie Hyneman and I speak at teacher conventions, we always draw a grateful crowd. They tell us Thursday mornings are productive because students see us doing hands-on science Wednesday nights on our show MythBusters, and they want to talk about it. These teachers are so dedicated, but they have difficulty teaching for the standardized tests they?re given with the budgets they?re not given. It?s one reason the U.S. is falling behind other countries in science: By 2010, Asia will have 90 percent of the world?s Ph.D. scientists and engineers. We?re not teachers, but our show has taught us a lot about how to get people interested in science. Here are three humble suggestions that might help reinvigorate American science education.

[*]Let students get their hands dirty.[/b]dirty.

It?s really difficult to absorb things just by being told about them?I know I don?t learn well that way. If students could get their hands dirty in science class they?d be more likely to internalize information. You can lecture about the surface tension of water, but it?s not as effective as conducting an experiment with a needle and a single beam balance. Jamie and I are in touch with a lot of teachers from industrial engineering programs, and one of them told us he thinks our show has helped shift the emphasis from the strictly theoretical to a more hands-on approach. (For an example of kids doing down-and-dirty engineer

[*]Yes, spend more money on science.oney on science.

We like to do things on the cheap at MythBusters, and we often find the most elegant solution is also the least expensive. But we still need significant resources. It drives me crazy that one of the first things to go when educational budgets get slashed is science supplies for kids to play with, so students end up just listening to explanations of scientific concepts. MythBusters is not a show where two guys read about stuff?it?s two guys doing stuff. When we need a valve to fire a baseball at nearly the speed of sound, we get it. Most of my friends who are grade school teachers pay for their own supplies. People say, ?You can?t just throw money at the problem.? By all means throw money at the problem! Learning science by experi?mentation yields innovation, inspiration

[*]Celebrate mistakes./li>

[*]Celebrate mistakes.

A good scientist will tell you that being wrong can be just as interesting as being right. The same holds for our show. We love hearing from fans who challenge our conclusions?especially kids. We gave a talk at the Uni?versity of Florida, and a 12-year-old girl asked us why, when we tested whether elephants are afraid of mice, we only used white mice. She was right; we should have tested different?colored ones. For our fuel-efficiency myth, windows versus a/c, we drove two cars at 45 mph until they ran out of gas; our data showed that driving with the windows open was more efficient. But a fan pointed out that over a certain speed, open windows create so much drag that a/c is more efficient. We repeated the test at 55 mph?and the fan was right. Kids need to know that teachers and textbooks don?t have all the answers?and that?s okay. Sometimes, even a failed experiment can be a good learning experience.

Source: Popular Mechanics

[evo0o]

i concur.

especially like the last part on the point of spending more money on science.

"Learning science by experi?mentation yields innovation, inspiration, intuition and fascination." absolutely.

[spacer]

These three suggestions are pretty obvious ones, but that doesn't make them untrue. Kids need to experiment and have access the tools and materials to do those experiments. Some schools simply do not have the funding to do that, and it's a real shame.

If the US Government even spent half as much money on education as they've spent on the current useless war, every school in country would have budgets large enough to last them the next 10 years...for every subject. It's really disgusting what the priorities of our current administration are.

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

spacer, your intent is honorable but the numbers aren't quite right. Half of the current amount spent on Iraq is about 260 billion dollars and that would only fund the Department of Education for about 4 years. I think the bigger problem is that only about 16 billion dollars from the Department of Educations current 63 billion dollar budget ever gets to the schools and that's a problem.

[Hurmoth]

Let students get their hands dirty. What's sad is that when I was in high school, we did maybe 4 hands on experiments and that was it.

[what]

We did experiments all the time at school but none of them were particularly interesting. We were taught what the theoretical result should be before we started so it didn't seem like we were there to discover anything, instead just replicating it with a list of instructions. If we were told to do something and then note the result and discuss what may have caused it, it might have been better.

[Cormier6083]

I never did a hands on experiment in a Science class.

[Rob2687]

We did experiments all the time at school but none of them were particularly interesting. We were taught what the theoretical result should be before we started so it didn't seem like we were there to discover anything, instead just replicating it with a list of instructions. If we were told to do something and then note the result and discuss what may have caused it, it might have been better.

That's pretty much how it is here.