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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

What was your high school biology like?

Tara mentions something while discussing a nice piece by Olivia Judson (oh, and that is an excellent op-ed) that had me saying, "Me, too!"

Alas, the experience of Judson is all too common:

When I was in school, I learned none of this. Biology was a subject that seemed as exciting as a clump of cotton wool. It was a dreary exercise in the memorization and regurgitation of apparently unconnected facts. Only later did I learn about evolution and how it transforms biology from that mass of cotton wool into a magnificent tapestry, a tapestry we can contemplate and begin to understand.

I think I've mentioned before that this my high school bio class was like this as well--lots of memorization, a good dose of anatomy, but no emphasis on evolution to tie it all together. In fact, I thought biology was boring before I took an intro course in college. I'm happy to admit I was totally wrong (something I don't do very often!).

I didn't think biology was boring, but I sure thought my biology class in high school was a waste of time. It was almost as bad as that mandatory health class taught by one of the coaches (who clearly hated being there) that was little more than a study hall with pamphlets. My biology teacher wasn't a bad guy—actually, he was likable and interesting as a person—but the class content was a dogawful bore. My daughter says similar things about her biology course right now.

That has me wondering: how many of you have had similar experiences with the public school teaching of biology? Could this be where the US is going wrong, treating biology as a subject that is drained of life by a stamp-collecting approach to reciting facts and details?

I'd also be interested to hear from any high school biology teachers. What do you do to bring the topic to life for your students? What constraints, if any, do you feel from parents and administrators to avoid evolution as a central theme?


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Comments:
#56229: BronzeDog — 01/04  at  02:10 PM
My 7th grade biology class was boring. My 7th grade biology teacher wasn't. When my friends and I were done collecting organically grown stamps, we'd head back over to her and she'd teach us a few things that weren't on the curriculum. Like biology.



#56231: Sam — 01/04  at  02:14 PM
I was assigned a great biology teacher in high school. Unfortunately, two weeks into the school year, he fractured his back and spent the next six months on disability leave. We had the awesome experience of being "taught" by the substitute, who basically read from the textbook because she had no experience teaching like this. None of us were actually prepared for the regents exam at the end of the year. Which was sad, because I was otherwise a total science-loving geek.



#56238: Jonathan Badger — 01/04  at  02:22 PM
Not to be picky, but it is quite misleading to say, as the author does "...the single-celled parasite that causes malaria is descended from algae. We know this because it carries within itself the remnants of a chloroplast."

As far as I know, *nobody* thinks malaria parasite evolved from algae -- instead, it is believed that it acquired an algal cell through endosymbiosis at one point and kept the chloroplast, which became the apicoplast. Saying that the malaria parasite evolved from algae is like saying we evolved from alphaproteobacteria because our mitochondria are related to that bacterial group.



#56239: The Countess — 01/04  at  02:32 PM
My junior high school biology teacher was insane. The school screwed up and let me take aquatic biology without my having taken basic bio. Since I learned everything in aquatic bio that I would have learned in basic bio, I was given a pass on basic bio. We went to the Chesapeake Bay Reserve several times a month to learn to take water samples, and we studied the local water life. It was a very interesting class, with a total kook as the teacher.

My class later learned that the teacher had an identical twin. We wondered how earth could handle two of those guys.

It's not biology, but I have to tell you about my chemistry teacher. He taught us how to blow things up. He was an American Indian. I learned more about Indians in that class than I did about chemistry. That teacher was another one who was certifiable.

What is it with high school science teachers and those same teachers being totally insane? I loved science when I was in high school because the teachers were as crazy as me.

It's still not biology, but I have to tell you about an astronomer I met while I was in high school. He worked at the Maryland Science Center, and I was a volunteer who ran the planetarium. That guy was also insane. I caught him standing behind the curator of the museum - an old relic - and this guy was screaming his head off at the relic, cussing him out. I just stood in the doorway, dumbfounded. He turned to me and said that the guy couldn't hear him because he was deaf. Then he went back to cussing him out. I used to see him cussing up a storm behind the guy's back all the time. That astronomer had a great influence on me.

I think that's why I am the way I am today - all the scientists I had contact with when I was a kid were completely bonkers.



#56240: The Chemist — 01/04  at  02:35 PM
My high school biology class (freshman year) was incredibly boring. I really disliked biology until my sophomore year of college; after taking some college bio classes (and especially the labs), I found it a lot more interesting.



#56241: The Countess — 01/04  at  02:37 PM
Oh, I forgot to mention that the American Indian chemistry teacher was best friends with another science teacher who did taxidermy as a hobby. The chem teacher would find roadkill, and bring it home to put in his wife's freezer. He'd later take the dead animal to the taxidermist teacher, who would stuff and mount if for him. He brought these dead mounted animals to class to show us. It was really cool.

His wife ended up buying him a separate freezer for the roadkill because she was tired of opening her freezer to get out a couple of steaks for dinner and seeing a dead raccoon or another dead animal sitting in there.

I tell you, every science teacher I've ever had was certifiable.



#56242: coturnix — 01/04  at  02:39 PM
Grades 5th through 8th I had an old bald mean teacher. He actually had a PhD in biology but he spoke slowly and softly and was boring as hell. I kept up my interest and did well because I was already a biology freak (I read the Origin when I was 13 - one of the first books I read in English language).

In high school I had a wonderful old lady throughout 9th through 12th grade. She LOVED evolution and spent a lot of time on it. It was great fun. She gave inspiring lectures and fostered classroom discussions. In addition, I had botany, zoology, ecology, and biology lab in 11th grade - the former two were pretty boring, as in going through the taxonomy phylum by phylum, class by class, order by orderm and the latter two were OK. I skipped the 12th grade while my classmates had biochemistry and molecular biology which, they say, was HARD.

I had recent experience teaching students who had biology in high school recently versus adults who had it 10-20 years ago. The former knew their stuff and were eager to go. The latter were scared of biology, thought it was boring and difficult. When asked, they confirmed my suspicions that they primarily memorized Latin names for body parts, flower parts, worm phyla and intermediates of Krebs cycle. The younger students had a much better high school experience and (mostly) undertood and appreciated evolution. This is Triangle Area, after all. I am assuming that it is much worse in the countryside.



#56243: Tara — 01/04  at  02:39 PM
Bronze dog wrote:
My 7th grade biology class was boring. My 7th grade biology teacher wasn't. When my friends and I were done collecting organically grown stamps, we'd head back over to her and she'd teach us a few things that weren't on the curriculum. Like biology.

My 7th grade bio class was awesome--that's when we first did dissections and stuff. Great for a 7th grader. Then we had earth science in 8th grade, physical science in 9th grade, and biological science not again until 10th grade--when we did those same dissections again, basically not learning anything we didn't already get from the 7th grade curriculum. We could then take yet *another* anatomy course as a junior or senior, but why bother to do it again? That's what made it boring to me. I liked (and still like) the anatomy portion of it, but there are only so many frogs you can cut up before you just aren't learning anything new.



#56244: Andrew Ti — 01/04  at  02:40 PM
I know all my classes at Columbia were like this, up through my third year Neurobiology class, long after I'd mentally checked out. The problem I found with these classes was that they were so heavily geared towards people interested in getting into medical school, which does, in fact, seem to be mostly anatomy and stamp collecting as far as biology goes, albeit on a very high level. I remember distinctly marking down that evolution in my first year biology class was discussed for exactly 10 minutes on the last lecture, right after the review for the final. Needless to say, that made a huge impact.



#56245: — 01/04  at  02:43 PM
I enjoyed my HS Bio class, but mostly because of the teacher. We spent the whole year getting ready for the NY Regents Exam, so without an exciting teacher, other kids at my school had less enjoyable times. Also, my teacher (A students could call him "Bio Bill") gave us detailed instructions for making moonshine at home (yeah yeast!) which I actually did.

My wife, who grew up in South Jersey, had a less inspiring experience. Her HS bio teacher used the 'Virgin' Mary as an example of asexual reproduction. No foolin.



's avatar #56247: PZ Myers — 01/04  at  02:47 PM
I like anatomy, too, and I think it's good basic stuff that's useful to teach to kids. What's even more awesome, though, is comparative anatomy: sit 'em down and have them find the differences and similarities between species. I think that what makes for a course that requires you to think rather than memorize is that extra level of synthesis.

OK, Countess, the formula for improving the teaching of science is to slip a few drugs into the teachers' coffee. I can see it. I agree that a certain level of crazy skewed perspective is also what makes a class interesting -- one of my favorite teachers was also nuts, and he taught math. I learned that geometry and trigonometry are pretty cool subjects from him.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris



's avatar #56248: — 01/04  at  02:47 PM
High school was mostly godawful. I graduated in 1958, just about the time when the country was beginning to tool up for dealing with the threat that we assumed was posed by the Russkies and their Sputnik.

My biology teacher was an idiot; but we were at least taught Mendelian genetics. Back then, of course, humans had 24 pairs of chromosomes and DNA wasn't part of the curriculum, although as a kid who bought his copy of Scientific American the minute it hit the newsstand, I of course knew about it.

I had a few decent teachers: My 3rd year Latin teacher, two math teachers, and one decent English teacher. Otherwise, high school was pretty much a dead loss.

From what I read, it hasn't improved much since then.



#56250: Jane Shevtsov — 01/04  at  02:56 PM
Am I the only one who had a great experience in high school biology? I went to the North Hollywood Zoo Magnet, a biological science magnet located in the LA Zoo parking lot.

In addition to regular biology, chemistry, health and inter-coordinated science courses, my school offered a wide variety of science electives. One of them was genetics, which focused on the population and evolutionary aspects of the subject -- I ended up reading Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation in tenth grade. There was also animal studies (a required zoology course taught by zoo staff), ecology, environmental science (with an AP course available on the main North Hollywood High School campus), invertebrate zoology, vertebrate physiology (actually more of a comparative anatomy class), a year-long course in physical oceanography. My biggest disappointment was not getting to take animal behavior. Evolution was woven into the curriculum.


Yes, one of the science teachers was lousy, but overall, it was an amazing school. Most of my first-year bio at UCLA, including a course in animal social behavior, was review.



#56251: logicus — 01/04  at  02:57 PM
I go to a high school in a suburb of Minnesota currently and AP Biology is not that bad. Basically, we are required to read campbell(ch.25 now) and take tests on it once in a while. No one takes the labs seriously though. The class itself is not too inspiring(rather boring lectures) but I find campbell really interesting(as do some of my classmates).



#56252: dr. dave — 01/04  at  03:00 PM
I'll go ahead and echo theophylact above... I don't deny that lots of HS bio classes suck, but I'm not sure this is necessarily a problem unique to biology. Thinking back, it's hard to recall more than 2 or 3 HS classes that DIDN'T suck.



#56253: Redshift — 01/04  at  03:04 PM
I didn't take high school biology. A friend of mine found out that if you were advanced enough in math, you could skip straight to chemistry and physics, and cutting up frogs and worms (which was all anybody talked about from biology class) was pretty unappealing. When I got to college I kind of regretted it, since I didn't end up taking any bio classes there. However, looking back now from a longer view, I've read a lot and I probably know about as much as I would remember by now anyway. (And I had enough other fields in college where I jumped straight into a high-level intro class with inadequate preparation.)



#56254: — 01/04  at  03:07 PM
My high school biology courses were so boring I remember them only as a blur being desperate to get onto chemistry and physics classes later in the day. In fact, my University biology classes bored me to tears untill I took neuroscience. Neuroscience 101 changed my life foreover, I quickly switched majors from physics to neuroscience and now I'm a card carrying neuroscientist.

I think part of the problem with teaching biology is that if the anatomy and comparative-anatomy geared stuff doesn't get you hooked (still puts me to sleep -- although I certainly can appreciate the importance now) you need a fairly firm grasp of organic chemistry to really appreciate what is going on at the molecular level and its nearly impossible to expect that of a high schooler. Its certainly worth the effort though.



#56255: The Countess — 01/04  at  03:09 PM
"OK, Countess, the formula for improving the teaching of science is to slip a few drugs into the teachers' coffee. I can see it. I agree that a certain level of crazy skewed perspective is also what makes a class interesting -- one of my favorite teachers was also nuts, and he taught math. I learned that geometry and trigonometry are pretty cool subjects from him."

I'm sure my science teachers didn't take drugs. I'm convinced their bodies naturally manufactured them. They really were crazy. I had lots of fun dissecting grasshoppers in high school. One teacher dissected a cow's heart for the class. I guess there weren't enough cow's hearts to go around. All the girls got icky-gooey over it, but I loved it.

I had one good math teacher, but I could never adequately grasp math. Algebra was confusing for me. Geometry was worse. It didn't help that the geometry teacher was a mean guy who didn't like me. He didn't make the math experience a pleasant one. For some reason, I couldn't handle math in math classes, but I did just fine with math in science classes. I think the teachers made all the difference for me.



#56256: Jane Shevtsov — 01/04  at  03:13 PM
Forgot to mention one thing. I missed part of the first semester of tenth grade because my family was traveling, so the animal studies teacher gave me an alternative assignment. He lent me a Norton anthology on Darwin and told me to write three essays comparing different authors. I got to read Darwin, Huxley, Leakey, Medawar and much else. Not a bad way to learn!



#56257: — 01/04  at  03:13 PM
My HS bio experience exactly paralleled that of Olivia Judson. Mandatory dissection drills that revealed nothing to my untrained eye, and memorizing all of the parts of a cell. Memorization, without any systematic overview, and no mention of the E-word that I recall.

I actually have a creationist to thank for my present interest in evolution. He started spouting off about the evils of evolution (Piltdown etc) over lunch one day. I had a strong gut sense that he was dead wrong, but didn't know enough real science to respond. That really ticked me off, so I started on a passionate campaign of reading. I found the subject to be utterly fascinating, much to my surprise. Forty books and ten years later, I find the subject as engrossing as ever. I'm now reading Sean Carroll's Evo Devo book (thanks PZ for putting it on your book list) and loving it.



#56258: — 01/04  at  03:14 PM
I went to a large high school just a mile or less from NASA's Johnson Space Center. Consquently, the area employed many highly educated people who demanded quality science and math education for their children. Biology was no exception. Evolution played an appropriately large role, and creationism was never even mentioned.

We also had a poli-sci teacher who introduced me to critical thinking, and an English teacher who taught me the value of expressing myself clearly. I will be forever grateful.



#56259: Linkmeister — 01/04  at  03:15 PM
My HS Biology teacher was a man who appeared to be about a week away from mandatory retirement. I remember nothing about the class except his name and the frog dissection. Chemistry the following year was more interesting (Things fizz! Things blow up!), but what really got me in HS was languages. I had the same instructor for three years of French and two of Russian, and those classes were dynamite.

It's the teachers who make the classes, in my experience.



#56261: — 01/04  at  03:25 PM
At school, I initially studied human biology, then went on to "normal" biology, getting the chance to cut up frogs, pigeons and dogfish in the process. Throughout, the whole subject was fascinating, with good teachers who made the subject come to life by stressing the evolutionary interrelationships of organisms.

Mind you, I'm a Brit...



#56263: BronzeDog — 01/04  at  03:32 PM
I did have one very good high school chemistry class. (AP, plus a "Lab Sciences" class that was just an extension) Especially liked some of the small revelations that I picked up from studying the material:

"Oh, so that's why two gases like hydrogen and oxygen combine to form a liquid!"

"Oh, so that's why oil and water don't mix!"

"Oh, that's why crystals shatter, and metal bends!"

Thanks to my teacher, I CLEPed out of 8 hours of college chemistry.



#56264: Kele — 01/04  at  03:34 PM
I loved my AP biology class last year. The most fun I've had in school so far. Great teacher. We didn't really learn (although all of us had had 9th grade biology) about evolution until April because she wanted it to be fresh on our minds, but she did talk about evolution a lot throughout the year so it was tied together. I would easily take it again if I had the chance. My teacher is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in biology right now. So, in short, I think we were taught well and the class was fine. :D



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