Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
training often get higher-paying jobs elsewhere.
Children need hands-on experience with the experimental
method rather than just reading about science in a book. We can
be told about oxidation of wax as the explanation of the candle
flame. But we have a much more vivid sense of what's going on if
we witness the candle burning briefly in a bell jar until the carbon
dioxide produced by the burning surrounds the wick, blocks
access to oxygen, and the flame flickers and dies. We can be
taught about mitochondria in cells, how they mediate the oxidation
of food like the flame burning the wax, but it's another thing
altogether to see them under the microscope. We may be told that
oxygen is necessary for the life of some organisms and not others.
But we begin really to understand when we test the proposition in
a bell jar fully depleted of oxygen. What does oxygen do for us?
Why do we die without it? Where does the oxygen in the air come
from? How secure is the supply?
Experiment and the scientific method can be taught in many
matters other than science. Daniel Kunitz is a friend of mine from
college. He's spent his life as an innovative junior and senior high
school social sciences teacher. Want the students to understand
the Constitution of the United States? You could have them read
it, Article by Article, and then discuss it in class but, sadly, this
will put most of them to sleep. Or you could try the Kunitz
method: you forbid the students to read the Constitution. Instead,
you assign them, two for each state, to attend a Constitutional
Convention. You brief each of the thirteen teams in detail on the
particular interests of their state and region. The South Carolina
delegation, say, would be told of the primacy of cotton, the
necessity and morality of the slave trade, the danger posed by the
industrial north, and so on. The thirteen delegations assemble,
and with a little faculty guidance, but mainly on their own, over
some weeks write a constitution. Then they read the real Constitution.
The students have reserved war-making powers to the
President. The delegates of 1787 assigned them to Congress.
Why? The students have freed the slaves. The original Constitutional
Convention did not. Why? This takes more preparation by
the teachers and more work by the students, but the experience is
unforgettable. It's hard not to think that the nations of the Earth
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