Hey science teachers make it fun Tyler DeWitt
let me tell you a story it’s my first
year as a new high school science
teacher and I’m so eager I’m so excited
I’m pouring myself into my lesson plans
but I’m slowly coming to this horrifying
realization that my students just might
not be learning anything this happens
one day I just assigned my class to read
this textbook chapter about my favorite
subject in all of biology viruses and
how they attack and so I’m so excited to
discuss this with him and I comment and
I say can somebody please explain the
main ideas and why this is so cool
there’s silence finally my favorite
student she looks me straight in the eye
and she says the reading sucked and then
she clarified she says you know what I
don’t mean that it sucks I mean that I
didn’t understand a word of it it’s
boring um who cares and it sucks
these sympathetic smiles spread all
throughout the room though and I
realized that all of my other students
are in the same boat that maybe they
took notes or they memorize definitions
from the textbook but not one of them
really understood the main ideas not one
of them can tell me why this stuff is so
cool why it’s so important
I’m totally clueless I have no idea what
to do next
so the only thing I can think of is say
listen let me tell you a story the main
characters in the story are bacteria and
viruses these guys are blown up a couple
million times
the real bacteria and viruses are so
small we can’t see them without a
microscope and you guys might know
bacteria and viruses because they both
make us sick but what a lot of people
don’t know is that viruses
can also make bacteria sick now the
story that I start telling my kids it
starts out like a horror story once upon
a time there’s this happy little
bacterium don’t get too attached to him
maybe he’s floating around in your
stomach or in some spoiled food
somewhere and all of a sudden he starts
to not feel so good maybe he ate
something bad for lunch and then things
get really horrible as his skin rips
apart and he sees a virus coming out
from his insides and then it gets
horrible when he bursts open and the
army of viruses floods out from his
insides if H is right if you see this
and you’re a bacterium this is like your
worst nightmare but if you’re a virus
and you see this you cross those little
legs of yours and you think we rock
because it took a lot of crafty work to
infect this bacterium here’s what had to
happen a virus grabbed onto a bacterium
and it slipped its DNA into it the next
thing is that virus DNA made stuff that
chopped up the bacterial DNA and now
that we’ve gotten rid of the bacterial
DNA the virus DNA takes control of the
cell and it tells it to start making
more viruses because you see DNA is like
a blueprint that tells living things
what to make so this is kind of like
going into a car Factory and replacing
the blueprints with blueprints for
killer robots the workers still come the
next day they do their job but they’re
following different instructions so
replacing the bacterial DNA with virus
DNA turns the bacteria into a factory
for making viruses that is until it’s so
filled with bio viruses that it bursts
but that’s not the only way that viruses
infect back to
area some are much more crafting when a
secret-agent virus infects a bacterium
they do a little espionage here this
cloaked secret-agent virus is slipping
his DNA into the bacterial cell but
here’s the kicker it doesn’t do anything
harmful not at first
instead it silently slips into the
bacterias own DNA and it just stays
there like a terrorist sleeper cell
waiting for instructions and what’s
interesting about this is now whenever
this bacteria has babies the babies also
have the virus DNA in them so now we
have a whole extended bacterial family
filled with virus sleeper cells they’re
just happily living together until a
signal happens and bam all of the DNA
pops out it takes control of these cells
turns them into virus making factories
and they all burst a huge extended
bacterial family all dying with viruses
spilling out of their guts
the viruses taking over the bacterium so
now you understand how viruses can
attack cells there are two ways on the
left is what we call the lytic way where
the viruses go right in take over the
cells on the left is the lysogenic way
that uses secret agent viruses so this
stuff is not that hard right and now all
of you understand it but if you’ve
graduated from high school I could
almost guarantee you seen this
information before but I wet I bet it
was presented in a way that it didn’t
exactly stick in your mind so when my
students were first learning this why
did they hate it so much well there were
a couple reasons first of all I can
guarantee you that their textbooks
didn’t have secret agent viruses
didn’t have horror stories you know in
the communication of science there is
this obsession with seriousness it kills
me I’m not kidding I used to work for an
educational publisher and as a writer I
was always told never to use stories or
fun engaging language because then my
work might not be viewed as serious and
scientific right I mean because God
forbid somebody have fun when they’re
learning science so we have this field
of science that’s all about slime and
color changes check this out and then we
have of course as any good scientist has
to have explosions but if a textbook
seems too much fun it’s somehow
unscientific now another problem was
that the language in their textbook was
truly incomprehensible if we want to
summarize that story that I told you
earlier we could start by saying
something like these viruses make copies
in themselves by slipping their DNA into
a bacterium the way this showed up in
the textbook it looked like this
bacteria phage replication is initiated
through the introduction of viral
nucleic acid into a bacterium that’s
great
perfect for thirteen year olds but
here’s the thing there are plenty of
people in science education who would
look at this and say there’s no way that
we could ever give that to students
because it contains some language that
isn’t completely accurate for example I
told you that viruses have DNA well a
very tiny fraction of them don’t they
have something called RNA instead so
professional science writer would circle
that and say that has to go we have to
change it to something much more
technical and after a team of
professional science editors went over
this really simple explanation
they’d find fault with almost every word
I’ve used and they’d have to change
anything that wasn’t serious enough and
they’d have to change everything that
wasn’t 100% perfect then it would be
accurate but it would be completely
impossible to understand this is
horrifying you know I keep talking about
this idea of of telling a story and it’s
like science communication has taken on
this idea of what I call the tyranny of
precision you can’t just tell a story
it’s like science has become that
horrible storyteller that we all know
who gives us all the details nobody
cares about we are like oh I met my
friend for lunch the other day and she
was wearing these ugly jeans I mean they
weren’t really jeans they were more kind
of like leggings but like I guess
they’re actually kind of more like
jeggings like but I think you’re just
like oh my god
what is the point or even worse science
education is becoming like that guy who
always says actually right you want to
be like oh dude we have to get up in the
middle of the night and drive a hundred
miles in total darkness and that guy’s
like actually it was 87 point three
miles and you’re like actually shut up I
just trying to tell a story because good
storytelling is all about emotional
connection we have to convince our
audience that what we’re talking about
matters but just as important is knowing
which details we should leave out so
that the main point still comes across
I’m reminded of what the architect Mies
van der Rohe said and I paraphrase when
he said that sometimes you have to lie
in order to tell the truth I think the
sentiment is particularly relevant to
science education now finally I am I’m
often so disappointed when people think
that I’m
advocating a dumbing down of science
that’s not true at all I’m currently a
PhD student at MIT and I absolutely
understand the importance of detailed
specific scientific communication
between experts but not when we’re
trying to teach 13-year olds if a young
learner thinks that all viruses have DNA
that’s not going to ruin their chances
of success in science but if a young
learner can’t understand anything in
science and learns to hate it because it
all sounds like this that will ruin
their chances of success this needs to
stop and I wish that the change could
come from the institutions at the top
that are perpetuating these problems and
I beg them I beseech them to just stop
it but I think that’s unlikely so we are
so lucky that we have resources like the
Internet where we can circumvent these
institutions as from the bottom up
there’s a growing number of online
resources that are dedicated to just
explaining science in simple
understandable ways I dream of a
Wikipedia like website that would
explain any scientific concept you can
think of in simple language any middle
schooler can understand and I myself
spend most of my free time making these
science videos that I put on YouTube I
explain chemical equilibrium using
analogies to awkward middle school
dances and I talk about fuel cells with
stories about boys and girls at a summer
camp the feedback that I get is
sometimes misspelled and it’s often
written in Lal cats but nonetheless it’s
so appreciative so thankful that I know
this is the right way we should be
communicating science there’s still so
much work left to be done though and if
you’re involved with science in
anyway I urge you to join me pick up a
camera start to write a blog whatever
but leave out the seriousness leave out
the jargon make me laugh make me care
leave out those annoying details that
nobody cares about and just get to the
point how should you start why don’t you
say listen let me tell you a story thank
you
you