The Water Cycle—Drowning in our own confusions

For a few days this week, you might have heard our newsreaders offering information about signs of radiation leaked from the Japanese reactor showing up in Massachusetts rainwater. On Monday, CNN called in MIT Professor Jim Walsh to reassure the viewers. No need to “freak out,” he said, and giving his ultimate imprimatur, he added later, “If I had a glass right now, I’d drink the water.”   Okay, I thought. But thinking back over Carol Costello’s interview, I realized that something she had said earlier concerned me even more. In trying to contemplate what it might mean if radiation could travel to the U.S., Ms. Costello revealed an interesting, and, I think, common misconception about the water cycle and the earth: “I wouldn’t think it could travel that far.” Having been so stumped, Ms. Costello lost her objectivity later in the broadcast and asked the meteorologist: “Didn't your parents used to tell you God was bowling and that was the reason for the thunder?” I worry about us if we are losing track of what we do know about the universe. We can talk about “theories” another day.

Costello’s confusion about the water cycle probably serves as a good surrogate for our general student population and helps us to understand our mediocre results in science. I thought about a few things we should and probably do know to help ourselves make sense of the news about radiation: The earth orbits, and the earth turns. Our planet takes about a year to orbit the sun; meanwhile, the earth spins once a day. These facts are important because, among other things, they help us to understand that the water cycle is also affected by the movement of water around the earth while it’s moving. Yes, Japan seems very far away, but with all this movement of the planet, it’s entirely possible that some molecules of water or units of radiation could reach New England a day after their emission in Fukushima.

Now here’s the beginning of a problem. Most drawings and even many animations of the water cycle do not show the earth’s movement.  Here is one for kids from the EPA (nice depiction of the cycle; no earth movement); here’s another from the EPA with jazzier Flash—it does show clouds moving and states that the earth is moving, but it doesn’t show it, and the background doesn’t move.  The Euro Science Center its own version that might help us to remember that the earth moves, but it does not illustrate the motion. The so-called “Cool Water Cycle Song” gets a little closer, and Bill Nye, Science Guy offers one of the more clear illustrations. But still, you could miss it in all of these if you focus only on the names of the parts of the cycle.  There is a research question lurking here for someone regarding the efficacy of teaching tools. The real work on best practices is yet to be done. Our perception of how things work that could be assisted by more carefully developed art. What is beautiful or attractive is not always thorough, and our thinking is often at risk due to tunnel vision.    

When I was in school our science teachers made a point of reminding us that the water cycle occurred on a moving planet. We need to ask critical questions about how much to tell whenever we teach. Instructional minutes are precious, and students are not all the same person. Ms. Costello, and perhaps many current students, might be forgiven for being confused about how substances migrate. Still, we might hope for more from our journalists. Our system focuses on the water cycle by itself. I’m not sure that the cycle is always integrated with other knowledge about the earth. How many teachers look more comprehensively at the movement of water by means of The Water Cycle Game, a teacher resource,  which you can find archived (and no longer supported) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)?  

Care to explore more? Here are some links from Cornell University’s astronomy department about how fast the earth spins:

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=665

what makes it spin:

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=329

and how long it takes to orbit the sun:

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=356

It is not easy to educate thoroughly. There is always some art involved.

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party: Learning the (Her)Story

The first time I saw Judy Chicago’s work, The Dinner Party, was during its first tour in 1979. It was awesome then, shocking to many, and continues to inspire the unexpected emotions today. You can see it at the Brooklyn Museum now, where it’s permanently installed. As an interesting counterpart, there’s a small but extraordinary showing of the collaboration that produced The Dinner Party and many other powerful feminist works at the Museum of Arts and Design, also in New York. There, you can see Chicago’s beautifully detailed drawings that resulted in Audrey Cowan’s gorgeous tapestries. There is a generous selection from a number of pieces, including The Birth Project and The Holocaust Project, and the exhibit documents the friendship and artistic development that blossomed during their long collaboration, which began with Cowan contributing a runner to the dinner table.

There have been times when I felt so overwhelmed by the experience of seeing The Dinner Party that I could not concentrate on the artistry of the 400 people who produced the artifacts for it. It was a special pleasure last week to savor the details--depiction of thread selections and the side-by-side impressions of Chicago’s cartoons coupled with Cowan’s translations into thread. In this month celebrating women’s history, this is an exciting exhibit for our students to view. There’s nothing anonymous about it, and it’s all sheer beauty, even when it depicts pain.  This small museum is a jewel that illustrates the value of art, design, and craft in our lives. Public programs and open studios enable the visitor to experience art with all five senses.

The Second Question

"Miss, where is India?"

Context is important. It might be everything, as some people have suggested. The second question was asked last year in an urban college classroom. I was showing a video illustrating world population growth since the year 1 AD, and a student saw a reference to India on the screen, which depicted an unlabeled world map. I paused the video so we could establish the location. It occurred to me that the students might not be able to appreciate the video without some knowledge of continents and countries, so I asked about the locations of China (they knew), Japan (most knew), Korea (not many), Vietnam (only one). We didn't do much better on the historical references offered by this excellent video. What to do?

How had they learned geography? Photocopied line maps were labeled by copying the teacher's blackboard drawings. In my experience, labels alone don't help people remember where countries are. How did I learn geography? No student could say what a topographical map was. I remember making those with clay, and I think that if you make the Himalayas with your hands, you are less likely to forget where they are, or which countries sit on either side. That's what art does for you. Scaling the Himalayas with your fingers makes you aware of their awesome height. While you are making those peaks, you might be learning about the Dalai Llama's exile from Tibet or Ghandi's coastal birthplace, and the teacher might also play a beautiful raga. Through art, you are nurturing a hearty contextual soup for your memory so it won't let go of the location of India, and its role in the continent of Asia. At least that's what education was for me.

My students are bright and curious. They operate smart phones with lightning speed, and they know how to use search engines. I need their help when the DVD won’t load. Their education has taught them to act quickly on their impulses, and they are often excellent technicians. These are admirable skills. To get the best value from a liberal arts degree, though, they are going to need to know more. While the No Child Left Behind Act has shined a bright light on some inequities, a decade of enforcement has narrowed the scope of every school’s efforts. Bureaucratic education reforms have reduced us to check box goals: "Student is able to label India on a map." When you walk away from the photocopy and the test of that information, what do you know about the culture of the world or why the monsoon season is important to ecology? You may know how to look up things, but how do you know what to look up? Without an artful experience of learning, this single fact--the location of India--has nothing to connect with in our memories. It's fine to teach people enough about reading and writing and arithmetic so that they can shop functionally, but what about solving problems and understanding the consequences of shopping choices? It's easy to educate a nation of impulse-buyers, but don't we all deserve something more in terms of the quality of our thinking about the world? I'm all for assessing learning, but we need to expand our notion of what students need to know.

On a brighter note, in a high school classroom recently, I watched as a newly arrived student from Latin America ran her hands over the Andes Mountains on a classroom topographical map. The teacher guided the student’s hand slightly east of the peaks, and said, “Bolivia.” The student  smiled and said, “My country?” The teacher nodded, and the student stroked the valley, smiling happily,  sighing, “Home.” It’s all about the context, isn’t it?