John Dewey breathes a sigh of relief

Today's New York Times has an encouraging op-ed piece on science education by Brent Staples (subscription req'd). Staples writes about the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), science program that has been successfully graduating students (with diverse backgrounds) who excel in, and pursue, careers in science. The secret sauce? "The students are encouraged to study in groups and taught to solve complex problems collectively, as teams of scientists do. Most important, they are quickly exposed to cutting-edge science in laboratory settings, which demystifies the profession and gives them early access to work that often leads to early publication in scientific journals. At the same time, however, the students are pushed to perform at the highest level. Those who earn C's, for example, are encouraged to repeat those courses so they can master basic concepts before moving on."

John Dewey, that old pragmatist and educator, can finally relax a bit. It appears that we're paying attention to how people learn. I know that Dewey is not the only person to understand that humans are primarily social, and that we can learn and work well together. I read Dewey's Art As Experience over 20 years ago and it transformed my thinking about education. So it is very heartening to see further empirical evidence of how people can learn in groups and still be individuals. It's especially encouraging to have examples of successful science education. We need to keep reminding ourselves that science (like other work) is exciting, productive, and fun, because of its social nature, not in spite of it. We really are in this together and together is how we will make progress.

And I know there are a ba-jillion important threads thrown together in these two paragraphs that deserve more explanation. But, there it is; this is only a blog posting.

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