Greensboring.com | Greensboro, NC

On its face, the story is absurd. Alan Alda is officially asking scientists to explain the nature of time... in terms that your average 6th grade student can understand.

My initial reaction was... HUH?

So according to the story, it appears that Alda has been keeping busy since the death of his acting career by being an advocate of science education. Which I think is a great thing to advocate, in general. But I gotta wonder exactly how much this guy has himself learned over the years regarding the matter of scientific communication.

His "challenge" is based on his point that the scientific community needs to communicate with the public more effectively, stop speaking in science-gibberish, if you will. The basic problem, unfortunately, is that many scientific subjects simply CAN'T be discussed without a fair amount of esoteric information being exchanged. Discussing the nature of time involves multi-dimensional constructs that your average 6th grade kid simply has no knowledge framework to deal with. /how can THAT be communicated in 6th grade terms without losing nearly all the information requested?

Another point that seems to have escaped Alda's attention: scientists ARE in fact making constant efforts to educate the public in general, and school kids in particular, in matters of science. My son is a big advocate of doing pubic demos for kids in matters of chemistry (his doctorate subject) and participates in such things regularly, as well as conducting seminars for local science teachers to help them develop lessons that work better than earlier efforts. This stunt is at best a waste of time -- completely redundant and doomed to failure.

Good one, Alan...

Uh time does not exist.

That will mess with the 5th graders head.

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:how can THAT be communicated in 6th grade terms without losing nearly all the information requested?

Isn't that the crux of his question?

All science education is about presenting half truths that children can understand - and then later teaching them a more accurate explanation that the earlier one has primed them to understand. 'Lying to children*' if you will

In many cases the lies follow scientific history - we learn Newtonian physics before Relativity, Newtonian Physics is wrong, or at least only right under the particular circumstances in which we commonly find ourselves. It's right enough to be bloody useful though.

We learn about evolution by tracing Darwin's discoveries, we add om Mendelian genetics and eventually if you go far enough you'll learn about the modern synthesis, genetic drift etc.

But we've had a hundred years or more to work these things out and so have developed useful memes to teach them. Our modern understanding of time is recent and esoteric.

I agree it is a huge challenge to teach about it in an understandable yet meaningful way. Just because it's difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't try or set it up as a goal.


*
The definition given in The Science of Discworld is as follows: "A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads the child's mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to appreciate if it has been primed with the lie". The authors acknowledge that some people might dispute the applicability of the term lie, while defending it on the grounds that "it is for the best possible reasons, but it is still a lie".

In reading the details of the article, I see that this is the second year that Alda has done this. His first challenge was based on his childhood question of "What is fire?"

Well, that WAS in fact a good question to ask for a response in 6th grade terms. Myself, I had to respond to the same question from my assistant scoutmaster one night sitting in front of a camp fire. I thought it was interesting that he seemed to think fire was a mystic, unanswerable question... and he was a bit disappointed in my response, though I'm pretty sure it WAS accurate (the incandescent-hot gasses flowing up from the result of chemical reactions combining carbon from the wood with ambient oxygen).

But I think "time" is a whole different matter in terms of explanation. But there you have it: the challenge has been issued, and I expect there will be some interesting responses to look through. In time, of course.