Teach Science: Start in Nature

Science class. I think of e=mc2 (can't find superscript), the Krebs cycle, memorizing geologic time periods, dissecting fetal pigs, and electron transfer. So many amazing topics taught in isolation from the end-result where they are acting in nature around us. My schooling was very conventional. Looking back, I feel that chemistry was one of the most ridiculous classes ever devised. Memorizing a bunch of elements and how they interact and transform, all in a vaccuum away from the world in which they actually act. Why would I ever care about behaviors and qualities of Strontium or Lithium? Why learn about all chemistry, or all geology or all biology separate from the other topics which are indispensable to them?  It's like looking at a big beautiful painting with a magnifying class and taking little photos of each square cm. And after 12 years, it seems I sort of had to piece all the little photos together myself somehow, and I was not provided any index to order the photos, and I was not led in the order that would help me piece them together to allow me to see the big beautiful picture. I say, why didn't we look at the painting first, and then inspect the areas of the painting that contribute to the whole?  Why not go to a place in nature, for example, Ichetucknee Springs in North Central Florida.

Observe the springwater flowing from limestone rock that goes to the river that supports aquatic plants and animals while people swim and snorkel. What an amazing sciene laboratory we have right there. But not a laboratory in the classic sense, a laboratory as a place to observe the hundreds or thousands of interactions of everything we'd ever need to learn in science class. We can start with the water flowing. We can observe the water and measure the clarity, the flowrate and talk about it's chemical composition. We can ask why it's flowing at that rate with those chemicals and that clarity. This leads us to ask questions about the rocks we see when we snorkel down. We see limestone rock. We do a little research about limestone rock and we learn that for millions of years calcareous animals died to create 1000s of feet of dolomite etc. What geologic time period was that? Does that rock help explain the chemical make up of the water? How does that affect the plants and fish growing in the river? Does clarity play a role in what lives in the river? So many questions to drive our curiosity about this place to lead us to discover about the biology, chemistry, biology, hydrology and physics of this place and putting little parts of all those topics into context of a big picture that started with a small interesting directly experienced place.

So I say, if I ever teach science, I will take you outside and start with the end. Start with what is here now, visible and experience-able so questions and curiosity can drive us into the mysteries of how it all works and interacts. I think I would call it "Nature Class."

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