How to Destroy Young Minds with Decorative Learning

Executive Director of Science House Foundation Joshua Fouts, with David Kanter and George Haines.

by Rita J King

“Tomorrow is the Rapture and I can’t think of a place I’d rather be,” said Ted Scovell, director of Science Outreach at Rockefeller University, who works with Science House to collaboratively curate a series of science education outreach salons. “And I don’t know if that’s pathetic, but it’s true.”

The Rapture never did come, but just in case, guests settled in with Rapture Pie by Science House Director of Operations Megan Kingery to discuss respective science outreach efforts and some of the obstacles:

–the disparity between scientific exploration in private schools while public schools lose ground to slow transformation and slashed budgets

–the complexity of grant-writing language

–the necessity for educators to teach core concepts and become technologically proficient at the same time

–reaching the wider public

–isolated efforts requiring organization to create a sea change

–the dangers of mechanized thinking and decorative learning

Ellen Jorgensen of Genspace at Science House.

Cheap, Easy Recognition
Educator Dan Menelly teaches a philosophical curriculum to students from 119 countries at the United Nations School and serves as an Albert Einstein Fellow at the National Science Foundation, working to shape emerging STEM policy.

Since much of education policy is created by people with kids in private schools, the policies that result tend to be “just good enough for the neighbor’s kid.”

“Teaching should be approached creatively,” Menelly said, “and risks taken in your teaching. The sands are shifting.”

As more schools shift to online models or virtual components of education, Menelly noted that the “dirty little secret” is the mainstreaming of mediocre technology largely because it’s unclear what the best options are for education.

“Teachers can get cheap, easy recognition for badly engineered, decorative learning,” Menelly said.

Collaborative Learning
Science House founder James Jorasch said that one of the goals of Science House is to help kids understand how to form global, entrepreneurial teams with science as a neutral platform to bring people together.

“Innovation is a social experience. We’re all in the soup together now,” he said.

All night I found myself reminiscing about one of the most powerful educational experiences in my own life, in a class about Native American tribes and rituals. We used a textbook to learn about the Mohicans, the Cayuga tribe and the Algonquin Indians, and I did well on my exams after memorizing facts that I’ve long since forgotten.

One tribe, however, remains forever vivid in my memory. The details and nuances of the Kwakiutl potlatch ritual imprinted because, for a brief time, I became a virtual member of the tribe, assigned to actually throw a potlatch along with the rest of my team.

We met on nights and weekends to compare recipes in preparation for the feast we had to cook for the rest of the class. We painted masks and practiced our dances. We read about the symbolism of destroying copper and other goods. We experienced the potlatch, or at least the semblance of one created from what we had learned together.

This is what I love about virtual environments for education, and it’s also why I recommend toggling between the physical world and its digital counterpart in the classroom. In the downtime between experiments, immersions and collaborative educational experiences, students should shift between different dimensions of the same reality we all share to gain the skills they need to participate in the emerging global culture and economy.

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