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Blair Smith Science curricula should be restricted to knowledge that is applicable to the individual if programs are to maintain credibility, concepts memorable and essential to a democracy. Learning vast amounts of knowledge, which may or may not be factual, useful, or retained is antiquated. As educators, we lose credibility by forcing pupils to memorize useless jargon. The public education curriculum could be unshackled immensely by the reduction of terms, using only those idioms necessary to acquire understanding. This would exclude such things as many parts of the microscope, or cell components. Some terms are necessary for an activity to work, i.e., slides in the microscope and the basic parts of an organism. Also, a historical perspective of a topic can aid understanding, but the memorization of inventor's names, or places, only patronizes dead people and discourages travel. Individuals who have contributed so much to science deserve a better legacy. Hopefully, this flippant absurdity emphasizes the unimportance of jargon. The two greatest inventions of history, the plow and the wheel, were devices that literally changed humans from hunter gathers to an agrarian society. We do not know the names of those inventors, and yet somehow cars are still built and massive populations get fed. So terms should be categorize in a DVD program such as Encarta, where they can be referenced in minutes, not cluttering ones mind. In a world whose knowledge doubles every 10 years, we cannot afford to waste our time memorizing useless facts. For this reason, success in education does not lie in knowing facts but in the ability to acquire information, analyze it, and then use the findings to solve problems. This skill transcends all subject areas. The only prerequisite is the ability to read and evaluate, with a disposition to do so. |