Teaching Science and Math with Real World Examples
I ran across a great post at Technocrat titled If We Taught English the Way We Teach Mathematics.
“Suppose that those classes, from elementary school right through to high school, amounted to nothing more than reading dictionaries, getting drilled in spelling and formal grammatical construction, and memorizing vast vocabulary lists — you never read a novel, nor a poem; never had contact with anything beyond the pedantic complexity of English spelling and formal grammar, and precise definitions for an endless array of words. You would probably hate the subject.”
This is a great point, and the post goes on to talk about why it’s not just a lack of “real world” examples that makes math and science such boring, intimidating subjects. Here’s the perfect example of how a real world example definitely did not help one student with physics:
So if memorizing facts and formulas is no use, and contrived, often bizarre examples are no help, how should we teach math and science?