[ta8645]

> I never liked the way biology was taught in high school. It was too much about the names of things. A subject so vast is spoiled by a textbook, which can only point at the endless parade of stuff-there-is-to-know.

Amen. You could easily teach quite intricate biology in grade school, if you focused on a fascinating example or two. How many more people would be inspired, rather than bored?

[atticora]

There's a nice discussion of this in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

> I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question – the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell – they couldn’t answer it at all!

> Then I say, “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being taught in Brazil!”

https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

[magicalhippo]

We had a student in class which was so brilliant at memorizing stuff.

But each test had one or two questions where you had to put together the knowledge, not just regurgitate, and that student consistently failed those question on each and every test.

Yet the student got top scores on each and every test, because the accumulated number of points was enough to get them into the top bracket.

I was so annoyed with that, asking the teacher how they could get top scores while clearly demonstrating they didn't understand the subject matter. Of course, all in vain.

edit: Great read BTW

[hahajk]

Measuring student outcomes is hard!

For example, do you think we should encourage students to study for tests, or should we encourage them to just show up? After all, if you understand it intuitively why would you need to study the night before?

Also, the act of testing changes the students being measured. As does the existence of a test in the future.

[Balgair]

I cannot disagree more here.

Biology is just astoundingly complicated, especially micro-bio.

Lets look at the 'Central Dogma' of biology as a point to focus on a bit. It's the idea of 'information' transfer. DNA gets decoded into RNA which then gets decoded into Protiens, right? Easy peasy little discussion. You go into how DNA works a bit, it's structure, it's functions. Then you go a bit more into RNA and the various sub types, how the decoding proteins work, Slicer and Dicer, etc. You then talk about how three letter codons work to make amino acids, how you transport the mRNA out of the nucleus, etc. At each step you take a look at how the thing works and you mention some other launching off points for more research if the kids are interested. This is how a lot of education works, things like cooking, math, history, etc.

Except nearly none of what I just said about the 'Central Dogma' is considered true anymore. Sure, some of it is, but the vast majority of how proteins get made is not encompassed in it. Nearly the entirety of modern micro-biology is all about the 'exceptions' to the 'Central Dogma'. So much so that you can't really even say that there is any appreciable difference between RNA and proteins anymore. Every week, and I am not joking here, there is at least one new paper detailing some hybrid mess of RNA and proteins that has critical importance in how we understand how even the most common parts of a cell works. It's to the point that I would not call the 'Central Dogma' and outright lie, but more of a useful fiction.

Like saying that a 'for loop' is how the internet works. Yes, there are 'for loops' in the internet, yes they are critical, yes, you need to learn about them. But no, you cannot teach someone about the internet via a fascinating example or two about 'for loops'.

Understanding biology is Hard, it is the end result of 4+ billion years of literal life and death. It is not something that can be done in a few examples. Even an understanding at a 12 grade level does in fact take a full school year to get to, and even then, it's just the barest launching point into the wider field. The OP s wrong. Full Stop. You do need to learn the names of these things, you do need to get down and do the work of learning all the facts, you do need to fill your brain with these things that are going to affect you as the world gets more and more complicated, you do need to connect this incredibly vast amount of information together. It is going to affect you or the ones you love.

Edutaiment is not the way forward here. Hard work is.

[pdm55]

Of course, the study of how living cells function is "hard". But that doesn't mean it has to be learnt without joy. We tend to explore things we enjoy. A lot of the writer's essays [1] are about finding some aspect of a topic intriguing and following that rabbit hole.

My own research centered on one subset of functions within E. coli. I was lucky that I found a carefully engineered subset of plasmids and adaptions of E.coli, that could be mathematically modelled [2] [3]. I didn't have to know the whole functioning of E. coli. I didn't have to use mathematics beyond algebra. That is, no calculus was needed. The key task was to put together the quantitative research of about half a dozen labs. Okay, I had a "mountain" of articles to read. And it took 5 years of effort. But it was only doable, because I was modelling a carefully constrained subset of cellular functions.

[1] https://jsomers.net/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8078069/

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425810/

[dekhn]

Modern biology is very much not an exception to the central dogma; it still remains central. Don't mistake the vehemence of the RNA biologists (of which I used to be one) for impact or significance (for example, the central dogma had no opinion of whether the ribosome was a protein machine, or an RNA machine, or a protein-RNA machine where RNA formed the critical core components).

The only really important detail that wasn't in the original dogma is reverse transcriptase, and they added a dotted line to support that once it was found in physical form.

[kerowak]

So, just to simplify your argument, you're saying that grade school students should not be taught biology in a way that GP finds more engaging, because:

> You do need to learn the names of these things, you do need to get down and do the work of learning all the facts, you do need to fill your brain with these things that are going to affect you as the world gets more and more complicated, you do need to connect this incredibly vast amount of information together. It is going to affect you or the ones you love.

[gfjx45234]

> Biology is just astoundingly complicated, especially micro-bio.

Do you mean molecular biology instead, which includes the study of central dogma?

(That's a common terminology hiccup, lots of people get this wrong)

[Starlevel004]

Relevant: https://xkcd.com/793/

[m3kw9]

It turns out the curriculum was made by a bunch of teachers that has been old school taught. Seniority and entrenchment, nobody in that group risking their heads to suggest any deviation from old beliefs

[lostemptations5]

Or maybe it wasn't done maliciously -- rather that's the way they thought it should be taught...