Announcement: Updating schedule is now Mondays and Thursdays. EXCITING!!!
Ok, readers, here’s your assignment for today.
1.) Design an experiment you can carry out with materials and knowledge accessible to a high school student.
2.) Come up with a way that your experiment affects the world.
3.) Work that “global impact” into the “purpose statement” of your baking-soda-volcano lab write-up.
That’s what we’re expected to do from now on with all our labs. There’s a saying among us IBers that says “IB, therefore I BS.” It’s true that we get pretty good at coming up with pretentiously intelligent-sounding nonsense, or at re-wording lowbrow concepts so that they sound higher-level. But that’s usually the result of our own desire to take shortcuts and not the absurdly impossible nature of the assignment.
1.) Design an experiment you can carry out with materials and knowledge accessible to a high school student.
2.) Come up with a way that your experiment affects the world.
3.) Work that “global impact” into the “purpose statement” of your baking-soda-volcano lab write-up.
That’s what we’re expected to do from now on with all our labs. There’s a saying among us IBers that says “IB, therefore I BS.” It’s true that we get pretty good at coming up with pretentiously intelligent-sounding nonsense, or at re-wording lowbrow concepts so that they sound higher-level. But that’s usually the result of our own desire to take shortcuts and not the absurdly impossible nature of the assignment.
This requirement is essentially a command to BS something. You’ll note it does not say “design an experiment that affects the world.” It says “figure out a way to spin some aspect of your experiment so that it may possibly be written to hypothetically affect the world.”
Think about the labs we’re doing. If you could cure cancer, end terrorism, or bring about world peace by looking at pond scum under microscopes, don’t you think the IB class of 06 (1806, that is) would have figured it out? Maybe the secret to a stable economy can be found right under an eggshell – just dissolve it in vinegar! It just hasn’t been noticed for centuries because we’re all too busy playing with the shell-less squishy bouncy eggs (which, by the way, is insanely fun).
But instead of writing up that lab and getting the lesson on osmosis that it was designed for, I’m too busy thinking up what it has to do with bird flu in Asia. Nothing. It has nothing to do with tea in China or bird flu in Asia or any other “global impact”! It’s an egg that was soaked in vinegar!
Lately I’ve had a hard time distinguishing between when I actually know something, and when I’m writing a bunch of buzzwords that sound nice. Maybe that’s all “knowledge” is – making easy stuff sound important.
My bio paper: “the theory of evolution has met with resistance from some groups who believe that the story of Creation found in the first book of the Judeo-Christian Bible is literal fact.”
What I really said: “some religious people don’t think evolution is real.” Now that’s not really higher-level IB thinking, now is it? Lots of people know that. Consider also that it had very little to do with the question I was answering about the influences on Darwin’s theories (those beliefs influenced his publicizing of his theories but not really his theories). But, I got points for it.
I do that all the time in just about every class except possibly Spanish. I’m not saying all of my work is lame ideas dressed up in fancy words, just that it’s a really easy fallback.
The thing about IB is it teaches you how to do that really well – first by piling on so much work that you don’t have time to craft higher-level theories, and then by asking you to come up with things that are impossible without an extremely high BS content.
I wonder, if we all stopped and thought about how much of our work really means something compared to how much just sounds like it does – we’d reconsider a lot of what we think we’ve “learned”. But then again, maybe this skill is just as vital as being able to actually say something of importance. What does that say about the world that IB is preparing us for?
Ah. There’s the “impact on society.” Dang I’m good.
1 comment:
I wrote to Amanda recently that I think maybe we're smart only in the sense that we have practice at expressing ourselves and higher level ideas.
In the same sense, we're smart only in the sense that we can find something to say about literally nothing.
I promise you, I never really had ten minutes of commentary to answer the question: If Desdemona doesn't talk very much in Othello, how come Shakespeare was so good at making everyone know she's so great?
The answer? The other characters talked about her and then she did something nice at the end of the play.
How the heck is that commentary? I was disgusted with myself for trying to seriously present that answer on its own, and for not being able to recognize that deeper answer. Apparently there isn't one.
We spend seven hours at school, a good deal extra working for school outside of it, and are learning little more than how to fool people. There's so much more I could be doing with my time.
Pretty much related- There was a series of lectures on Christian education at my church recently (I think I mentioned it in a note) and it was recorded. It's not on the internet yet but if you're interested I can let you know when it gets there.
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