Today I worked with the other 8th grade Biology teacher on a lesson plan for the circulatory system. As much as I'd like to spend a couple weeks on circulation, I have about 4 total lessons, so it's good to make those count.
We were to plan out a lesson on the big and small circulations - the big circulation being between the heart and the cells of the body, while the small circulation happens between the heart and the lungs.
When we got to the small circulation (heart and lungs), we worked on making the information more concise, which she did a pretty good job with, but then got down to actual content. I asked her "What is the function of the small circulation?" and expressed it in other ways like "Why does the blood even go TO the lungs, why not just go out directly to the rest of the body?" and all I got back from her were random definitions like "The left ventricle of the heart is larger than the right ventricle."
Not that I was shocked, it was just disappointing. She couldn't actually process the question because she had never been taught that the question has any actual meaning - the whole game in school is to match the answer with the question, given a finite number of possible questions. Worse comes to worst, give the definition of some of the terms used in the question. That's how educated people seem to act, after all!
So she was playing the same game with me that my students play with me. And all I can think to say is "Think about the question" which means to them that I've already given them the answer, but it's hard to think of. And so much of the problem has to do with language. The students don't know what these words mean, so they memorize them and when they are teachers, make up definitions to appease the students. But they're just memorized words.
So in this teacher's education, she had been introduced to the "small circulation", but never thought about what it meant or anything about it beyond the questions and definitions. What I was asking her to do today was elementary in many educational systems, but high-level for the system here.
And after about 10 minutes of poking and prodding, she finally got that the blood needs oxygen, which it gets in the lungs.
When we got to the "big circulation" we ran into the same problem and spent as much time resolving it. I don't know if I can teach her how to think critically or analytically, but at least she sees the simplicity of it. In fact, she remarked on how simple the concepts really are and how often they become overcomplicated.
It really seems to me that the objective of education here is to lord over others by complicating matters and elevating language - in other words, hold people down.
In a discussion with Nanosh today, I concluded that the truth can never be found as we ourselves are always changing and the world is always changing. But we can still have spirituality in the sense that we can look for rules or ideas to live by. It is this spirituality I have and it feels so much more real than any religion I have experienced.
Peace
John
