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Hannah Gatz-Miller's picture

Studying the world -- in the world

When I was in Middle School, we only had "formal" (in the very loose sense of the word) science classes about two times a month. Instead, once a week, the class would go on a day long field study, in order to better understand the natural world and its forces. Using this method, biology, chemistry and physics were mashed together to create one overlapping sense of "Science" and what it means to the world around it and everyone in it. We learned about Dissolved Oxygen and PH levels at the banks of actual rivers, and saw how it affected the fish and other animals there. We studied the velocity of the water rushing past, and were required to memorize native plants. For Geology, we would visit sites like Mt. Saint Helens and the museums and wildlife areas there. This approach was definitely infinitely more engaging than watching PH change colors in a test tube in a sterile classroom environment, without watching what it might mean for whatever's living in the water, all for the sake of a grade or test scores. Not to say that science cannot be engaging in the classroom (it usually is) but I think that people need to see how much science is integrated into our daily lives and the world around us by actually going and observing it outside of a textbook and a controlled classroom.
To me, science seems to be only one of many different ways of knowing. If the perspective of science is limited, what does that mean for a person's perspective on the whole world, and how they interact with it and the people, plants and animals within it?

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