“It’s not every day a girl gets to play with lungs!” quoth Crox Minor (12) on returning from school earlier today, professing that she’d just had “The Best Science Lesson EVER”. Her science teacher, clearly of the old school, had been to the butcher and presented her class the recently excised, gloriously squishy and ichorously revolting heart and lungs of a pig. She invited the class to have a good grope; to feel the larynx in the windpipe, to prod the sponginess of the lung tissue; to marvel at the very thin yet remarkably strong membrane of the diaphragm. It clearly made an impression on Crox Minor. Why, I asked, did she like the science lesson so much? Because it was something new and unexpected; and because it wasn’t yet more bookwork.
My reaction was – HOORAY!
I, too, had the great good fortune to have been educated by an old-school biology teacher, who also, every now and then, came into class by way of the butcher. The fishmonger, too. At school I racked up a pretty sizable body count of earthworms, frogs, dogfishes and rats, before moving on to more exotic species at University. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think anyone has a right to call themselves a biologist until they’ve gotten all down and dirty with their subject of study. People who claim to be squeamish, or to object to dissection because they are (say) vegetarians, or think it’s cruel, shouldn’t be in the class. Models, videos and simulations are not – repeat not – the same thing at all.
I’ve just written a note of congratulation and support to Crox Minor’s science teacher. Before the nimbyist do-gooding health-and-safety vegan raffia mafia get to her first.
I have good memories of in an undergraduate Biology, course called “Comparative Biology of Vertebrates” I felt a real scientist when it came to trephining the skulls of rabbits and to investigate the hemispheres and their anatomy.
The highlight of the science curriculum during my primary education was the dissection of eyeballs. Yes, by a class of ten year olds, an eyeball apiece. She was (ahem) a visionary science teacher.
groan.
Right, two can play at that game:
So, which was her favourite pupil?
That’s the cornea-st joke so far.
Iris ent that.
Eye dunno…
oh, I remember my first lungs… we got to blow them up to see how much bigger they get then!! Absolutely something that stuck.
And it is quite fascinating, to see and investigate the organs and life forms like that under the microscope. I saw things I didn’t think about when gutting a fish “normally” (as in preparing them after taking them up from the lake). Good to write a note for the teacher, since I’m sure there are some people who thinks this is cruel or “don’t tell the kids beef comes from real life cows” (yes, that happened to my cousin’s class….. duh…)
We only ever got to dissect rats, during A level biology. Our teacher said my friend and I were “disgusting” for finding it so interesting, and for continuing the dissection to include organs other than the ones we were supposed to be looking at. I think her sympathies ran closer to the students who were crying / extremely reluctant / calling in “sick” that day.
I was actually talking to my husband about science education last night. He said they dissected frogs when they were in their early teens, but that was their only practical class in biology – ever! And they didn’t get to do any experimental chemistry at all! (We got to make all kinds of exciting smells and explosions, and also made glass from scratch). And no practical physics! We were always setting up a Van de Graaf generator, or making circuits and motors from components and battery packs! He’s now quite jealous, and wonders if he might have been more interested in science as a kid if he got to do more hands-on stuff.
Boooo to boring teachers!
Huzzah and pip-pip to Crox Minor’s excellent teacher!
As a PhD student, I was fortunate enough to land a gig as a Level 1 biology lab demonstrator, which each year involved much the same
gameteaching method, of getting down and dirty with some pre-haggissian innards. I loved it. It also helped feed my rapacious real ale habit.