People in my staff room know better than to talk to me about space exploration, but occasionally something happens where the topic just can’t be avoided- a successful test of the Falcon Heavy rocket, T.E.S.S. discovers another planet, an impact crater is discovered under the ice sheet in Greenland or scientists challenge the theory that Earth’s water came from space... Okay, so I guess I bring it up a fair amount without anyone's help. But this week it was the first “photos” of a Black Hole providing further evidence for Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. After sharing around the picture and explaining (manplaining?) what exactly we weren’t seeing and why that was SO cool, I was asked the question I am always asked at these moments: Why do you care about this stuff? A Brief Answer My interest in space actually began with space’s interest in me. When I was younger than Ms. M, I noticed that moon followed our car at night. I couldn’t have been the only five year old that found that a little creepy. Then one morning in 1979, the sun went out. What I remember most about that day was being scared that I was going to go blind. “Don’t look at the sun!” They talked about it on the news. My parents both warned me, my baby-sitter and my teacher too. I got scared that I might be outside when IT happened and my eyes would be irresistibly be drawn skyward, compelled by some mysterious, irresistible, celestial force. When the day finally arrived, I remember that we went out early for recess to avoid being outside during the eclipse. When we came in, we gathered on the carpet and then a television (AT SCHOOL!) was wheeled into the room and we watched the world outside our windows grow dark while on the black and white TV, the moon slowly crept across the surface of the sun- just as they said it would. Well, from that point on, I was hooked. To their credit, my parents were very supportive of all my passions growing up. When I told them I needed to take my bathrobe to Grade 1 because I needed a “lab coat” they didn’t bat an eye. Santa brought me a telescope and a model rocket. They took me to the Ontario Science centre every time we visited Toronto. But by far the best thing they ever did for my learning was investing in the Charlie Brown cyclopedia set- one book every two weeks during the second grade. There were few cartoons in those days, but everyone knew Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang. I learned more from this collection than I did from any teacher until Mr. Corbeil in Grade 8. And I became particularly fascinated by the Voyager space probes. I put a lot of work into a report explaining its mission to my Grade 2 class who were about as interested in space as my current peers. (I have continued to follow this mission throughout my life until three years ago when Voyager 2 left our solar system for good. It remains to my mind one of the most amazing achievements ever and I am not alone in this- see the documentary "The Farthest" on Netflix). Beyond Space Of course my interest in science wasn't confined to the extraterrestrial. I was interested in science of all sorts and I believe that stemmed chiefly from growing up in the country. I think there are few better things for cultivating an interest in the world than growing up in a rural area. I have sat and watched as a frog kicked its last kick in the mouth of a garter snake. I have collected tadpoles and crickets and even a praying mantis in jars and witnessed the migration of monarch butterflies and geese. I have collected fossils from limestone quarries of creatures that haven’t lived in a hundred million years. I have planted seeds in a garden, watched them grow and grudgingly eaten the vegetables produced. I have, day after day, seen the creep of ice across a pond until it fuses in the middle then buckles and breaks at the shore, watched the shimmering blue-green curtain of the Northern Lights sway and dance across the sky. I know how the air feels when a thunderstorm is coming and the smell before a snow. I have been out walking at night on a new moon and seen all the stars and planets above and felt how infinitesimally small I am, how small we all are in the greater scheme of things. “The place where we spend most of our lives moulds our priorities and the way we perceive our surroundings. A human-engineered habitat of asphalt, concrete and glass reinforces our belief that we lie outside of and above nature, immune from uncertainty and the unexpected of the wild.” ― David Suzuki I don’t know if children who grow up in cities experience these same things, but my suspicion is that they don’t or that they don’t witness them because these days they have so many other distractions and entertainments. I think this in part accounts for their lack of perspective on our world which to my mind should be one of awe and wonder. Humility is, I believe, unavoidable if you have any understanding of the universe and our world. This is certainly the perspective I do my best to cultivate through my teaching, but as is always the case, results are mixed. Making Science Bearable Friday, my class was busy working on some online surveys created by by my Grade 6 math students. A few students were discussing one the questions and comparing their least favourite subjects. “Science!” said one vehemently, “It’s only bearable because of Mr. C.” So obviously making science “bearable” is a little short of the bar I set for myself- especially given the fact that I believe that our precarious future depends on rapid technological advancement combined with a much deeper understanding of the complexity and interdependence of life on Earth. But I wasn't really discouraged by the conversation either because of something else that happened this week. On Wednesday one of my former students visited the school. When I asked him how it was going he told me he had just been accepted into UBC and that he was pursuing a B.Sc in Biology. Six years ago he was a bright but unmotivated student. I couldn't have guessed his future from the student I knew then, but perhaps I made science a little more bearable for him too or perhaps it has been his passion from his earliest memories. Either way, I'm counting it as a point for the home team. “At first you are awed by the splendour, by the beauty, of the planet and then you look down and you realize that this one planet is the only thing we have. Every time the sun comes up and goes down… and for us that’s sixteen times a day… you see a thin, thin, thin layer just above the surface, maybe 10 or 12 kilometres thick. That is the atmosphere of the Earth. That is it. Below that is life. Above it is nothing." JULIE PAYETTE, Canadian astronaut
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Dwight A. Loftis (R-District 19) and James Mikell "Mike" Burns (R-District 17) sponsored House Bill 3826 in South Carolina's legislature on January 31st, 2019. The bill, among other things would "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science as part of the course content." That's not a science with which I am familiar. And lest we get too smug with ourselves North of the 49th parallel, I would direct your attention to this story in the Globe and Mail last week that predicts we are likely to see a large measles outbreak in Canada in the very near future (similar to the one that has spread throughout Europe over the past year). There have been two reported cases in Canada thus far in 2019 and more will follow due to declining immunization rates. While many view the disease as pretty harmless, it killed 110,000 people in 2017- the last year for which the World Health Organization has published statistics. That’s good enough for 1st place on the list of vaccine preventable deaths. Now to put these stories in a broader context, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” was published by Charles Darwin in November of 1859. That’s almost 160 rotations around the sun ago (assuming you subscribe to the heliocentric theory of the solar-system). Darwin’s theory of evolution that has since been confirmed by archaeologists and geneticists the world over. Likewise, John Enders and his colleagues created a measles vaccine in 1963 that should have eradicated the disease. Instead, a growing number of people are voluntarily choosing to put their children and their neighbours at risk because a) it’s God’s wish, b) diseases are good for kids or c) vaccines cause autism or ADHD or <insert absurdity here>. How is this possible? First off, I can tell you with great certainty that educators are doing their best, but clearly there are a lot of people coming through the school system that fundamentally don’t understand the process that is science. Despite our best efforts, if people are reaching adulthood thinking that Science is something akin to “Nerd’s opinions” about things we have failed. Science is not something that you believe or you don’t. Belief is only required for articles of faith. Science is something that you understand, or you don’t. It exists independent of your thoughts about it. Case in point- whether you believe in Newton’s theory of gravity or not, if you walk of the roof of a building you will find yourself accelerating towards the most massive body nearby: the oblate spheroid we call Earth. Now my colleges and I may be partially at fault in all this. We may have inadvertently undermined children’s’ understanding of science through the careless application of relativism. When we teach children that there is no one way to understand poetry or to a lesser extent, history, we have to distinguish this from the study of Science and Mathematics because children are prone to over-generalizations. You see this with very young children when they are learning the language and they make mistakes with irregular verbs- “Yesterday we swimmed in the pool”. This is over-generalization. Last year after a lesson on Body Safety, Ms. M got the idea that she didn’t have to eat vegetables she didn’t like because, “My body, my choice”. Also, over-generalization. This tendency allows children to learn quickly but it can lead to a lot of confusion if the exceptions to the rules aren’t taught. And teaching these distinctions is difficult. We have to walk a very fine line between cultivating a healthy skepticism that is essential for critical thinking while nurturing a respect for the results of evidence-based inquiry. We have done a good job with the former, but we have been less successful at the latter. Of course it doesn’t help that we have other organizations working against us. Much of the misinformation about the role Science plays in our lives can be laid at the feet of organized religions and corporate industries. They have done their absolute best to muddy the waters of scientific inquiry and to undermine the results produced. Religions should have bowed out of teaching metaphysics 500 years ago when Galileo set the record straight. They could have thrown in the towel after Darwin and just focused instead on the moral teachings of Jesus, which- it should be said, are the absolute standard for what it means to be good. As for corporate industries, they are absolutely diabolical when it comes to misinformation. My favourite (or least favourite) example of corporate corruption comes from General Motors who added tetraethyl lead to gasoline knowing full well that it was poisoning everyone. Beginning in 1922, it was only finally phased out in North America in 1995 (though it is still used in other parts of the world). Phillip Morris Tobacco had their 3rd best year ever in 2017 with 7.8 billion dollars in revenue worldwide in large part because the harmful effects of tobacco use are still “just a theory” in the third world. In much the same way that effects of man-made climate change remains “just a theory” for approximately a third of the people in the United States and Canada thanks in no small part to the good work of the Saudi Royal family, Sinopec and Exxon-Mobil. I don’t want to end on a note of doom and gloom. In fact, I’m not very pessimistic about our future. For all the people who are refusing to get their kids vaccinated, there are many, many more who do. Mr. Loftis and Mr. Burns from South Carolina may want to confuse creationism with science in schools, but there are thousands upon thousands of archaeologists scouring the globe at this moment adding to our collective understanding of the past. (There is also a Supreme Court that settled this matter 40 years ago.) In short, I’m not pessimistic about the future because I know that science is progress and I have faith in the future. Do you want to see what a kidney transplant looks like? I mean the statistical version, not the bloody and literally gut-wrenching version. Here is a record of the amount of protein in my blood from the year 2000 until last Saturday. One of the kidney's functions is to remove this protein. I've got a shiny nickle for anyone who can identify when my new kidney kicked in. This Friday I will be back at the hospital for my bi-monthly clinic visit and if all goes well, I won't have to go back again until May. I expect that they will be satisfied with my progress. Apart from my gaining a little more weight and suffering from a few drug side effects- insomnia, shortness of breath and itchy skin- I feel like I am light-years better than where I was a year ago. In fact, this is the best I have felt in many, many years. And I owe it all to a person whom I never met and a team of medical professionals who devoted their life to studying both the anatomy of the human body and some of the most technologically advanced medical procedures ever invented. It's a debt that I will never be able to repay. The best I can hope to do is try to help others the way that they have helped me (and even this is a daunting task). Anyway, I just wanted to say again how grateful I am to have been born in country where we help each other when we can. Whether it's shoveling a neighbours' driveway, paying for the next order at the drive-thru, making sandwiches for the homeless or donating a kidney. I am fortunate to be surrounded by country of good people who care about more than themselves. And on the topic of generosity, here is one of my all time favourite Onion stories (graphic content/very dark humour). |