When I recently read a Math teacher's lament (Paul Lockhart) on the plight of math instruction, I couldn't help wonder if there was an equivalent lament on the state of teaching Biology. I haven't found one yet. I share a similar sentiment for Biology instruction as Paul. His lament resonated so much with my own thoughts on the common misconceptions of what Biology is, particularly among those educated in India, where I did my schooling.
Biology is considered, in my circle of friends, synonymous with identifying the parts of an animal or plant! They cant be blamed for this misconception. Considering the diversity of life forms on earth, intelligent students realize early in their Biology curriculum, the futility of accumulating "store once, never recalled again memory", when they have to delve deep into the anatomy of select few species - cockroach, frog, plant... I don't recall learning any rationale as to why the deep study of anatomy of these few isolated samples of species would give me a panoramic view of living systems, their function, and their design. All I remember from those years of mindless cramming is a scattered vocabulary of terms - cloaca, ommatidia, parenchymatous cells etc. So most students quickly loose interest in it. Biology is shelved away in their brains as a boring discipline engaged in the pointless pursuit of identifying and naming the parts of critters and the likes.
Teaching Biology is perhaps even more challenging than teaching Math. Math is a product of abstract thought and is pure and beautiful at its core. It is liberated from reality - there are no imperfections, and rarely exceptions. Biology however, is more like engineering than mathematics. In fact it is "messy imperfect engineering" because there is no preconceived design. Living systems are the product of nature tinkering blindly over time. Imperfections abound in design. But it works. And those designs that don't work become extinct. To comprehend the underlying beauty of the design and order in living systems, one has to see through immense diversity and detail and identify common patterns of function and form that propel life in all its richness. That is hard. It is not like starting off with a few axioms and in short order experiencing the pleasure of proving an eternal mathematical truth. Having said that, perhaps Biology instruction can take that tip from Mathematics instruction - to start with as small a knowledge base as possible and focus on elucidating the underlying patterns and mechanisms of form and function rather than inundating our young with mind numbing diversity and detail. Being an engineer, I would have enjoyed and appreciated Biology if it was taught more like an engineering science where solving engineering problems are the path to learning and comprehension, as opposed to passive consumption of tons of detail (similar to Paul's statement of millions of adults remembering the formula for the solution to a quadratic equation, without knowing how it came about).
It gives me great pleasure to share the excitement and thrill of learning Biology in this blog for those, like me, who missed out on the fun of learning Biology(as it should be!) in their early life, and desire to have a glimpse of the beauty and order that propels life. I will continue to do this as I play catchup learning this thrilling, science of life.
One interesting side effect of my pursuit of learning Biology is that it is no longer possible to do some "unconscious actions" that I could do so easily before - I have to expend conscious thought and effort. For instance, I can no longer callously brush away that little pesky spider weaving webs in those hard to reach corners, or ignore that little ant and let it flush down the drain as it desperately clings to life on the edge with one leg stuck in a tiny blob of water. I am compelled to take the spider and leave it in the garden and engage in the "not so fast rescue operation" of that little ant (you cant scoop it with your fingers - it may become paste in the friction between your fingers and the surface you are scooping it from). And this behavioral change in me is not triggered by a new Buddistic view of life that captured my fancy, but from the simple realization that, that little ant or spider is much more complex and has millions of years of design that has gone into its making, despite it being "trial and error blind engineering", than the iphone in my pocket - a device that I so admire for its design, function, and beauty. And of course, a simple "drop test" comparison between my iphone and an ant proves the point - the resilience millions of years of what even blind design can produce. I am ignoring other minor comparison points such as self-replication...
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