The motto of my high school was “Experiment. Explore. Excel”. And that isn’t where this fetish ends; the word “experiment” was everywhere. The school itself was an experiment1 about experiments (I was a member of first graduating cohort). But therein lies the biggest deficiency of the whole system.
So, we did experiments everyday in the chemistry laboratory, in physics class, everywhere. But what were these experiments about? What did we really do? What we did was to read the handout provided by the teacher and follow the instructions word for word (at this point, what I am going to say must already be obvious to you, dear (well-read and intelligent) reader). We even had classes with names like “Hands-on Chemistry I” and “Hands-on Physics II” 2 3 where we spent entire semesters reading 10 sheets of papers and an hour each week stirring mixtures in glass containers (and the question repeatedly pops into my head ― did I evolve a huge 0.16 inch thick cerebral cortex to stir stuff!?). After that, we’d write a lab report, a report that could have been written a week earlier because the results of the actual experiment were completely inconsequential. On occasion, the outcome of the experiment would differ from what was expected. At these times, you’d stare at the dried powder, ask yourself “Is it really yellow or is it almost white?”, conclude that it was indeed yellowish and then, inform the teacher. She’d give you a long look like you were showing her methamphetamine4 and proceed to dispose off the evil substance. Never once exploring why it was yellow instead of white! Never exploring which faulty procedure could have lead to this state. Never once running a single test to determine, at the very least, its basicity.
Long story short, we repeated experiments that had been done a million times before by a million different people.
The problem, of course, is the word “experiment”. What does it really mean? Here’s what Merriam-Webster lists as one of the definitions ―
ex · per · i · ment ― an operation or procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law.
There are actually two very different definitions within this single one ―
- to illustrate a known (effect or) law.
- to discover an unknown effect or law.
In schools, these two meanings get compounded together and we end up seeing only experiments of the first kind, which are not as enlightening as the second kind and which did not teach students everything that we expect them to learn from doing experiments, like creativity and problem solving skills.
No doubt there is some value in redoing “experiments”, but that’s only true when students are younger and when there’s no short supply of truly counter-intuitive phenomenon that you have to see to believe. Even in the boring and complicated experiments that we conduct as we get older, in many cases, there is some real experimentation by students (particularly in physics experiments) by modifying the parameters and playing with things. But at some point, experiments fail even at illustrating a known effect. That a chemical which is white and another chemical which is also white react together to form something that is greenish does not excite me any longer. To show that 
is actually (approximately) true, taking into consideration drag and experimental errors, is practically meaningless to a teenager. A logical derivation from more basic principles/formulae is almost always more convincing and insightful.
The natural question here is how do you have experimental learning in schools of the second kind, where students are able to discover an unknown effect or law5?
One of the best TEDTalks I have seen is about this exact question. Sugata Mitra, a Professor of Educational Technology, started the “Hole in the Wall” experiment, first in a Delhi slum and then, in more rural parts of India. In this experiment, he places a computer in a kiosk within a wall and besides filming it, that’s all he really does. The interesting bit in the talk below is at 9:26 (YouTube lets you go to middle of videos) where a kid who has never before seen a computer (and who thinks it’s an interactive television) learns, by himself, to browse the web in under 8 minutes. It’s fascinating to watch him first figure out that touching the small ball next to the screen moves something on the “television”. Soon, he learns to control the movements of the cursor and then, accidentally discovers that clicking produces interesting effects. By the end of the day, 70 kids have figured out the computer. The propagation of the knowledge is not just by each child discovering it, but also due to children teaching each other about it. It’s truly experimental learning.
Mitra has a really nice and fitting name for his learning methodology too – Minimally Invasive Education.
This is an extreme example of what experimental learning should be like. But it could happen in classrooms too, under the supervision of teachers. We could structure our classes (tolerance for failure would have to be high) so that people have more time to play. (Some schools get this but they also get too playful so to speak. The last time LEGO was fun for me was when I was 8. Play (clearly, I picked the wrong word here) would have to be very different for children of different age groups. By the time you are 14, drop-out-of-school-and-do-a-startup-worthy web services and desktop software are “play”.) Admittedly, it’s tough to let students experiment in many fields. Should schools allow students to mix radioactive and potentially biohazardous substances that aren’t supposed to be mixed together? Maybe not. Math, computer science and most of physics are much easier to experiment in. All you need is either a pen and a piece of paper or a computer.6
The other thing that schools could do is to get out of the fucking way and give more free time to students. For most of my high school life, I hardly had any time to do anything outside school. There was just so much schoolwork and homework. But in my final semester, the school pushed all our classes to Monday and Tuesday and made us do either a 3-day internship or a research project with a university professor. Since I picked the latter, I only had meetings once or twice a week. I practically had 5 day weekends and who’d have guess it, that’s when I did some of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done. I worked on Devo and Ubiquity and a bunch of other personal projects. I started reading novels and nonfiction and blogs again. I had a much better intellectual life than I ever had in school.
To experiment is to discover
I’m not really sure what a school can do to facitilate real experimental learning. I believe that the best role that school can play is the most minimal one – bring together people with similar interests and just let them do whatever they think is fun.
There just might be a more active role for schools but alas, we have gotten hold of the wrong meaning of “experiment”. It’s sad to see millions of dollars in education research wasted and schools around the world fall into the same trap. We continue down this path without realizing how wrong we all are because, to truly experiment is to discover, not repeat.
- Apparently, the Singapore government felt that its education system wasn’t producing enough talented people, so like any sufficiently authoritarian (in a loose sense of that word, of course) government blind to its own faults, it figured that the schools were the one that were bad. And then, they started my school. ↩
- As you might guess, creativity is not a job requirement for chief-module-namer here. ↩
- “Hands-on learning”, of course, is just another alternative term for “experimental learning”; possibly more accurate but in practise, it’s all lumped together to mean the same thing. ↩
- I know, methamphetamine isn’t yellowish-white. ↩
- They might, in fact, discover something that someone has already discovered before but there’s great joy and value in the act of discovering. ↩
- Arts on the other hand are all about play and I suppose that’s why these people are called “creatives”. While we have established that other professions like software developer require a lot of creativity too, this might also be true : that chemical engineers don’t need creativity to do their work and a lot of other people don’t either. One thing is certain – every profession is getting increasingly creative. ↩
July 29th, 2009
by A. Servant
You may find some of the writings of John Taylor Gatto to be refreshing and full of hope. Look for descriptions of his “guerrilla curriculum.”
July 29th, 2009
by Aditya Mukherjee
You do realise that what you’ve described is pretty much the same story even in India? I’m guessing this plagues most of Asia — since we’re so good at copying things in this part of the world.
High School is never meant to be productive in the sense you want. It establishes ones ability to follow directions, and instil a “process”. Time for creative thinking comes in college (if you go to the right one — which you are). Don’t worry, you’ll forget all about this the moment you step in to the next phase. Why do you think schools have gone un-changed for so long?
Aside: there has to be a law somewhere as to the number of footnotes you can have in a post. And might I suggest increasing the size of the text in this comment box? I love small fonts, but this is a little ridiculous.
July 29th, 2009
by Sanchit Bareja
Haha, the 3rd last paragraph is so true for me. In year 4 I was packed with so many modules and had no time to do anything I really liked. I though I would try and fit everything I like with my school subjects but schools are rather bad at allowing you to express your creativity. I guess for motivated students independent study modules are most rewarding. I wonder how long will our school take to implement it. There was some speculation about it but it has lost its buzz. Its also ironically true that I learnt most out my personal study.
July 30th, 2009
by Abi Raja
The Author
@A. Servant Indeed John Taylor Gatto’s “Guerrilla Curriculum” essay is pretty interesting but I don’t know if I would call it hopeful. I know he explicitly insists that he isn’t talking of a conspiracy, the tone of his writing suggests otherwise, which of course isn’t true because educators and politicians did not conspire together to form the modern school curriculum. You could say that the curriculum’s designed by conflicting interest groups (sadly, as it always seems to be in modern American politics..) to increase obedience to “the system” (I only use it as Haruki Murakami used it in his speech). Is the The Underground History of American Education any good?
@Aditya I think the same problems plague education systems all around the world including the ones in the UK and the US. I know, high schools were not originally designed to enable “creative thinking” but most people realized a decade ago that they should be and these people have tried to move in that direction. Undoubtedly, there’s been some progress here. India is probably too slow to implement such changes quickly. (Until 8th grade, I did the Indian CBSE curriculum and I know how pathetic it is because it’s all about memorization.) My high school is certainly a step up from that.
But here’s the thing – my school was started (I was part of the first graduating cohort) to do precisely this, make students more creative and yet, it fails in almost the same ways that normal schools fail. That’s sad.
@Sanchit Really, the school should give more free time but be glad that you’re almost done with high school.
August 1st, 2009
by Cap'n Refsmmat
As a freshly-graduated high-school student, I feel your pain. I suffered through pointless labs in chemistry and physics classes, although probably less than you did.
I actually wrote about the problem a long time ago: http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2008/02/07/so-much-for-labs/ Now that you’ve brought it back to my mind, I think I’ll start thinking about the subject again… education — and the failings of it — is one of my biggest interests as I head off to be educated even more, and I’m always trying to find ways to better teach science and math (my specialties). Think of the possibilities if our education systems functioned properly, teaching people to think creatively and critically.
I really like the concept in the TED talk, by the way. Have you ever read The Mathematician’s Lament?
http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
August 4th, 2009
by Abi Raja
The Author
@Cap’n I tried to comment on your blog but I think it failed to get through. Here’s what I wanted to say —
“While I do agree with you that “labs are ways to teach” (like I elaborated in my blogpost), I don’t think letting students discover an existing relationship would actually work. Like the other commenters pointed out, if a person’s grade depended on it, they would no doubt read up beforehand (personally, that’s what I would do; I’d probably even use my iPod to check online during the lab itself…). Also, in my high school, we did have some labs like this, but everyone already knew the relationship cos people talk to each other and people don’t want to fail! So essentially (and not completely consciously), we end up trying to make the data fit with the expected relationship. One of the problems here of course is that the cost of failure (lower grade) is too high. But even if you corrected that, I doubt this would work.
On the other hand, a better approach might be to ask students to build things (ungraded, of course), that way, it would be more enjoyable than simply verifying a relationship.”
And yes, there are so many ways that education systems could be improved. I’m going to write a few more blogposts about how my school sucked.
Ah, The Mathematician’s Lament. Someone sent it to me a few days back but it was too long so I just glanced through it. I should probably read it now though. Sounds relevant and interesting.
August 6th, 2009
by Cap'n Refsmmat
Whoops, sorry, your comment was stuck in my moderation queue.
The other commenter, swansont (who has a PhD in atomic physics), had a suggestion on his blog that would solve the “I already know the answer” relationship: you can simulate some things via computer and then change the physical rules. Instead of demonstrating some boring physical law, you change up the law and have the students devise a (computerized) way of figuring out what it is. There’s a link to his post in the comments if you’d like to take a look.
The Mathematician’s Lament is rather good, although I don’t quite agree with all of it.
August 13th, 2009
by A. Servant
@author
the deliberate dumbing down of america by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt may be more important to understand than Gatto’s Underground History.
@Aditya
Almost all of the public educational “systems” throughout the world have become dominated by the American / Prussian model.
October 12th, 2009
by Cyrus Hall
Very interesting post. If I may, I’d like to offer one reason that seems to constantly hold most teachers and professors back from opening up learning time: fear of unpredictable outcomes.
If one gives students small, easy to complete tasks (”experiments”), it’s pretty easy to “understand” how well they went. Better yet, the difference between class A and class B’s performance will be easy to quantify, which makes administrators and, further up the chain, governments happy. Just as importantly, it maintains a baseline of self-worth for teachers by making positive evaluation of the student (and therefore themselves) easy.
When I teach (computer science), I try to make ample space for true experimentation. I’m lucky enough to be at an institution where that is more or less allowed. Students excel, their interest peaks, and learning outcomes, while almost impossible to quantify directly, are much better. But even here I’ve had to deal with the typical questions: why didn’t the students “produce” more? (Because they were experimenting and learning) How can we compare this year to last year? (Subjectively, with a healthy dose of self-reflection) Etc…
Keep up the good fight.