What Science Leaves Out

Kids have lots of questions about the nature of the world, and this is good.  However, I think our answers to these questions often miss the mark.  Consider that quintessential chestnut, "Why is the sky blue?"  Google for an answer and you will find physical explanations involving atmospheric molecules, light scattering, and wavelengths of light.  Let's focus on the color aspect, because here the explanation given to children and adults is about the same.  The color model is that white light, such as that given by the Sun, is actually a bundle of waves, where each color is a different wavelength.

I remember reading such an explanation in one of W's "science for kids" books and feeling uneasy.  I did not like the matter-of-fact approach and authoritative tone, as if the question and answer belonged to the same category of question as "What is the state capital of Massachusetts?".  It seemed to me that something important was left out of the answer.

One source of my uneasiness has to do with how much explanatory power we can ascribe to physical models at all and how we interpret the reality of those models.  I could write at great length here, but I'll admit this is mostly metaphysical quibbling.  Given the success of physics in getting men to the Moon and back, I am willing to put aside those questions... at least until the boys are a little older.

But even if we take the physics at face value, I still have uneasiness.  Doess the "color is really just a wavelength of electromagentic radiation" answer really do full justice to the phenomenon of color?

Recently I came across a thought experiment that articulates my unease: Mary's Room.  The idea is to conjure someone who has never seen color because she has been captive in a colorless room her whole life.  Now give her perfect knowledge of the physics involving color, atmosphere, and anything else you like.  The question is this: when she is released from the room and looks up at the sky for the first time, will she learn anything new about color?

Of course she will.  She will learn what color looks like.  And here we come to what it is that physics necessarily leaves out: experience.  Because of this, we should not pretend that physical science provides complete explanations for the nature of things.

Let's get back to the child asking why the sky is blue.  Maybe "color is a wavelength" needs to be part of our answer.  But maybe part of our answer also needs to be "color is a particular experience".  Which is a small child really reaching for: the mechanics of light waves, or wonderment at why an experience is just this experience and not that experience.

As a philosopher might say, perhaps whatever answer we give should end with a semi-colon instead of a period.

The One Subject Matter for Education

Think about the terms we often use to refer to what a student studies: "material", or "subject matter". These terms suggest that the subject of study is vacuous and dead. When school education is largely the insistence of disjoint facts with no justification for their importance, is it any wonder students are so utterly non-motivated to learn? If you "master the material" and can execute the algorithm for solving a quadratic equation, but you have no sense for why this is important or when it would be useful, have you really learned anything?

Here's Whitehead:

The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity, we offer children -- Algebra, from which nothing follows; Geometry, from which nothing follows; Science, from which nothing follows; History, from which nothing follows; a Couple of Languages, never mastered; and lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by plays of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short analyses of plot and character to be in substance committed to memory. Can such a list be said to represent Life, as it is known in the midst of the living of it?

The Golden Rule of Education

Alfred North Whitehead has many great insights in his essay The Aims of Education. Here is one:

I appeal to you, as practical teachers. With good discipline, it is always possible to pump into the minds of a class a certain quantity of inert knowledge. You take a text-book and make them learn it. So far, so good. The child then knows how to solve a quadratic equation. But what is the point of teaching a child to solve a quadratic equation? There is a traditional answer to this question. It runs thus: The mind is an instrument, you first sharpen it, and then use it; the acquisition of the power of solving a quadratic equation is part of the process of sharpening the mind. Now there is just enough truth in this answer to have made it live through the ages. But for all its half-truth, it embodies a radical error which bids fair to stifle the genius of the modern world. I do not know who was first responsible for this analogy of the mind to a dead instrument. For aught I know, it may have been one of the seven wise men of Greece, or a committee of the whole lot of them. Whoever was the originator, there can be no doubt of the authority which it has acquired by the continuous approval bestowed upon it by eminent persons. But whatever its weight of authority, whatever the high approval which it can quote, I have no hesitation in denouncing it as one of the most fatal, erroneous, and dangerous conceptions ever introduced into the theory of education. The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exercised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now. That is the golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.