NewScience Second Quarter 2007

Task % completed

Narrative

NewScience aims to bring to light the ways of thinking that honor the world of human experience, and so to connect the human being – students and teachers – to the disciplines that find the order and extend the means to operate in that world, i.e., science and technology.

This comes as a response to a common modern experience of  disconnection.  There are many such disconnections, one for instance is between science and its education.  Is science primarily a body of knowledge and a conventionally accepted line of inquiry?  We think so when we look chemistry for instance.  One learns atomic masses, valences, and at the same time one learns history.  Who were Dalton,  Avogadro, Planck and Bohr.  The more we look the more easily we see that the science of Chemistry has changed profoundly over the centuries.  Knowledge isn't a single body, solid and forever established.  Lines of inquiry have changed.  The questions and goals are set by human beings living in very different times and circumstances.  Human beings are crucial in the disciplines that find and create the order in the world.

Another disconnection we can find is the one between the promises of scientific knowledge and its paradoxical results.  Science empowers humanity and sets us free.  At the same time, with that freedom, comes fear and danger.  Pollution poisons wetlands, discolors the skies, clutters our cities with abandoned wrecks of cars that in turn leak fluids into the ground.  Energy which lights our homes produces toxins and waste.  Weapons that, etc.

and meaningful human experience of the world. When this is coupled with other modern experiences -- of the tragedies wrought through science and technology, for example in the forms of wide-spread pollution and nuclear threats; and the disconnects from experience wrought by our culture, where lives are lived out of sight of food production (“Momma, what's a cow? I thought milk came from the bottles?”), and multiple hours are spent staring at TVs and monitors, far from actual life -- young people find it increasingly difficult to find meaning in science and engineering.

The value of these disciplines is in their ordering of our experience, and through this knowledge learn to extend that experience and operate in the world. Its basis and value is in that experience, in that actual world. When young people feel disconnected from the world, they are also disconnected from the disciplines that find order in that world. They don't feel the value of the work.

A major step forward in the NewScience work was attained at the annual board meeting of the Saratoga Institute in Saratoga Springs, when the Institute accepted NewScience for fiscal sponsorship. This gives us not only their very well respected cachet, but also nonprofit status, vital for accepting donations, but also for the services that are available specifically to nonprofits, particularly in website building and newsletter mailing.

The work of the initiative needs to advance by providing concrete content via the website, explaining the vision and benefits to be offered; and then instituting a broad outreach campaign, largely through an introductory email newsletter with sign-ups for updates and for membership, including means to indicate interests in particular volunteering efforts in support of the initiative. Four forms are necessary to speak to the particular communities-of-interest – individuals and “unschoolers”; public school teachers; home and alternative school educators; and Waldorf school teachers.

That this be realized practically requires a sophisticated database aimed at the practical considerations of nonprofit work; and that this database be set up for the particulars of this initiative. The software has been found in “Organizers Database” and setup nearly complete.

An emailing service has been engaged for transmission, and for monitoring responses and failed mailings.

We have had a good deal of “practice” in recent months, in casting the ideas behind the work in language that speaks to a range of people. This has come about through personal encounters, and in meetings with other educators.

The second outreach phase is press releases to online and print journals; these will be formed from the above-mentioned newsletters.

The third phase will be collating the responses, and follow-up communications. It is anticipated that a network will begin to take shape from these responses. This is not likely to be large at the beginning, but will help to leverage the work.

Parallel with these is the production of examples of w NewScience approach. We will begin with four areas – warmth and temperature; matter and Hooke's Law; electricity and magnetism; and color. Complete sets of material are being produced, including phenomena, their ordering concepts, demonstrations that allow phenomena to show themselves in their inner nature; reference charts and graphics; biographies and history; and teaching aides.

These will be produced in formats that allow any part to be used; while a strong narrative-of-meaning carries through the carefully chosen sequences of demonstrations and concepts.

In addition, small modules that can be used as adjuncts to lessons will be developed, to serve as bridges between individual experience and the concepts of science. These will be made available to teachers and will be publicized for their quality of maintaining student engagement with the world of their experience, while lighting the way for scientific concepts.