Mohamed Adnan
Professor Adams
Science in the City Seminar 3
09-08-2013
The 95 Percent Solution Reflection
In “The 95 Percent Solution”, John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking point out that knowledge and learning is not limited to only the classroom. They believe that “School is not where most Americans learn most of their science” (486). The authors think that free-choice science learning through external resources such as parks, libraries, or museums exposes students to a stronger learning experience.
I completely agree with what the authors had to say in the article. Science should be learned through doing, not just reading and sitting in a classroom. As I child, I believed that if I crammed, memorized, and studied different scientific topics that I would truly grasp them. I learned that through that method, I would forget all the topics I learned within a few months. Exposing myself to a more practical method of learning that was more handson allowed me to form a stronger long term memory of each topic. I placed myself in a chemistry research laboratory and applied the concepts I had learned. This helped enforce the knowledge I learned and exposed me to a “real world” experience that made me consider every decision I made in order to obtain desired results in an experiment.
The article promotes free-choice learning and that in itself has many benefits in comparison to school based learning. In school, we go to lecture, we are assigned homework, we read textbooks, but we do not enjoy every topic as much as we would like to. However, free-choice science learning is all about going out and serving your thirst for knowledge. For example, going out to a zoo to observe species interactions is much more interesting and memorable than just reading about it.
However, learning in the classrooms is still necessary to build a foundation. Free-choice learning is just an extension of knowledge that should reinforce what we learn in our classrooms. I believe that the quality of the science education can also be improved through the teachers. As a child in elementary school, I felt that my science education was highly neglected. This is further reinforced by “a 2007 study of San Francisco Bay–area elementary schools found that 80 percent of K–5 multiple subject teachers who are responsible for teaching science in their classrooms reported spending 60 minutes or less per week on science; 16 percent of teachers reported spending no time at all on science. ” (487). Many students attribute schoolwork of being jaded, but I believe that if your teacher is passionate and interesting, then you will be interested in learning. Free-choice learning is essential for the development of better scientists, teachers, and a scientific community. A combination of improved teaching and free-choice learning can build great scientific minds.
