Let me tell you a story.
Naj vam povem zgodbo.
It's my first year as a new high school science teacher, and I'm so eager. I'm so excited, I'm pouring myself into my lesson plans. But I'm slowly coming to this horrifying realization that my students just might not be learning anything.
To je prvo leto mojega poučevanja naravoslovja na srednji šoli in sem zelo zavzet. Zelo sem navdušen in res se potrudim za svoje učne ure. Počasi pa doumevam nekaj groznega, in sicer da se moji učenci morda ničesar ne naučijo.
This happens one day: I'd just assigned my class to read this textbook chapter about my favorite subject in all of biology: viruses and how they attack. And so I'm so excited to discuss this with them, and I come in and I say, "Can somebody please explain the main ideas and why this is so cool?"
Nekega dne se je zgodilo tole: mojemu razredu sem naročil, naj preberejo poglavje v učbeniku o moji najljubši temi pri biologiji: virusi in kako napadajo. Tako se veselim, da bom z njimi razpravljal o tem. Pridem v razred in rečem: "Mi lahko kdo, prosim, razloži, kaj so glavne ideje in zakaj je to tako kul?"
There's silence. Finally, my favorite student, she looks me straight in the eye, and she says, "The reading sucked."
Tišina. Končno me moja najljubša učenka pogleda naravnost v oči in reče: "Tekst je bil beden."
(Laughter)
Nato je pojasnila. Dejala je: "Veste,
And then she clarified. She said, "You know what, I don't mean that it sucks. I mean I didn't understand a word of it. It's boring, who cares, and it sucks."
ne mislim, da je zanič. Pomeni, da nisem razumela niti besede. Dolgočasno je. Mislim, koga briga, in še zanič je."
(Laughter)
Po sobi so se zdaj razširili
These sympathetic smiles spread all throughout the room now, and I realize that all of my other students are in the same boat, that maybe they took notes or memorized definitions from the textbook, but not one of them really understood the main ideas. Not one of them can tell me why this stuff is so cool, why it's so important.
sočutni nasmehi. Jaz pa sem dojel, da so vsi moji učenci na istem, da so si morda naredili zapiske ali so si zapomnili definicije iz učbenika, a nobeden izmed njih ni zares razumel glavnih idej. Niti eden mi ne zna povedati, zakaj je to tako kul, zakaj je tako pomembno.
I'm totally clueless. I have no idea what to do next. So the only thing I can think of is say, "Listen. Let me tell you a story. The main characters in the story are bacteria and viruses. These guys are blown up a couple million times. The real bacteria and viruses are so small we can't see them without a microscope, and you guys might know bacteria and viruses because they both make us sick. But what a lot of people don't know is that viruses can also make bacteria sick."
Popolnoma sem zgubljen. Pojma nimam, kaj naj storim naprej. Edina reč, ki se je spomnim, je: "Poslušajte. Naj vam povem zgodbo. Glavni liki v zgodbi so bakterije in virusi. Te tipe povečamo par milijonkrat. Prave bakterije in virusi so tako majhni, da jih ne moremo videti brez mikroskopa. Morda poznate viruse in bakterije, ker zaradi obeh zbolimo. Veliko ljudi pa ne ve, da virusi lahko okužijo tudi bakterije."
Now, the story that I start telling my kids, it starts out like a horror story. Once upon a time, there's this happy little bacterium. Don't get too attached to him.
Zgodba, ki jo začnem pripovedovati otrokom, se začne kot grozljivka. Nekoč je živela majhna vesela bakterija. Ne navežite se preveč nanjo.
(Laughter)
Morda plava v vašem želodcu
Maybe he's floating around in your stomach or in some spoiled food somewhere, and all of a sudden, he starts to not feel so good. Maybe he ate something bad for lunch. And then things get really horrible, as his skin rips apart, and he sees a virus coming out from his insides. And then it gets horrible when he bursts open and an army of viruses floods out from his insides. "Ouch" is right. If you see this, and you're a bacterium, this is like your worst nightmare. But if you're a virus and you see this, you cross those little legs of yours and you think, "We rock." Because it took a lot of crafty work to infect this bacterium. Here's what had to happen. A virus grabbed onto a bacterium and it slipped its DNA into it. The next thing is that virus DNA made stuff that chopped up the bacteria DNA. And now that we've gotten rid of the bacteria DNA, the virus DNA takes control of the cell and it tells it to start making more viruses. Because, you see, DNA is like a blueprint that tells living things what to make. So this is kind of like going into a car factory and replacing the blueprints with blueprints for killer robots. The workers still come the next day, they do their job, but they're following different instructions. So replacing the bacteria DNA with virus DNA turns the bacteria into a factory for making viruses -- that is, until it's so filled with viruses that it bursts. But that's not the only way that viruses infect bacteria. Some are much more crafty.
ali nekje v pokvarjeni hrani in kar naenkrat se ne počuti tako dobro. Morda je pojedel nekaj pokvarjenega za kosilo. Nato stvari postanejo res srhljive, ko se njegova koža razpara in vidi, kako iz njega prihaja virus. Nato postane grozljivo, ko se razpoči in iz njega priplava cela četa virusov. Če -- prav imate, auč! -- če to vidite in ste bakterija, je to kot najhujša nočna mora. Če pa ste virus in to vidite, prekrižate svoje nogice in si mislite: "Mi smo zakon." Potrebno je bilo veliko iznajdljivosti, da so okužili to bakterijo. Zgodilo se je naslednje. Virus se je pripel na bakterijo in vanjo spustil svoj DNK. Nato je ta virusni DNK naredil tisto snov, ki je razsekala bakterijin DNK. Zdaj, ko smo se znebili bakterijskega DNK, virusni DNK prevzame nadzor nad celico ter ji začne narekovati, da naredi več virusov. Veste, DNK je kot načrt, ki živim bitjem pove, kaj izdelovati. To je nekako tako, kot da bi šli v tovarno avtomobilov in zamenjali načrte s takimi za ubijalske robote. Delavci pridejo naslednji dan in opravijo delo, a sledijo drugačnim navodilom. Ko se bakterijski DNK zamenja z DNK-jem virusa, to spremeni bakterijo v tovarno za izdelavo virusov -- no, dokler ni tako polna virusov, da poči. A to ni edini način, da virusi okužijo bakterije. Nekateri so veliko bolj iznajdljivi.
(Laughter)
When a secret agent virus infects a bacterium, they do a little espionage. Here, this cloaked, secret agent virus is slipping his DNA into the bacterial cell, but here's the kicker: It doesn't do anything harmful -- not at first. Instead, it silently slips into the bacteria's own DNA, and it just stays there like a terrorist sleeper cell, waiting for instructions. And what's interesting about this is now, whenever this bacteria has babies, the babies also have the virus DNA in them. So now we have a whole extended bacteria family, filled with virus sleeper cells. They're just happily living together until a signal happens and bam! -- all of the DNA pops out. It takes control of these cells, turns them into virus-making factories, and they all burst, a huge, extended bacteria family, all dying with viruses spilling out of their guts, the viruses taking over the bacterium. So now you understand how viruses can attack cells. There are two ways: On the left is what we call the lytic way, where the viruses go right in and take over the cells. On the [right] is the lysogenic way that uses secret agent viruses.
Ko skrivni virusni agent okuži bakterijo, malo vohuni naokrog. Tukaj ta skrit skrivni virusni agent v bakterijsko celico podtakne svoj DNK a tu je trik: ne stori ničesar škodljivega -- vsaj ne na začetku. Namesto tega se tiho prikrade v bakterijski DNK in tam ostane kot nekakšna teroristična speča celica, ki čaka na navodila. Kar je pri tem zanimivo, je, da, ko ima bakterija otročičke, imajo tudi te otročički v sebi tudi virusni DNK. Zdaj imamo celo družino bakterij, ki je polna spalnih virusnih celic. Veselo živijo skupaj, dokler ne pride signal in -- BUM! -- ves DNK skoči ven. Prevzame nadzor nad celicami in jih spremeni v tovarne virsov in vse počijo, cela razširjena družina bakterij, vse umirajo, ko se iz njihovih drobovij izlivajo virusi, ki so prevzeli bakterije. Zdaj razumete, kako lahko virusi napadejo celice. To sta dva načina: na levi je litičen, pri katerem virusi vstopijo v celico in prevzamejo nadzor. Na desni je lizogeni način, ki uporabi skrivnega virusnega agenta.
So this stuff is not that hard, right? And now all of you understand it. But if you've graduated from high school, I can almost guarantee you've seen this information before. But I bet it was presented in a way that it didn't exactly stick in your mind.
To ni tako zapleteno, kajne? Vi to vsi razumete. Če ste naredili srednjo šolo, vam lahko zagotavljam, da ste to informacijo že videli. Stavim pa, da so jo predstavili na način,
So when my students were first learning this,
ki ni ravno ostal v glavi.
why did they hate it so much? Well, there were a couple of reasons.
Ko so se moji učenci prvič učili o tem, zakaj so to tako zasovražili? No, bilo je nekaj razlogov.
First of all, I can guarantee you you that their textbooks didn't have secret agent viruses, and they didn't have horror stories. You know, in the communication of science, there is this obsession with seriousness. It kills me. I'm not kidding. I used to work for an educational publisher, and as a writer, I was always told never to use stories or fun, engaging language, because then my work might not be viewed as "serious" and "scientific." I mean, because God forbid somebody have fun when they're learning science. So we have this field of science that's all about slime and color changes. Check this out. And then we have, of course, as any good scientist has to have ... explosions! But if a textbook seems too much fun, it's somehow unscientific.
Prvič, vam lahko zagotovim, da njihovi učbeniki ne vsebujejo skrivnih virusnih agentov in nimajo grozljivk. Veste, v znanstveni komunikaciji vlada obsedenost z resnostjo. To me ubija. Ne šalim se. Včasih sem delal pri izdaji izobraževalnih knjig. Kot pisatelju so mi dejali, da ne smem nikoli uporabiti zgodb, zabavnega ali zanimivega jezika, ker mojega dela drugi ne bi videli kot "resnega" ali "znanstvenega". Kajne? Mislim, da se ne bi slučajno kdo zabaval, ko se uči naravoslovja. V naravoslovju je polje, pri katerem se ukvarjamo s sluzjo in spremembe v barvah. Poglejte si tole. Imamo pa jasno tudi, kot katerikoli dobri znanstveniki, eksplozije! Če pa se učbenik zdi preveč zabaven, je na nek način neznanstven.
Now another problem was that the language in their textbook was truly incomprehensible. If we want to summarize that story that I told you earlier, we could start by saying, "These viruses make copies of themselves by slipping their DNA into a bacterium." The way this showed up in the textbook, it looked like this: "Bacteriophage replication is initiated through the introduction of viral nucleic acid into a bacterium." That's great, perfect for 13-year-olds.
Še ena težava je, da je bil jezik v učbeniku resnično nerazumljiv. Če bi želeli povzeti povedano zgodbo od prej, bi začeli z nečim takim: "Te virusi izdelajo kopije samih sebe tako, da v bakterijo podtaknejo svoj DNK." V učbeniku je to izgledalo nekako takole: "Reprodukcija bakteriofagov se začne z vstavljanjem virusne nukleinske kisline v bakterijo." To je enkratno, popolno za 13-letnike.
But here's the thing: There are plenty of people in science education who would look at this and say there's no way that we could ever give that to students, because it contains some language that isn't completely accurate. For example, I told you that viruses have DNA. Well, a very tiny fraction of them don't. They have something called RNA instead. So a professional science writer would say, "That has to go. We have to change it to something much more technical." And after a team of professional science editors went over this really simple explanation, they'd find fault with almost every word I've used, and they'd have to change anything that wasn't serious enough, and they'd have to change everything that wasn't 100 percent perfect. Then it would be accurate, but it would be completely impossible to understand. This is horrifying.
A stvar je taka. Veliko ljudi, ki poučuje naravoslovje, bi si to pogledalo in reklo, da niti slučajno tega ne bi dali svojim učencem, ker vsebuje jezik, ki ni popolnoma točen. Na primer, povedal sem vam, da imajo virusi DNK. No, majhen delček njih ga nima. Namesto tega majo nekaj, čemur pravimo RNK. Poklicni znanstveni pisatelj bi to obkrožil in rekel: "To mora ven. To moramo spremeniti v nekaj bolj strokovnega." Ko bi se te res preprosto razlage lotila skupina poklicnih znanstvenih urednikov, bi našli napake v skoraj vsaki besedi, ki sem jo uporabil, in bi spremenili vse, kar ni dovolj resno, in vse, kar ni 100-odstotno popolno. Potem bi bilo natančno, a popolnoma nerazumljivo. To je grozljivo.
You know, I keep talking about this idea of telling a story, and it's like science communication has taken on this idea of what I call the tyranny of precision, where you can't just tell a story. It's like science has become that horrible storyteller that we all know who gives us all the details nobody cares about, where you're like, "Oh, I met my friend for lunch the other day, and she was wearing these ugly jeans. I mean, they weren't really jeans, they were more like leggings, but I guess they're actually kind of more like jeggings, and you're just like, "Oh my God. What is the point?" Or even worse, science education is becoming like that guy who always says, "Actually." You want to be like, "Oh, dude, we had to get up in the middle of the night and drive a hundred miles in total darkness." And that guy's like, "Actually, it was 87.3 miles." And you're like, "Actually, shut up! I'm just trying to tell a story."
Veste, kar naprej govorim o tej ideji, da bi pripovedoval zgodbo. Zdi se, da je znanstvena komunikacija prevzela to idejo, ki ji jaz pravim tiranija natančnosti, kjer enostavno ne smete povedati zgodbe. Kot da je znanost postala tisti zanič pripovedovalec zgodb, ki ga vsi poznamo, ki nam pove vse podrobnosti, ki nikogar ne zanimajo, ko je nekako tako: "Ah, zadnjič sem šel s prijateljico na kosilo in je imela oblečene take grde kavbojke. Mislim, pravzaprav niso bile kavbojke, bile so kot nekakšne pajkice, ampak pravzaprav so bile nekako bolj kot mešanica obeh, recimo, ampak mislim, da ... " in vi si mislite: "O, bog. Kaj hočeš povedati?" Ali, kar je še huje, postaja učenje naravoslovja podobno tistemu tipu, ki vedno pravi: "V bistvu." Kajne? Najraje bi rekli: "Model, morali smo vstati smo sredi noči in se peljati 150 kilometrov v popolni temi." In ta tip reče: "V bistvu je bilo 138,8 kilometrov." In vi rečete: "V bistvu bodi tiho! Rad bi povedal zgodbo."
Because good storytelling is all about emotional connection. We have to convince our audience that what we're talking about matters. But just as important is knowing which details we should leave out so that the main point still comes across. I'm reminded of what the architect Mies van der Rohe said, and I paraphrase, when he said that sometimes, you have to lie in order to tell the truth. I think this sentiment is particularly relevant to science education.
Ker je dobro pripovedovanje zgodbe odvisno od čustvene povezave. Svoje občinstvo moramo prepričati, da je to, o čemer govorimo, pomembno. Ravno tako pa je pomembno, da vemo, katere podrobnosti moramo izpustiti, da še vedno povemo glavno sporočilo. To je opomnik na besede arhitekta Mies van der Rotha, parafraziram, dejal je, da se je včasih potrebno zlagati, da poveste resnico. Zdi se mi, da to še posebej drži za učenje naravoslovja.
Now, finally, I am often so disappointed when people think that I'm advocating a dumbing down of science. That's not true at all. I'm currently a Ph.D. student at MIT, and I absolutely understand the importance of detailed, specific scientific communication between experts, but not when we're trying to teach 13-year-olds. If a young learner thinks that all viruses have DNA, that's not going to ruin their chances of success in science. But if a young learner can't understand anything in science and learns to hate it because it all sounds like this, that will ruin their chances of success.
Zdaj, končno, sem pogosto tako razočaran, ko ljudje mislijo, da zagovarjam poneumljanje naravoslovja. To sploh ni res. Trenutno na MIT-ju pišem doktorat in popolnoma razumem, kako pomembna je podrobna, natančna znanstvena komunikacija med strokovnjaki, a ne, ko poskušamo naučiti 13-letnike. Če mlad učenec misli, da imajo vsi virusi DNK, to ne bo uničilo njegovih možnosti za uspeh v naravoslovju. A če mlad učenec ne razume ničesar pri naravoslovju in ga začne sovražiti, ker vse zveni tako, bo to uničilo njihove možnosti za uspeh.
This needs to stop ... and I wish that the change could come from the institutions at the top that are perpetuating these problems, and I beg them, I beseech them to just stop it. But I think that's unlikely. So we are so lucky that we have resources like the Internet, where we can circumvent these institutions from the bottom up. There's a growing number of online resources that are dedicated to just explaining science in simple, understandable ways. I dream of a Wikipedia-like website that would explain any scientific concept you can think of in simple language any middle schooler can understand. And I myself spend most of my free time making these science videos that I put on YouTube. I explain chemical equilibrium using analogies to awkward middle school dances, and I talk about fuel cells with stories about boys and girls at a summer camp. The feedback that I get is sometimes misspelled and it's often written in LOLcats,
To se mora prenehati in želim si, da bi te spremembe izhajale iz najvišjih ustanov, ki nadaljujejo s temi problemi, in prosim jih ter rotim, da naj že prenehajo. Mislim pa, da je to neverjetno. Srečo imamo, da imamo vire, kot je internet, kjer lahko preslepimo te ustanove od spodaj navzgor. Narašča namreč število internetnih sredstev, ki so posvečeni razlagi naravoslovja na preprost in razumljiv način. Sanjam o strani podobni Wikipediji, ki bi razložila katerikoli znanstveni koncept, ki si ga lahko izmislite, s preprostimi besedami, ki bi jih razumel katerikoli osnovnošolec. Jaz preživljam večino svojega prostega časa tako, da na YouTube dajem takšne znanstvene videe. Kemijsko ravnovesje pojasnim z analogijo nerodnega osnovnošolskega plesa in o gorivnih celicah pripovedujem zgodbe o fantih in dekletih na poletnih taborih. Odgovori, ki jih dobim, so včasih napačno črkovani in pogosto napisani z SMS jezikom,
(Laughter)
a so vseeno
but nonetheless, it's so appreciative, so thankful that I know this is the right way we should be communicating science.
tako pohvalni in hvaležni , da vem, da je to pravi način, kako bi morali govoriti o naravoslovju.
There's still so much work left to be done, though, and if you're involved with science in any way, I urge you to join me. Pick up a camera, start to write a blog, whatever, but leave out the seriousness, leave out the jargon. Make me laugh. Make me care. Leave out those annoying details that nobody cares about and just get to the point. How should you start? Why don't you say, "Listen, let me tell you a story."
Ostaja pa še veliko dela in, če se kakorkoli ukvarjate z naravoslovjem, vas spodbujam, da se mi pridružite. Vzemite kamero v roke, pričnite blog, karkoli, a izpustite resnost in izpustite žargon. Nasmejte me. Naredite tako, da mi bo mar. Izpustite nadležne podrobnosti, ki nikogar ne zanimajo, in povejte bistvo. Kako naj bi začeli? Zakaj ne bi kar rekli: "Poslušaj, naj ti povem zgodbo"?
Thank you.
Hvala.