Hook, Line, and . . . Science!
The Hook: Sister Mary Daniel
The Line: Sister Mary Daniel’s unique, and uncanny ability to mesmerize her students. She always left us nearly breathless, awaiting her next magnetizing utterance.
The Result: A total love of science and all things scientific.
The 411 on Sister Mary Daniel
She was young, or so we thought. She was on the hefty side; well, maybe. It was hard to tell because every day she was covered from the neck down in her traditional Dominican-order habit. There were three things about her, however, that we noticed right away, and that we continue to remember: her bubbling enthusiasm for teaching us, which was infectious; her full, round smile, which was the light of our learning; and her calm, steady, soothing, musical voice that spoke a language that we easily comprehended, and that guided us to understanding. We called her Sister Mary Daniel, (aka the Mad Scientist).
Waking up each school day, we would dress quickly in our required uniforms and chug down our warm oatmeal with milk and brown sugar in huge, breathless gulps. We’d run a brush through our teeth and hair and race the six blocks to school—frequently leaving our bagged lunches behind in our haste to get to school—to Sister Mary Daniel’s classroom; our classroom. During the mad dash to school we always asked ourselves the same questions: “What will Sister Mary Daniel show us today?” and “Will she blow something up?”
Our school year with Sister Mary Daniel began with the volcano. Actually, in the beginning, there was nothing more than wire, papier-mâché, plaster of Paris, paint and brushes; and a couple of toy dinosaurs thrown in—all kinds of neat stuff.
The first step was to build the volcanoes—all six of them. Sister Mary Daniel believed in spreading the building fun, so to speak. We took our turns (not our time) forming the wires into cone-shaped mountain frames. Then we had fun cutting strips of papier-mâché to length and size, coating them with the plaster of Paris and placing them on the frame, forming what looked to us, like volcanoes.
Before we could paint the newly formed volcanoes, we had to let the plaster of Paris dry. During the drying period, Sister Mary Daniel sent us to our desks and told us it was time for daily grammar and math drills. Before beginning the drills, she always enticed us with the following: “The better you people do on these drills, the faster we will get back to blowing up the mountains.”
Wow! Those magical words . . . “blowing up the mountains” still resonate, after all these years—it was almost like hearing “Wake up, it’s Christmas morning!”
Well, as it turned out we had a bunch of whiz kids in our class and we got through those grammar and math drills with ease (given the proper motivation, we kids could do just about anything!). Then we turned our attention to the six waiting volcanoes. Sister Mary Daniel split the class into six groups of six kids each so that each group had its own volcano. When ready, she directed one member of each group to drop the baking soda into the throat of the volcano. Then another kid would pour in the glass full of vinegar. Then all heck broke loose when all that goopy synthetic lava gurgled, spit, and foamed up and out of the cone and all over the place. Even now, years later, we recall how funny it was when kids got too close to the cone opening and their uniforms became coated with synthetic lava. You might say it was a real blast.
After the initial classroom volcanic eruptions, we conducted many more throughout the school year. We just couldn’t get enough of that foaming lava spewing upward and going everywhere. However, the rules of conducting the volcano eruption experiments changed with time. Sister Mary Daniel began to ask us questions such as: “Why did the mixture we put inside the volcano foam up?” We were not allowed to foam the volcanoes again until we answered this question correctly (carbon dioxide production).
Before our next experiment and all subsequent experiments the rest of the school year we had to answer more questions. For example, we had to explain what type of chemical reaction occurred during the volcano foaming (endothermic reaction). Then before another foaming operation we had to explain what an endothermic reaction is (meaning energy is required to make the reaction occur).
Seems funny now that we were always able to find the answers to these questions, and we found them the hard way—relative to today, that is. That period of our school training was before the Internet, email, and computers. We had to go to the library, look up the information, write it all down on little white index cards, and then present our findings in class. And we did.
During the school year, Sister Mary Daniel also had us perform other experiments like putting together those old crystal radio kits. We also grew frogs from tadpoles. Sister Mary Daniel had us look up and explain the process of metamorphosis—the tadpole to frog thing. Funny thing is, that five or six years later, after leaving grade school and moving on in our educational pursuits, we visited Sister Mary Daniel in our old classroom. We were surprised to see that Sister Mary Daniel had not changed a bit, and lo and behold, she still had a few of the frogs that we had seen transform from tadpole to frogs. We had no idea those frogs could live up to 15 years of age.
Today, many years later, many of us are scientists or work in a scientific medical field. The fact is Sister Mary Daniel’s volcano fired us up about science; we could never get enough of it, even now. We just never left science; like learning the alphabet and mathematical operations, science was engrained into us because it was interesting, real, exciting, wonderful, fun, and sometimes, quite explosive.
By the time we entered college we were not at all surprised to find that all freshmen were required to take at least one two-semester science course with accompanying lab, in one of the major sciences such as biology, chemistry, or physics. Gee, why not? Science is fun! Science is life!
Later, however, we were surprised to find out that 75 percent of first year students only took the required science course because it was required. Otherwise, many of these students would have avoided science of any type. In the college years that followed, that was exactly what many students did—avoided any form of science, period. The number of students majoring in any type of science continued to fall as we proceeded through the various stages of graduate school. After grad school and into the real world of 9 to 5 workdays in our chosen scientific professions, we found that only those we worked with had a science background; only they and a few others were science or scientific literate. The rest? They were and are scientifically illiterate.
Scientifically illiterate? Yes; to our continuing amazement we find the majority of people we come into contact with, including many of our students, avoid and actually fear science. Thus, they are scientifically illiterate. Moreover, we have many good friends who are not able to understand experiment and reasoning. Thus, they are scientifically illiterate.
In addition, many of our acquaintances do not understand how data relates to law and theory; that theory is regarded as the highest level of expression. Thus, they are scientifically illiterate. The scientific illiterate cannot navigate through the maze of opinions on global warming, global climate change, pending $20 per gallon gasoline, renewable energy, fuel cells, stem cells, the difference between warm fronts and cold fronts, or what a pandemic disease is. This trend toward scientific illiteracy is not only an eye-opener for us, but for others also. Carl Sagan,1 for example, stated that we “live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” He is referring, of course, to the scientifically illiterate.
Along with the authors of this text, Carl Sagan and others, Vergano2 (2009) authored a short article for USA Today entitled: Is America Scientifically Illiterate? Basically, the gist of Vergano’s article is an amplification of the authors’ of this text and other science authors’ thoughts about the dilemma facing America in that they/we have a growing awareness shortcoming when it comes to the importance of “science in politics, policy, and our collective future.”
The obvious question is, why? The answer to this question is rather complex and puzzling—not as complex and puzzling as finding the cure for cancer, but, at best, difficult to pin down. As mentioned, grade school children just love dinosaurs and foaming volcanoes. So why is it that by the time many of them reach high school and beyond they lose all interest in science? Again, we refer to Carl Sagan, who makes this point clear: “I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.”
There are many different theories postulating one reason or another as to why Americans are scientifically illiterate. Many of these theories are discussed in this text. But when you come right down to it, the answers seem rather obvious to us. First of all, as followers of the horror master, Stephen King might say “Science just scares the bejesus out of us!” Secondly, there are not that many Sister Mary Daniels out there in academia. When and if you find one, treasure her because you’re very fortunate; she and her clones are God sent. Thirdly, how about the moms and dads, grandparents, older brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts who could nudge kids into scientific fields? Where are they and their push for science education? Few and far between and lacking, we are afraid. Finally, in our opinion, the biggest culprit behind Americans’ scientific illiteracy is communication—most notably, the lack of it. The quote from Captain, Road Prison 36 (actor Strother Martin) in the film classic Cool Hand Luke is apropos: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
In Defense of Science is all about communicating. Instead of a cure-all for all factors leading to scientific illiteracy (an impossible goal) it is an antiseptic and band aid intended to stop the hemorrhaging; we leave the final cure to those smarter than us. Written in clear, plain, down-home English, we avoid the pitfalls of presenting scientific gobbledygook that requires a modern Rosetta stone to interpret. This is not to say that we avoid all scientific principles, because we do not; it is impossible to do so in a book about science.
What we do, however, is present science in an understandable format, avoiding higher mathematics, advanced physics, chemistry, and biology. In Defense of Science is a bare bones presentation that communicates why science is critical to our very survival—with the emphasis on communication. Simply, a better informed public is our goal in a modern America. The convenient truth is that it is important for individuals to filter through information and make informed decisions, instead of letting the well-connected so-called “experts” provide all of us with what they term “inconvenient truths.” Carl Sagan said “Science is the candle in the dark.” We say the flame that lighted the candle is communication.
The bottom line: The world is presently short on the likes of Sister Mary Daniel and her kind; however, this does not mean that we can’t light that candle in the dark by striking our own match.
NOTES
1. All Carl Sagan quotes used herein come from his television show Cosmos and many are from his published works such as Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1997); The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996); and Cosmos 1985. New York: Ballantine Books.
2. Vergano, D., 2009. Is America scientifically illiterate? USA Today 08/21/2009.