Science Education

My earliest memories of science education are odd, chaotic, fragmented, and utterly beautiful.

I was born in 1960s Cambridge, in a period rife with intellectual foment, ferment, fervour and flavour. My neighbour was 'Uncle' Stephen. I never really knew him, except as a funny, interesting person who looked very different from most adults. Dad told me 'Uncle' Stephen was very bright. We were (and continue to be) ordinary mortals, and knew little of such brightness. But even Mum was impressed when A Brief History of Time rocketed up the bestseller lists, defying literary gravity.

My father is a military historian. He used to say, "I teach war during weekdays and preach peace on weekends." One of the great advantages of having an historian as your immediate ancestor is that hardly anything gets thrown away. Dad turned out to have been a science-geek in his youth; he had stashed away piles of an ancient publication called Understanding Science in teak cabinets (where neither moth nor rust corrupt very much), against the day when one of his descendants might turn out to be a science-geek too. He also had closed glass cabinets of Airfix models of military aircraft and ships.

My mother teaches English language and literature. She planted a garden of the mind that has never died. It was from her that I learnt how to arrange a library, sort books by author and theme or subject, ponder over what to do when an author turned out to be disconcertingly multi-disciplinary (where to put Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, for example), and keep shelves clean and tidy. She never admits to having scientific tendencies, but she taught me to analyse texts and events and answer that most deceptively simple-sounding of questions, "What is this all about?"

I wanted to be an astrophysicist when young. Arthur C Clarke was my inspiration at first; he was soon followed by Heinlein and Asimov. I drew designs for slow starships driven by nuclear fusion and ion-sails. I was excited by the thought of a starcraft blasting off on a pillar of H-bomb ('thermonuclear device' sounds too dull) detonations. I encountered sociological science fiction and dreamt of becoming a xenosociologist.

Meanwhile, I had discovered potassium permanganate. The deep purple salt was used by my paternal grandmother (favourite question: so you think you're very clever, ah?) to wash fruit before they could be pronounced clean enough to eat. I never thought it unusual that rows of toxic chemicals should be present in the kitchen; grandfather was a physician whose pharmacy was full of bottles marked Tinct: Bellad (alcoholic extract of the belladonna plant), Aq. Fortis (nitric acid), and dozens of other alluring substances. We were brought up to examine before touching, to listen before probing, and to resort to technology last.

My epiphany came when I realised that potassium permanganate could react violently when crystals of it were mixed with organic substances and a little water added. As the dark mixture bubbled and roiled, throwing off noxious vapours, emanating heat and melting my plastic container, I flung the mess out into the orchid garden. Miraculously, none of the plants died. (Learning points: never mix that purple stuff with cooking ingredients, plastic melts, plants are hardy.)

I was hooked. It was 1977. I was in primary four and my sister had just been born. That year, I memorised the Periodic Table (it was easier then, only 103 elements) and cracked open my first organic chemistry text. I remember bugging my cousins (then in their final year of pre-university education) because I couldn't figure out how on earth manganese ever got to an oxidation state of +7. Organic chemistry was easy, it was always about counting to four; transition metals bugged me a lot.

Occasions like that informed my ideas on science education. I realised that real science was difficult to teach, difficult to learn. Yes, it is true that we grow up observing and questioning. It is totally false that observing and questioning are the basis of science alone, or that observing with questioning alone forms the basis of science. You also need the capacity to invent ways of finding answers, refining them, and working out what to do with them. And this does not even consider the question of whether the answers are correct enough to be useful, or if they can ever be useful at all. And if so, to whom?

In the end, after 14 years as a science educator, after eight years as a leader of science educators, I am left with two main questions which I strive to answer everyday. And despite my illustrious male ancestors and influences, I am forced to admit that they come from my female ancestors.

From my dear (and sadly, now-deceased) grandmothers, both paternal and maternal: "So you think you're very smart, ah?"

From my dearest mother, who made me a teacher while attempting to deny any such insidious influence and verbally discouraging such a course of development: "What is this all about?"


Further Reading: Stuff