“According to the members of Newton’s Apple four areas need to be addressed:
• More young people must be encouraged to take up science education” etc.

Sadly, taking up a science education may be more futile than they think.

On the BBC’s website (news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6074202.stm), we discover that British schoolchildren are pretty rubbish at geography. For example, only 20% can locate the UK on a map of the world.

A major teachers’ union, which includes science educators among its ranks, responded thus:

“The NASUWT said the findings were “nonsense” and did not reflect staff and pupils’ hard work.”

So teachers, who are responsible for, amongst other things, science education, believe that statistics should be discounted if they do not support one’s beliefs.

Of course the statistics don’t reflect hard work, because that’s not what they set out to measure. What they do show, however – and this is what the NASUWT is too stupid to grasp – is that they show that all this hard work isn’t much more than pointless fannying around.

So if teachers can’t interpret data, what hope is there that they will be able to teach their students how to do it?

(I’m a teacher, by the way, but I do despair of many in my so-called profession.)

They don;t have much in the way of transcripts from the lectures though unfortunatly. Would be interesting to be able to look at some of the original ones.

Would be interesting to find out if there is an archive of them any where. i shall have a look i think.

Turns out these date back all the way to 1825. They were started by one of Britain’s greatest scientists, Michael Faraday, then President of the Royal Instuitution, who did them nearly 20 times himself between 1825 and 1860:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Institution_Christmas_Lectures

So did I. She says, “Regarding the drawings, they are there to stay I am afraid”. Which comes across as a very polite “f*** you, don’t criticise my baby”. I suspect she drew them.

The reply continues, “Please do not hesitate to contact me again should you have any queries or suggestions”. Not much point if that’s their attitude to criticism.

Enthusiasm for their subject (along with knowledge of obviously) is probably about the most important thing a teacher needs to be able to get that knowledge across to the pupils (of whatever age, primary through uni)

Of my two best teachers one was a bit of a lunatic chemistry teacher who was wildly enthusistic to the point of waving arms around whilst explaining things…. not a great idea with reactive substances and naked flames around the place but great fun to watch.

The other was a more reserved type (biology teacher) who would catch your attention with small amusing things and use them to lead into bigger interesting subjects holding pupils interest by the way he spoke and presented things. Never pushing a section for too long but mixing small practicals throughout the classes which would give a break (brain gym anybody?) and get everybody going again.

I appear to have digressed

oh well

On the school practicals, we missed out on a lot of them because the school was teaching science in 1.5 hours fewer a week than they were supposed to. To fit teaching the syllabus in the time, they cut out the practicals. Of course this also meant they had almost no time to cover things related to, but not on, the GCSE syllabus and that tends to be the interesting stuff.

Likewise. They’d be better off with photos. Unfortunately people tend to be very precious about site design, but we’ll see…

I agree, and it’s not just media stance, it seems to be public perception too. I’m not sure which drives which, or whether they feed off each other. I think it’s very much an emotional response, rather than an intellectual one.

I read that one as well.

Have to say that when I did this experiment (late 70s) we didn’t actually do it – the teacher did, in the middle of the playground (50 yards from all buildings) with us watching – then ditto for potassium into water. Damn good show. We weren’t DOING it ourselves, but we were involved, if you see what I mean.

Which points up something Delster just said about the importance of teachers – I have always felt teachers needed to be part-showman, part-encourager, all-enthusiast.

Goes for Univ teaching too, IMHO.

that would indeed be the lectures i’m talking about. A lot of work yes i’d agree… not to mention expending a lot of energy just in enthusiasm whist presenting it.

As for audience, your right, the majorty would be those already interested but also maybe the occasional young, impressionable person (me for one back then) will stumble across it by accident and stay awhile.

I think part of getting people (kids mainly that is… get them young i say!) interested has to be down to teachers shoing, in the classroom, that the subject can be interesting / fun / challenging and getting them to use their brain to actually think with rather than slavishly following the herd.