Thanks for the great article.
I see a *huge* animal bias in my college level students. To some of
them, trees are merely something you sit in to hunt from.
I think this is because most of them have had the interest
beaten/bored out of them in prior classes. Instead of starting with,
"This is a plant--it can make its own food, it can make oxygen, it can
skip sex altogether, you can reproduce it from a single leaf, it
mimics a bee to acheive pollination, this one can eat bugs, etc.
Isn't it cool?" they were given, "This is a plant cell--here are the
chloroplasts... Memorize all the parts of the cell and the
photosynthetic pathway." Snore...
If you hit them with the "gee whiz" factor up front, more of them stay
awake for the hard science later on. I realize that, in a way, that
is catering to the "entertain me" mentality, but you do need to find
the hook that draws them in. We need to have students at all levels
poking in terraria, lying belly-down in patches of bluets, tasting odd
crops, and mucking about in wet ditches.
Monique Reed
Texas A&M
"David R. Hershey" wrote:
>> "Plant Content in the National Science Education Standards"
>http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/hershey2.html>> David R. Hershey
--
WPC5
