Last week, when I announced we’d be dissecting cow eye’s, there was one student who thought that they might not be able to stomach it. Yesterday that student asked if they could dissect a second cow eye.
After class today, five of us sat around discussing near- and far-sightedness, negative and positive corrective glasses, and astigmatisms. Students decided they should bring their glasses to class on Wednesday (many of them usually wear contacts), and to bring the boxes their contacts come in.
Yesterday, there was ice on my windshield, but by the time I got to the slaughterhouse, there were hundreds of water droplets on the windshield, each showing an upside-down image of fields and sky around the slaughterhouse. I know this happens, but how often do I go through the day not noticing these things?
Last week, a student told me that they realized that many of their ideas have not been right, and that, in fact, many of their ideas that they thought were so right, must now be wrong.
Students in inquiry often think its “cheating” to go look online for information, or they think I want them to completely disregard information they look up. I don’t think they need to go look up information, but I’m happy if they do. Really, I just want them to treat ideas they read online no differently than they do ideas they hear from class. Those ideas are subject to our scrutiny, to our questioning; and we should concern ourselves with whether those ideas help us to build an explanation, or whether those ideas are merely providing scientific jargon.
Teach. Brian. Teach. 
Leave a Reply