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Space at School?
karolp
post Dec 11 2006, 12:18 PM
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Hi all,

I guess that issue may be considered part of space policy as it is often where future astronomers and astronauts may first encounter the topic of what is "out there" and become fond of it. Also, it spreads a general knowledge of basic things like causes of day and night, seasons and other things where astronomy and earthly matters meet. I am very curious what it is like where you live in. In Poland astronomy used to be a regular subject at school around the time of the golden space era of the 1960s, then was degraded to becoming part of physics classes in the 1980s and driven completely out of school curricula around now. So, what are you opinions on that? Is astronomy still taught at school where you live? Should it be taught at school at all?

Regards,

Karol P.


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ustrax
post Dec 11 2006, 12:52 PM
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QUOTE (karolp @ Dec 11 2006, 12:18 PM) *
Hi all,

I guess that issue may be considered part of space policy as it is often where future astronomers and astronauts may first encounter the topic of what is "out there" and become fond of it. Also, it spreads a general knowledge of basic things like causes of day and night, seasons and other things where astronomy and earthly matters meet. I am very curious what it is like where you live in. In Poland astronomy used to be a regular subject at school around the time of the golden space era of the 1960s, then was degraded to becoming part of physics classes in the 1980s and driven completely out of school curricula around now. So, what are you opinions on that? Is astronomy still taught at school where you live? Should it be taught at school at all?

Regards,

Karol P.


I totall agree with you...
In this area, how I envy the American outreach programmes...
In my school days I only remember giving the basics about our solar system and nothing more...
I really don't know how things are today but this government is making a great effort to catch the lost time, just to give an example, while almost all the other ministries saw their budget reduced the Science one was increased in 7.9% and the Foundation for Science and Technology had an increase of !!! 75.6% !!!
Some work is done and the area you made reference to there is the Ciência Viva project, a great example...


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djellison
post Dec 11 2006, 01:08 PM
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I was able to get through school without being taught any astronomy. There was a small ammount of Astrophysics as an option module during A-Level physics, but nothing more than the basics.

Doug
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odave
post Dec 11 2006, 02:08 PM
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When I went through the U.S. public schools in the late 70s/early-mid 80s, astronomy was pretty much just a "unit" in the science classes. It got the most depth in my first year of high school, also called 9th grade, which was when I had just turned 14. Like Doug, I had a bit of astrophysics & orbital dynamics in my last year of high school physics, when I was 17. The depth and quality of the coverage in those classes really depended on the teacher - if the teacher was a space enthusiast, a lot of extra material tended to be inserted during the space unit. I didn't run into dedicated astronomy courses until university, but at that point I was too busy with engineering studies to take any of them.

My 9 year old daughter's 4th grade class has just started her solar system unit, which is going in to more depth on the composition of the planets than previous years. Her teacher also assigned an optional essay for extra credit on the Pluto planetary debate - it's cool that I can sit down with her and read all those UMSF posts!


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MizarKey
post Dec 11 2006, 04:24 PM
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Not so much Astronomy in the lower grades, but when I reached 9th grade I met a wonderful teacher who was a very enthusiastic Astronomy buff. He even got the High School to invest in an observatory with a 10" reflector. All during high school I was always able to skip other classes to assist with eclipses and other daytime observations. We had an astronomy club that met a couple of times a month and invited younger children to observe the planets. I'll never forget my first view of Saturn through the 10" scope - wow! I consider myself quite fortunate to have attended a high school with an observatory.


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JRehling
post Jan 2 2007, 06:05 PM
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My elementary school had lots of outdated materials. Globes showing countries that no longer existed were part of the mix. But one particular memory that's stuck with me is when I was assigned an "SRA" around 1978, when Pioneer Venus was making the papers. This SRA was a one-page essay on Venus with questions on the back for me to answer and then self-grade. With the reading over a decade out of date, it described Venus as being possibly a jungle planet, and the question "Is there life on Venus?" expected the answer "Nobody knows". Knowing that the consensus had shifted considerably on this by 1978 (while theoretical objections will be neverending), I wrote "No", of course, inevitably finding my answer "wrong". The teacher let me count it correct after I explained that my information, unlike my classroom's, was not 18 years out of date.

Overall, though, it was essentially possible to follow my educational arc with almost nothing said of outer space. Physics and advanced physics courses had some mention of orbital mechanics, but nothing of the nature of the worlds out there. The last mention of astronomy just might have been in fourth grade, at which time the planets were explained as little more than orrery props. We did visit a science museum around that time, which provided a bit more information than anything in our classrooms. My high school had an outstanding observatory which I made use of to see the planets and Halley's 1986 flyby (even doing some photometry of variable stars), but this was all "off the clock" on my own time. This despite the fact that Viking, Pioneer 11, Pioneer Venus, and Voyager all had most of their dazzling encounters while I was in school. I remember learning a lot about them OUT of school, but essentially nothing (but the aforementioned half-truths) while in the school building itself. Truly good data for the old chestnut that school gets in the way of an education.
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Bob Shaw
post Jan 2 2007, 06:45 PM
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I utterly loathed my time at a UK boarding school (think 'If...' but without the guns, not Hogwarts), but one day discovered that in the school library were two extraordinary books: the Paul Hamlyn UK edition of the Larousse Encyclopaedia of Spaceflight, and Carl Sagan and I S Shlkovski's 'Intelligent Life in the Universe'. With these, plus twice reading the Britannica, and a copy of Zdenek Kopal's 'Exploration of the Moon by Unmanned Spacecraft' which I found in a local bookshop, was the die cast. These were entirely self-learning, however, and played no part whatsoever in my formal academic education! Prior to that I had been a space-fixated child from an early age, mostly despite the promptings of parents and school authorities.


Bob Shaw


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odave
post Jan 2 2007, 07:28 PM
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In my post upthread I mentioned that my 9 year old was going through her space science unit at our local public elementary school. I flipped through the book before the holidays and overall I thought that the material presented was fine for a general survey at the 4th grade level.

The unit was 35 pages long and they spent about 3 weeks covering it. I'm not sure how much time was spent doing science per day. The first section of the unit covered the solar system in general: the sun, inner planets, asteroid belt, outer planets, and comets - I can't remember if they called out the Kuyper belt specifically but I don't think so. Then each planet and its moons got about a paragraph's worth of material that covered some of that panet's distinguishing features, such as Earth's oceans, Jupiter's great red spot, Saturn's rings, Titan's dense atmosphere, Uranus' ~98 degree axial tilt, etc.

Next up was space exploration, manned and unmanned. The book was published in 2000, so it had pictures from Galileo, MPF (though for some reason they referred to the entire spacecraft as "Sojourner" blink.gif but that was pretty much the only big gaffe in the unit), as well as the usual suspects from the Voyagers. Ulysses even got a mention when they were covering the sun. Telescopes (optical and radio) were next, with a nice full page cutaway drawing of HST and a full page biography of Clyde Tombaugh. The unit finished up with some basic astronomy - stars, galaxies, and constellations.

Her homework was to observe and draw the moon's phases over a two week period. Of course, this being Michigan in December, she only got to draw about four phases - the rest were lovely cloud drawings smile.gif

For her exam she was expected to know:

* what the solar system is
* what the sun is composed of
* the difference between inner and outer planets
* the definition of/difference between orbits and rotational axes
* the difference between asteroids and comets
* identify a drawing of the big dipper
* draw and label the moon's phases
* brief essay on why different constellations are visible at different times of year
* brief essay on why radio telescopes are needed
* brief essay on why most space exploration has been unmanned

For some reason she did not have to list the planets from memory, which I think would be more important than being able to draw and label moon phases. Go figure...

If you will permit me to brag, she got a 98% - the only thing she did wrong was label the first quarter phase "waxing quarter" - although it's not the proper term, she was technically correct tongue.gif

All in all I was pretty satisfied, though being a space nerd I wanted more depth. But then again they've got a lot of science to cover in a year. So far this year they've done geology, fossils, weather, and space. I think plants and animals are next.


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nprev
post Jan 2 2007, 08:52 PM
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Man, that's really good to hear, odave, especially in a public school. My daughter was your daughter's age back in the mid-90s, and she didn't receive ANY instruction in astronomy whatsoever, nor unfortunately could I transmit my "bug" to her...sigh. sad.gif

I think that karolp is right on target with his thesis, though. Astronomy & especially introductory planetary science should be taught in elementary school if for no other reason than it broadens the outlook of people and therefore makes their world-view a bit less provincial.

For example, here in the US I think we'd probably have a better-managed country if most of our politicians knew the difference between a star and a planet, to say nothing of other basic scientific concepts... rolleyes.gif ...certainly we'd have fewer problems funding UMSF!


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dvandorn
post Jan 3 2007, 02:57 AM
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You know, I was in grade school 46 to 40 years ago, so I don't have the clearest memories of exactly what kinds of science I was taught way back then. However, I do recall an event...

My brother was in 3rd grade and I was in 1st grade. My brother's class was doing its science lessons, and his teacher, Mrs. Ambrose, asked the class if anyone knew why the Moon had phases. My brother, a bright child and as interested in matters extraterrestrial as I was, raised his hand and proudly explained about how it (the Moon, not his hand) orbits around the Earth, always showing us its same face, and as it went around, its aspect to the Sun changed and so we saw different portions of it in illumination.

Mrs. Ambrose scolded him in front of class, told him he was wrong, and told the class that the Moon shows different phases because its distance from Earth changes as it orbits.

My brother got suspended from school because he stood his ground and told his teacher that she was wrong. In front of the class. The suspension was lifted and the teacher was disciplined (thankfully, was "retired" from her position after that school year) when my parents went to the school's principal and could (and did) demonstrate that even my brother's little kid brother (me), only in first grade, knew the subject better than their teacher did.

All I can really recall in my early space education is that when I was about eight or nine years old, I had read every single book in my school library and every single book in my public library's children's section. My parents went with me to the public library and talked them into giving me an "adult" library card, which you supposedly had to be 16 years old to be granted. I browsed through most of the subjects, but gravitated to the space books. By 1966 or so I had read every single book in my public library on astronomy, geology, meteorology and physics, as well as every scrap of science fiction available... smile.gif When I entered high school, I was lucky enough to attend the local university's laboratory high school, so I not only gained access to the high school's library, I gained access to the university's library, as well.

Sometime in the middle of high school, I hit puberty really hard and it hit back just as hard -- but the upshot was that my interests widened (read: girls), and I sort of slowed down in my voracious reading. I stopped reading everything just for the sake of reading it, and concentrated more on new materials on space exploration. And, as I grew, got an education, started working and got a "life", even my reading on space topics slowed.

This is partially why I have this vast storehouse of information (some of it quite trivial) about astronomy, geology, and many other subjects, but much of the basis of that knowledge is a little dated. I've kept somewhat up to date in the physical sciences, and very up to date in space exploration (and only somewhat less in geology), but the vast amount of data I acquired as a child, that forms most of my knowledge base, is, admittedly, 40-plus years from when I acquired it and was probably 5 to 50 years old when I first read it.

So, when some of my comments may seem to have outdated concepts, just remember that I'm almost entirely self-educated in science and technology, and much of that is based on the voracious reading I did as a child...

-the other Doug


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nprev
post Jan 3 2007, 03:24 AM
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Harrowing but very admirable story about you & your brother, dvandorn; LOVED the outcome, though, and congrats on not backing down!!! mad.gif

Back when I was in eighth grade (13 yrs. old for our UK friends; not sure what form that translates to), I went down to the school gym to get a Coke for lunch. A number of the coaches were in the break room, and a Mr. Hope (who later became the school district superintendent, believe it or not) called across the room to me, "Hey, Previsich! How far away is Mars?" whereupon he & his colleagues broke into laughter. (My science fair project was a Mars Jar, and it won). I shot back "38 million miles during a close opposition, which happens every 17 years. You want me to go figure out the number for today?" This earned me a night of detention for being a "smartass"... rolleyes.gif

I was self-taught in space stuff as well, D. I read everything I could find, esp. those great "How & Why" books before I started school. One big misconception I had was that you needed a telescope to see the stars at all. As it turns out, I was severely nearsighted, which was quickly noted when I started school & I shortly got my first pair of glasses. A few nights later, I went outside and first saw the stars in the dark Montana sky...I still remember that moment, and still marvel every time I see them.


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