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I would like to continue with the interaction between science and religion, on which I wrote in your class last semester, and did my thesis on (related) during this last summer.  What more compelling of a topic than one such as this, which centers around and alludes to the question of our existence.

Certainly, our religious background and knowledge is of ‘social construction’.  More times than not, this knowledge base conflicts with material that is presented in science education.  Because of the very nature of constructivism, these ideas are not ideas that students will dismiss easily.  In fact, students may not want to dismiss their religious ideas at all.  How can the science educator assist students in understanding scientific knowledge that conflicts with the students’ religious knowledge?  How can science educators present scientific knowledge without compromising this knowledge in a way that allows students of any religion to accept it as scientific knowledge, no matter what their religious beliefs?

I am not sure whom I can collaborate with on this subject, but I think it could fit in (alongside) quite a few inquiries into constructivism and education.

My reading list would include Dawkins, Dewey, and John Lennox; articles on: constructivism, science education, misconceptions, preconception, and religion.

I am concerned that you may be going over ground already trod instead of advancing the scholarship.  Please tell me how this is new reading for you and more directly, how it is connected to the social construction of knowledge.

For me this is new ground.  I have known for sometime that misconceptions were very hard to unlearn.  And I know that some religious beliefs interfere with some peoples learning of science.  I want to look at these specifically through the eyes of conceptualism.  I think approaching these areas in this light may answer (or at least guide me closer to an answer) some questions.

I am confident I can cover new ground with this.  I will submit my paper from last semester and my thesis with it showing there will be little or no redundancy.

I encourage you to move to another topic and connect it to the social construction of knowledge.  Explore, expand your horizons.

In the end, the answer was a flat out no.

Yet the human mind seems to always do exactly as it wants.  Have you ever sat down to do something that HAD to be done, only to have your mind drawn away to something else?  How can we as educators ignore this and persist that there are limited areas in which the content of our material can be learned?  To what end is our persistence relieving the struggle within our students, the struggle between what their mind tells them is interesting and that which they MUST learn because … because ‘we said so’.

What is it that you remember?  For each of us it is different, yet for each of us it is exactly the same.  We remember (and understand) in the context of our interests.  We are told to be successful in life, “to do something you love”, “to do what you did as a child, only on a grander scale”.  Those who spoke these words understood the human mind.  They were simply saying: if you want to be successful, eliminate the struggle of what your mind wants to do and what you want to do; make them both the same.

How successful would Thomas Edison have been if he did not work with electricity?  Did he enjoy his work?  We can’t be sure.  Yet, it takes something to try (and fail) a thousand times to make a working light bulb.  Take a minute and think about doing something that is of interest.  Now, think of the most successful people you know or know about.  Does it seem they were interested in the area they were interested?

If success does center around our interest, just as the groups to which belong, the books we read for pleasure, the type of show we watch on television; then it would seem a good way to ALLOW students to be successful in school, would be to ALLOW them to explore their areas of interest.  This is in contrast to what Li, Klar, and Siler call the “mile wide, inch-deep curriculum”.  As a teacher of science I can see how ‘science’ can be learned exploring ANY aspect of science.  This may be because what I think is necessary for students to learn in science is not a bunch of facts (which by the nature of science are subject to change), instead that they learn the nature of science. 

By learning the nature of science within the context of an area of interest, students will remember the associated facts (of which there are so very many today as compared to a hundred years ago) painlessly and seemingly effortlessly.  An example of this is the people who enjoy movies and television shows to the extent that they can name off the associated actors and actresses.  Think about your area of interest.  What facts do you know about your area of interest?  Think of something of which you have absolutely no interest (that in itself may be hard).  What facts do you know about that area of which you have no interest?  Perhaps you once learned facts (in school) in an area you were not interested in and in a different area that you did have an interest.  From which of these areas do you remember more facts?

For all the time I spent this semester working on a paper that was not the paper my mind wanted to work on, my mind still worked on the paper of its interest.  It is not that religion is taught by the preacher or the Sunday school teacher in a constructivist manner.  And here is the power of social constructivism; it is that religion itself is set deep within a constructivist setting.  Religion becomes an important part of people’s lives.  It becomes part of who they are, who they know, the social events they attend, what they believe, and it is a filter through which we see our world.

How can our present method of teaching science begin to compete with the way religion is learned?  For those not interested in science, it cannot.  Scientists themselves have interests focused on one tiny aspect of science.  It may be much easier for students to ‘learn science’ through a single area from all of science; an area of interest, to them.

So, while I am wondering day to day if I can recover this mental slump and get back into ‘doing school’, which at the very least would allow another income via another student loan and being paid a stipend for another semester, not to mention giving me another semester to hopefully rekindle this love affair with education and a PhD, along comes $800 worth of tire problems on the Mini. I put $390 on my credit card and leave the car to have the rear tires replaced when they come in this evening, promising to pay the other $390 after the first of the month and have the front tires replaced then. Today I am without a car. This would be a good time to try to write some of those seemingly insanely hard papers for school.

It was about 6 months ago, just after the city did some minor excavation along the side of our yard near the mail box to repair a water leak that we started noticing sewer smells inside the house.  These smells were accompanied by an occasional gurgling of drain pipes.  I called the city … it was on mother’s day … and a very nice supervisor came out and walked around occasionally rubbing his chin and  offering some suggestions, non of which involved the city.

Gradually things got worse.  We used gallons of drain cleaner, we used an auger attached to a drill (then threw it away) and we used a 50 ft section of flat iron.  The toilet had to be removed to use the flat iron as there was no sewer line clean out to be found.  I decided to call a plumber while the toilet was still removed.  The first day he spent about 3 hrs and found nothing.  We opted for the camera inspection of sewer lines for an additional $100.  There was a build in locator function in the camera and we found out the sewer line ran to the main sewer line at the opposite end of the house than we thought (a distance of about 50 ft).  The other toilet was pulled and the plumber worked from that access.  The decision was made to add a clean out just outside the house and to repair what seemed to be a problem about halfway between the house and the city line.

The sewer pipe was broken just outside the house which was part of the problems, but not the serious one.  Now the plumber could bring out the big auger and go in thru the broken line.  It went a considerable distance and would not go past a blockage.  The camera was ran down the line and located the block just at the edge of the road … right where the city had repaired the water line when all this started.

I called the city.  The first guy came, shook his head, and said he was the one who dug the first time and there was no way he hit a sewer line.  I told him I was not concerned HOW it happen, the problem existed on city property and THEY needed to fix the PROBLEM.  He was not sure of this and continued to plead innocence for causing the problem.   hmmm   He deferred to his supervisor who showed up not 15 min later (the nice guy from mother’s day).  I told him we found the problem of his last visit and the plumber showed him where it was next to the road.  The supervisor was not sure this was a city problem.  After all their backhoe was broke and the only thing they had was an old retired one stored away someplace.  He would have to investigate.

An hour later the city water boss (nice guy) came back and said they were responsible 5 ft from edge of the paved part of the road.  After long negotiations of whether the blockage was at 4 ft 11 inches or 5 ft 1 inch, the water boss decided his crew would be out the first thing in the morning and fix the problem.  This only meant another day with out a functional sewer system for us.

Morning came …. the city did not.   10:00 am came, the city did not.  Noon came, the city did not.  After calls to the city at all these time the lady receiving the calls was frustrated and gave us the direct phone number to the water boss.  I called him.  He said they had gotten tied up at city hall (they were moving offices around) and his guys would be here (his whole crew) right after lunch.  They showed up around 2:00 pm.

After much excavation with the backhoe and shoveling of dirt by shovel, the pipe was found.  The skinny water guy (thought of by all concerned on our side as the …. rude obnoxious one) exclaimed the pipe was indeed not broken.  I reminded him that the location of the break as determined by the camera was directly underneath where he was standing and they had another two feet of so to go to get to that spot.  Reluctantly they continued removing dirt.  One workers shovel hit the pipe and he exclaimed its broke.  The thin guy says … you broke it? or it was broke already?  It was broke already was the reply.  Oh, I thought I heard it break when your shovel hit it, said the thin guy.  No, it was already broken, said the digger.

The problem started 5 feet (or so) from the road and continued with a completely collapsed thin wall plastic pipe ran inside a cement pipe all the way to the edge of the road.  It was a makeshift repair made years ago by the city which gradually over the last 6 months allowed less and less sewage to pass.  The city crew was nice enough to stay almost to dark to finish the repair (not by choice, as there was much gnarling and gnashing of teeth.  People showed up from throughout the city to witness the calamity and the repair of.

So here I am in PhD studies at TCU.  This is a very unbelievable thing for me.  Of course I believe I am there, so I should be more specific.  It is unbelievable that I will finish.  Already the first two weeks of PhD studies were so much different than Masters of just the last regular semester.  It is the same professors, same level classes (there are Master students in all 3 of my classes.  That is the first part: not sure I will finish.  Any time in my life up to five years ago I would have laughed at anyone even suggesting I try to earn a Masters degree.  I actually held people with college educations (until I got to know them) in suspicious contempt.  That is the second part which makes it unbelievable.  It is this disbelief which has led me to start this website and this blog.  I thought I could contribute to humankind through education.  I wanted to do that at the level of doing research and having a meaningful voice in changing what I see as a very out of date, inefficient, non productive method of educating our replacements in society.

There are many things which have led me to doubts about finishing my initial course.  Not the least being that I would be 60 years old when obtaining my PhD.  Then there is something called postdoctoral ???  I ask in the back of my mind … who is going to hire a recent graduate at that age?

Yet, many thousands of dollars of student loans exist and I still do not want to sit around the house living on Navy  Retirement and Disabled Veterans pay.  I want to do something (preferably teach) meaningful either to society or to myself.