Students or Learners

The article “You Know This Is True” by Will Richardson from his blog Weblogged tests our traditional school teaching system.  The blog starts with a powerful quote from an article in the Washington Post, “ ‘We’re not really motivated to learn to gain knowledge... We just want to memorize it and get a good grade and get into a good school.’ In a sense, she said, the educational process has been corrupted. ‘Especially after the final exam, you just forget it afterward.’ ”  Richardson then goes on to elaborate on the fact that students just study and try to learn to get a good grade on the test.  He says that many kids are not motivated and don’t have the drive to be learners.  The fault is not entirely the students; they are not the ones making the tests, they just do what they are told.  The suggestion in some schools is to eliminate tests.  It will reduce the stress on kids and maybe it will result in students becoming better learners.  The change is a scary thing; parents and teachers are skeptical of the new idea.  Teachers are not positive that the budget cuts, lack of time and technology will allow them to change the traditional ways.  Parents are afraid of change and don’t what their kids to suffer if the learning style changes.  He finishes with saying that the big problem is the lack of vision and we are too afraid to change.  It is easy to make schools a little better, but hard to make schools different.

I know that Richardson’s statement is true, do you?  Many kids study for tests, quizzes, and finals so hard, but then forget everything just weeks after the test is over.  The topic in the quiz is forgotten sometimes because it is not mentioned again or it is not important to the student.  Students tend to remember important information if it is interesting to them; if they don’t find it interesting they often think is not important to know.  For example, I just finished a giant history midterm today that my friends and I studied for extremely hard, but the fact is that we are going to forget the information.  The hundreds of names we learned are not going to come up in class probably ever again, plus we find history to be the worst subject.  How can we change the typical habits of students though?  The problem is that most high school teens are students and not learners.  Learners take the learning to a different level, retain the information, and engage themselves in learning.  Students on the other hand learn to get good grades, and do just what they are told to do.  How do you change a student into a learner?  I believe most students are learners in at least one of their classes; the one that they are the most interested in.  I don’t think that a student needs to be a learner in all subjects.  If you become a mathematical engineer you do not need to know the name of a rebel that started a revolt in Cuba.  Everything depends on what you are working towards, what you what to do with your life.

If schools want to change into not giving tests what are they going to do instead?  How can you test a student’s progress without specific questions on a test?  How will they change students’ learning styles?  It could be a good idea to limit tests in classes, but where is the alterative?  Will schools start giving tests in the form of a game?  How would that help students become learners?  I personally think tests will stay in teaching techniques, mostly because we don’t have another way.             

New Planets? What if...?

“How Astronomers Hunt for New Planets” by Michael D. Lemonick from Time Magazine explores the use of science technology in discovering new Earth-like planets.  New technology has allowed us to perform more advanced tasks in the vast area outside the planet we call home.  We now can find the mass, size and density of a planet; but, the hard part is that we don’t have the technology to find all these pieces of information together.  A new radial velocity strategy permits scientists to determine the mass of a planet but not how physically large it is.  One planet that has been found using the radial velocity strategy is known as Gliese 581.  This planet is very much like Earth.  It is a reasonable distance away from its star that is not too hot but is close enough that is not too cold.  Scientists believe that there is a high possibility of life existing on this planet.  The problem is that we don’t know what the size of it is to determine the material from which it is made.  Gliese 581 could be larger than Earth and made of rock or about the same size and made of marshmallow cream.  Opposite of the radial velocity strategy problem, a spacecraft was launched last year to find the size of certain stars, but it cannot gauge a planet’s mass.  The spacecraft launched is known as the Kepler Mission; this mission is said to be a huge success.  Geoff Marcy, the person who has found more distant worlds than anyone said, “the best thing I can tell you about the Kepler is that we sequestered 400 stars, and you can bet the implications of some of them are profound.”  The search for new planets is on, will we find life?

This article reminded me of my peer Lauren’s class presentation last week about science and how much fact and guessing is involved with science.  At that point it seemed to me that science was a lot of guessing and hypothesizing based on little fact.  This article showed me that science does use very advanced technology to base their opinions; of course this also depends on what type of science is being studied.  In the discovery for new planets the technology backs up scientists’ thoughts, but only to a certain degree.  The statements such as this planet is very Earth like is backed by facts.   Technology allows us to observe the gravitational pull on the planet from its star to tell how far away the planet is from the star.  On the other hand a statement made by Steve Vogt was a guess that cannot be backed up.  Vogt said, “he was almost 100% sure Gliese 581 has at least primitive organisms living on it.”  This claim can in no way be supported with facts; just because the planet is like Earth does not mean it has living organisms.  I am sure that many scientists would disagree with Vogt’s statement.  These scientists that disagree with theories come up with their own and lead to other discoveries.  We should be able to establish our own thoughts too.  Science should not control our lives.  How do we know that the universe in never ending; maybe we are extremely small and in reality we live in a box kept by a superior creature.  My thought may be a little far out, but science should be questioned.  Questions lead to answers, and answers lead to discoveries including the discoveries of new planets.      

Why does this article relate to your life, and my life?  Why should we care that scientists we don’t know are on a mission to discover planets?  Well what if they did find a planet with life on it?  Our lives might completely change if other forms of life are found.  Technology is advancing so fast I believe scientists could find life on a distant planet in the future.  The far out fact may very likely become true, who knows?  What would happen if other life was found?  Could the life forms be more advanced than us, or would they be hundreds of years behind use in terms of advancement?  If the life forms discovered are superior to us we would learn so much from them.  They could have the answers to our unsolved questions.  They could help make our lives easier and more efficient with the technology that we don’t have.  Would it be a good thing to jump ahead and not go along the process of discovering ideas or technology?  I believe that it would end up to be a bad idea not follow the scientific process.  We would not learn by ourselves we would just be told what to do.  What if the new planet was not as far along as we are?  Would we try to take over the planet, or would we help the life forms advance?  What if the life forms were mean and wanted to totally wipe out humans?  What if they were nice and taught us to not have any more wars?  On the other hand, what if Earth’s countries went to war over other planets?  Instead of wars over territories in countries we would now be fighting for the planets.  War would take on a whole new meaning.  Would we be fighting in space?  We definitely would.  Why would we fight on Earth for land that is light years away?  New weapons would be made causing many deaths just like what happened in World War I.  In the first world war so many new weapons were made that massive amounts of deaths occurred.  Would this same situation repeat?  Is it possible that we did not learn from the mistakes of your ancestors in World War One?  We would have to form new ways to travel because planets are light years away.  What if part of your family lived on a different planet?  Instead of saying your family lived out of state you would say they live out of planet.  Is this all possible?  I believe it is; someday we will find life.  How can we not in the “never ending universe”?  How long will it take to make these discoveries?  No one has any way of knowing.  There are so many what if’s in the possibilities of discovering new life that the path splits so many ways.

WHAT IF…