This past year I have been part of a nine-member staff teaching a one year (three quarter) sequence in social science at the University of Chicago. About two hundred students registered for the course. They were divided up into sections of 25 each. The sections met for discussion three hours per week and all 200...
Tag - science teaching
At the end of the first semester a proposal was made by a group of teachers: instead of giving another semester of general biology to the freshman class, why not offer areas or study which differed in content, so that students would have some choice in their scientific curriculum, and we could thereby pursue our own...
In the last few years many of us have begun to question various aspects of our jobs as teachers. In part this has been due to an awakening consciousness among all teachers about the authoritarian nature of schools and the socializing function they perform. It has been due also to the broad recognition now that...
In a recent issue of Science for the People, the Science Teaching Group offered a critique of science courses in the schools1 The critique emphasized the role of traditional science education in maintaining the economic and social status quo. This is accomplished by fostering the myth of an apolitical, benevolent...
In the classroom, the myth of an apolitical, benevolent science prevails. The training of a scientist involves a total submersion in technical material with little if any, historical or philosophical perspective. Research productivity is the measure of worth, as the student acquires skill in a specialized field...
Scientific and technological resources of the United States should not be used to help colonize and repress people in less developed countries, but to help them improve their own economic, political and cultural position. That would be "Science for the People." While the chances of official U.S. policy being changed...
The educational system is one of the most important means by which the power of the ruling class in this country is maintained. This process can be seen very clearly in science education. (For a more detailed statement of this position and some of the reasoning behind it, see the excerpts of our pamphlet printed in...