the 201 portfolio

Muhammad Farrag

RHET 201

Summer 2012

Dr. Mee5a

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Table of contents

1.Cover Letter page 3-4 2.The Journals page 4-23

3.The paper drafts page 23-75

4. The final draft page 75-97

5. The last journal page 97-99

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Cover letter

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This letter is to my doctor, classmates and the paper readers.

Dear Dr. Mike, ok this is very formal let’s start again. Ya mee5a, I really enjoyed the course

with you, you was more of a good friend and will always be, however you never forgot that you are

my teacher, you taught me a lot. Not only did you teach me grammar and how to sense language,

but most importantly also you taught me how to get the best out of myself, because I’ve never

thought of writing such a good paper, and its all because of you giving me the freedom of choice in

whatever I want to write about, and simple leading me. Thank you very much, for being a big

brother.

Hey there homies, I had a great time in class with you, listening to your topics and reading

some of your papers. This was truly informative, to watch your present your topics and just sit and

learn. I also want to thank you for your time taking my questionnaire survey, reading my paper, and

listening to my presentation, I hope this added something.

Dear readers, this is a paper about “why do people hate science?” If you love science, this

paper will make you know your duty, which is spreading the love of science, and how to do it. But

if you hate science this paper will help you love science, and you’ll see why it is important to love

science. I organized the portfolio this way because this is the order that I’ve been writing it through

out the semester. Hope you enjoy it.

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The Journals

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journal 1:

Brainstorming

The problem:

I, as a science maniac, was always concerned about why do many people have this misconception of science in general; chemistry, biology, physics, and math - if you consider math as a science, but we will come to that later. Why do they view science as boring and why do they keep asking these meaningless questions like ‘what would I get by knowing that the speed of light is 3*10^8 m/s?’. Why do many people do not understand the very simple basics of science, the fundamentals of the surrounding nature, and the core of our existence? There is this division of states that humans encounter through their lives that I really like; first you are unconsciously incompetent, that is the worst state, and that when you are not aware of the existence of a something and off-course you are incompetent of using it. The next state, is a conscious incompetent, and that is when you are aware of the existence of something, but yet you still are incompetent of using it. Third is the conscious competent, looks like the perfect case, but it is not; that is when you are conscious that there is this thing and you are familiar with it in a way. The fourth state, which is ‘in fact’ the best state, is the unconscious competent which is doing the thing by heart without even bothering thinking of it consciously. To solidify this “ division of state” thing we can take the example of walking. First the baby is unconscious about the existence of such an act and of-course does not know how to walk. When he start to realize that he must walk, he starts to try but fails many times, and that’s the second state. The third state is when he succeeds in walking, however he is fully concentrating in it. The fourth one is the one we, adults, are in now, it is that we are walking without putting any effort on the mechanism of it, it just comes, and that is unconscious competent. From the moment I knew this division of state, I start categorizing where should science be, and where is it now; lets take a look on this, science should be continuously passing through all the states by every one of us, however it seems that it is spending much more time in the first state, and yet it did not get enough.

The target:

Looking down on the chronological order of the states, and how can science fit in, it is obvious that it is perfectly in-size. Science should have been going through all of these states continuously, in the sense that every new discovery was at the first state, then it moved to the second by the fact of discovering it. It then moves to the third state by knowing how to put this theory into action and getting out some fruitful results out of it, and the last state when all the people use it in different contexts without even knowing that they are using this technology ( for example many people use the GPS without knowing that it is one of the vast uses of general relativity ). Science discoveries already goes through all of these states nowadays, yes they are very few percentage of the population of the globe, yet there is some people doing it. However, this is not the problem; the problem is in complete strangers learning these new science discoveries and theories, knowing the use of it, putting it into many different contexts, and make an indispensable use of it. and by definition this is our target

The obstacles :

Why are we in this situation right now ? Well, this is a cause of a a single disaster that yielded in an unconscious, incompetent, scientifically-ignorant, boring, contaminated community. The reason is

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the improper way of teaching; teaching by definition is “the act that causes the understating of something by example or by experience”, teaching nowadays have been transformed into “ the art of getting the best grade, no matter how”. As a result the students grew up with the same ideology, putting much pressure on their youngsters to get high grades, no matter what they have actually learned. Thus, the job market becomes more competent because of the high grades and the higher ones, employing the highest grade student in the highest position to get the highest salary. And here comes the real dilemma, This guy who got the highest salaries because he got the highest grades, starts to believe in what his parents have told him ( get the highest grades no matter how ) because he is getting a tremendous amount of money. He then starts to teach his sons the same way he was taught plus teaching them to get money as much as they can no matter how. This makes them goes to business schools, mass-communication schools, acting and theater schools, and any other school that can get good money at the end, leaving the schools of sciences almost empty. This turned our community to a scientifically-ignorant community, born to get money, marry, get children and die which is a very boring process. Moreover, they are incompetent and unconscious of explaining any scientifical fact or any scientifical reason behind the existence of anything, even things that surround them daily.

The solution:

- Getting better education system- conveying science in a more fun way

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journal 2:

President, Tim Seldin. "Child Development Institute Parenting Today." Child Development Institute

Parenting Today. Child Development Institute Parenting Today, n.d. Web. 18 June 2012. <http://

childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-development/children-little-scientists.shtml>.

Tim Seldin showed in his topic that a ‘little scientist’ is a synonym of the word ‘kid’ . Kids are born as little scientists; they question the very fundamentals of the existence of anything, they question the way things work and why they work in that specific way, and that is the core feature of any scientist. He further discussed how can life mentors encourage this sense of exploration, by trying to mingle with their youngsters in as many activities as they can, that convey a science discovery or support a science theory. That is mainly to get them realize that science apply to real life.

Shepherd, Jessica. "Fertile Minds Need Feeding." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 02

Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/10/teaching-sats>.

This was Jessica Shepherd interviewing Ken Robinson, an educationalist, and asking mainly about how schools stifle creativity? Ken Robinson has this view about the current education system as one that suppresses the creativity and intelligence of student, he said “ we don’t want to tweak in the recipe - we want a new one”. This quote illustrates his point of view of having a new educational system that rather enhance creativity. His hypothetical education system contains of two main parts; the dynamic curriculum, in which separation of subjects is prevented and mingling different concepts from different subjects is rather enhanced, to achieve the so-called ‘interdisciplinary curriculum’. More of the the dynamic curriculum is that it allows different aged students to learn the same thing at the same time, put differently, it does not believe in age as one of the criteria to learn something. The second part of the hypothetical education system is the creativity in class room, and this part mainly addresses teachers who still thinks of creativity as being extrovert and bright; creativity can be simply put as allowing students to take risks.

Troop. "Why I Love Science." - Blog. N.p., 14 July 2008. Web. 17 June 2012. <http://www.city-

data.com/blogs/blog374-why-i-love-science.html>.

In this piece, Troop showed his passionate love of science and the reason behind this love. Troop loved science because he found in it the key that unlocks his imaginations and it helped him to put forth his ideas and hypotheses, “an element of science that is all too often not provided in schools”. Troop self-educated himself (this is a very crucial point that we will make a good use of it in the

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essay). He further stated that science provides him with the answers of how many things work, and why does it work that specific way, which, when he understands it, it puts him in an empire-state-of-mind.

"Walter Lewin, MIT Professor: "All of You Have Now Lost Your Virginity... in

Physics!" (interview)." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 June 2012. <http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF-m3XZKvLI>.

If we were to speak about the right way of teaching, Walter Lewin, a physics professor in MIT, has a total grasp of it. Professor Walter mentioned in his interview that his role is to explain scientific discoveries to any man walking in the street in a such a way that he can picture the whole idea and make use of it. Moreover, he called the teachers who just narrate science as boring topic and as a result making students hate science, ‘criminals’ he further explained “ they miss golden opportunities, they made it dull and boring, and so people begin to hate physics”. He also tackled a serious problem which is carrying on the bad teaching from their teachers to their sons when they become fathers, so their children will also teach their children the same misery, and so on and so forth. This link might also help teachers to know what does it mean to be a good teacher http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw

"What Do Scientists Do?" What Do Scientists Do? N.p., n.d. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://

weirdsciencekids.com/WhatDoScientistsDo.html>.

This Article shows exactly the scientific way of thinking. First scientists figure out a problem or a question, they then make the hypotheses, which is roughly the answer of the question. The next step is to check for the validity of this hypotheses, so they start conducting experiments; if the results of many different experiments holds to the same conclusion, which is the hypotheses, then this is true, otherwise it is not (and by otherwise I mean not a single experiment fails to give the same conclusion). In fact, reaching the conclusion from the experiments depends on the preliminary observations. And finally, publishing the then-called discovery to reach the world.

"Why My Kids Hate Science." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 24 Feb. 1991. Web. 17

June 2012. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1991/02/24/why-my-kids-hate-

science.html>.

The author was talking about how his little children were abused by the wrong science education. He sees that the ones to blame for this “ science turn-off” is the science teacher; because nowadays they are incompetent and they do not have enough knowledge to unleash the “explorer” living inside each kid. Giving this freedom-state for their minds to stroll with their imagination out beyond the stars, will help them and help us a big deal, in fact.

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Tyson, Neil De grass. "How to Encourage Little Scientists? Get Out of the Way!" PBS. PBS, 05

Feb. 2011. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/parents/theparentshow/how-do-you-encourage-

your-child-to-be-a-scientist-get-out-of-the-way/>.

Neil Tyson is an astrophysicist, he sees that parents get in the way of children curiosity, so he thinks that getting out of the way is the solution. He then supports the interactive learning, where parents and children get to play with each other in a way that the parents use to convey a certain scientific concepts using he very simple home utensils, a good example for this one was the sink float experiment with water and oil. Moreover, the philosophy of teaching kids is to teach how to think instead of what to to think of. Help them raise questions by themselves because sometimes there is questions that do not have answers, yet. And some do have more than one answer, where all makes sense, so it is not about the correct answer now, it is about how you think of the answer. So the important thing here is the process of getting to the most sensible right answer, not the answer itself. He wrapped up with magnificent word which is worth quoting “ what is a scientist? ... it is someone who never stopped being a kid”

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journal 3:

Bloom, Paul, and Dena Skolnick Weisberg. " Edge: WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE .

N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. <http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html>.

Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg were discussing the fact that many scientific discoveries defies the deepest understandings and beliefs our children have. They mentioned the example of the spherical nature of the Earth as a scientific discovery, that defies that fact that one can stand on any point on the sphere and remain still. They further stated the way the children learn, addressing two main points; the children notice the difference in school and at home, where teachers use the scientific discoveries to explain things that is not even trusted by the parents of these children. And here comes the importance of the second point, that a child get the information from the most credible source from his point of view. So that decides if he will trust the teacher or his parents.

Carmichael, Mary. "Nature's Little Scientists." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 22 Nov.

2009. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/11/22/nature-s-little-

scientists.html>.

The message Mary Carmichael wants to communicate through this piece is tackling parents aw well as teachers. Parents, in the first place, have to admit that their kids will never stop learning, and specially in the age-range between three and eight because this is the the age where their explorative souls reach its optimum activity. So parents should never say that this topic is too hard for our children to swallow at this age, they are always willing to understand theories as long as it is made simple enough to understand, no matter how exclusive it is. Mary was mainly addressing the theory of evolution, and here comes the teachers part. Evolution is a phenomenon that children encounter when they enter any competition, for example, and they figure out that only the best one wins, which is in fact an analogy for the “survival of the fittest”. So this must persuade and motivate us to start tangling core topics as such in the curricula taught to these kids.

Greene, Brian. "OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Put a Little Science in Your Life." The New York Times.

The New York Times, 01 June 2008. Web. 17 June 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/

opinion/01greene.html?pagewanted=all>.

Brian Greene, a physicist on string theory, showed how the human turn from little scientist into a scientifically illiterate person, by narrating his time line. He started by stating the fact that science is an indispensable mean of living, and he explained how a life without science will be a mess, giving the examples of M.R.I., CT scanners, mobile phones, pacemakers to make it even more obvious, and to make the reader capture how could have life been without those amazing technologies. Greene then illustrated that all the children are little scientists, and he supported his claim by the questions the kids ask like what is this? How does this work? Why, where, what kind of questions,

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which showed the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this spirit does not last long because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focused much on the details - i.e solving equations and memorizing definitions - paying no attention to the big picture - i.e the theory of relativity, string theory. Hence, science became lifeless. However, the big picture is the thing of importance and is the thing that we should struggle to clarify it to children, because this is the thing that will help them love science and appreciate science because they will know its uses, and this is when science comes to life. He put it in a nutshell at the end of his speech saying that we need to make a cultural shift to give science its proper position beside music, art, literature.

"How to Not Hate Science." BookRags. BookRags, n.d. Web. 18 June 2012. <http://

www.bookrags.com/articles/35.html>.

This article is talking mainly to people who hate science but are obliged to take it, it tries to help them out to just pass the course. Although I do not like the main concept, but I like the way the problem will be tackled. The article first divided the science into different categories, each category has its fields, then asked the reader to follow the steps. You must at first take a look on each field and decide which one are you interested the most. Second, try to make it interesting, for example by watching movies. Third, excel in a single concept of the science you chose and start teaching it to people. Last, spend good time in the laboratory and invent, because this is the fun part in science, when you actually do things and bring what was on the book to real life experience. This will help you realize the importance of science.

Kador, John. "ChiefExecutive.net." The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy. N.p., 1 Feb. 2012. Web. 17

June 2012. <http://chiefexecutive.net/the-perils-of-scientific-illiteracy>.

John Kador showed how misery it can be if we continued to be scientifically illiterate. He stated that the scientific literacy paves the way for maximizing the benefits from any field - even if it is a non-science one. He then stated that a scientific illiterate is one who can not explain neither understand the simple science theories, for example a result like this shows scientific illiteracy “only 47 percent of American adults were able give an approximation of how much of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, and 50 percent thought that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs.”

"Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED Talks, June 2006.

Web. 19 June 2012. <http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html>.

Ken Robinson, an educationalist, wanted to show that deep down inside any human being, there is a creator. This creativity is of equal importance as literacy in education and should be tackled efficiently. He then gave the example of the girl in the art class as a proof of the spirit of creation and being not afraid to mistake. From his point of view, being prepared to be wrong is the core

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foundation to come up with something original; he further says that unfortunately we are raised in a community that prohibits mistakes, and an educational system that educate children and take them out of their creativity simultaneously. Thus, this creative spirit is ripped off as soon as we grow up. Moreover, he sees that the hierarchy of the subjects (with mathematics and sciences at the top, and music and art at the bottom) forces the teachers and the students to concentrate on their brains more than their bodies, which is not the main reason for public education, at least from his opinion, he sees that they must be equally-professionally taught. Because he sees that as a result of this people will be judged solely on their academic abilities, which is absolutely not fair. However, humans must be judged on their intelligence because intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct.

Lowe, Derek. "A Chemist Responds to Slate's David Plotz's Claim That Not Enough Students Are

Going into Science and Engineering." Slate Magazine. Future Tense, 16 June 2012. Web. 18 June

2012. <http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/06/

scientist_shortage_is_a_myth_.html>.

Derek Lowe is convinced that we do not need much more scientists, in fact we need better scientists. He is a medicinal chemist and he is doing drug research. He cited himself as an example to support his claim, because he mentioned that what they lack when they go to the laboratory and spend time on new drug structures and new ways to find them is new ideas not labour force. So, it is obvious that a bright scientist will help much more than a bunch of average scientists.

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Annotated Bibliography

Bloom, Paul, and Dena Skolnick Weisberg. " Edge: Why Do Some People Resist Science .

N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .

Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg were discussing the fact that many scientific discoveries defies the deepest understandings and beliefs our children have, and that what makes them do not like science. They mentioned the example of the spherical nature of the Earth as a scientific discovery, that defies that fact that one can stand on any point on the sphere and remain still. They further stated the way the children learn, addressing two main points; the children notice the difference in school and at home, where teachers use the scientific discoveries to explain things that is not even trusted by the parents of these children. And here comes the importance of the second point, that a child get the information from the most credible source from his point of view. So that decides if he will trust the teacher or his parents.


2009. Web. 16 June 2012.


Greene, Brian. "OP-ED Contibuter; Put a Little Science in Your Life." The New York Times. The

New York Times, 01 June 2008. Web. 17 June 2012.

Brian Greene, a physicist on string theory, showed how the human turn from little scientist into a scientifically illiterate person, by narrating his time line. He started by stating the fact that science is an indispensable mean of living, and he explained how a life without science will be a mess, giving the examples of M.R.I., CT scanners, mobile phones, pacemakers to make it even more obvious, and to make the reader capture how could have life been without those amazing technologies. Greene then illustrated that all the children are little scientists, and he supported his claim by the questions the kids ask like what is this? How does this work? Why, where, what kind of questions, which showed the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this spirit does not last long because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focused much on the details - i.e solving equations and memorizing definitions - paying no attention to the big picture - i.e the theory of relativity, string

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theory. Hence, science became lifeless. However, the big picture is the thing of importance and is the thing that we should struggle to clarify it to children, because this is the thing that will help them love science and appreciate science because they will know its uses, and this is when science comes to life. He put it in a nutshell at the end of his speech saying that we need to make a cultural shift to give science its proper position beside music, art, literature.

Hazen, Robert M. "Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" (ActionBioscience). N.p., 21 Nov.

2002. Web. 23 June 2012.

Robert Hazen in his article, defined the scientific literacy as the background knowledge that gives a person the ability to tackle the normal science issues of our time like any other subject. From this perspective he stated that even some scientists are somehow scientifically illiterate, because they know much in their fields, but not even simple facts in other fields. With the same spoken, most of the college graduates are scientifically illiterate. The problem is that the majority of the world’s population are scientifically illiterate which made us intangible of the world around us, as science discoveries are so rapidly blending with our everyday life (from our house bells that we ring to the mobile phones that we carry). This said, Robert illustrates that we must enhance the education in each single stage we go through to be more considering of conveying, at least, the basic knowledge of science that decreases the statistics of the scientific illiteracy.

"How to Not Hate Science." BookRags. BookRags, n.d. Web. 18 June 2012.



June 2012.


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Web. 19 June 2012.

Ken Robinson, an educationalist, wanted to show that deep down inside any human being, there is a creator. This creativity is of equal importance as literacy in education and should be tackled efficiently. He then gave the example of the girl in the art class as a proof of the spirit of creation and being not afraid to mistake. From his point of view, being prepared to be wrong is the core foundation to come up with something original; he further says that unfortunately we are raised in a community that prohibits mistakes, and an educational system that educate children and take them out of their creativity simultaneously. Thus, this creative spirit is ripped off as soon as we grow up. Moreover, he sees that the hierarchy of the subjects (with mathematics and sciences at the top, and music and art at the bottom) forces the teachers and the students to concentrate on their brains more than their bodies, which is not the main reason for public education, at least from his opinion, he sees that they must be equally-professionally taught. Because he sees that as a result of this people will be judged solely on their academic abilities, which is absolutely not fair. However, humans must be judged on their intelligence because intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct.


Going into Science and Engineering." Slate Magazine. Future Tense, 16 June 2012. Web. 18

June 2012.


"Richard Feynman - Educated By My Father." YouTube. YouTube, 02 Oct. 2011. Web. 24 June

2012.

Richard Feynman talks about how he was raised and educated by his father. His father made things easy to understand, although it seemed very hard to Richard before. Moreover, Richard’s father was more concerned of the understanding of the concept than he was by only remembering names of theories, and this was clear in the example of the ‘inertia and the wagon’ that he mentioned. He was very loving to the way he was raised, he said “ no pressure, only interesting lovely discussions” when he wanted to illustrate how he was educated. Furthermore, when Richard went to college, his father asked Richard to explain to him some questions that his father himself did not know the answers of it. This obviously shows an example of a very good teacher and parent, and how parents should raise their children.

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Seldin, Tim. "Child Development Institute Parenting Today." Child Development Institute

Parenting Today. Child Development Institute Parenting Today, n.d. Web. 18 June 2012.



Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.


Troop. "Why I Love Science." - Blog. N.p., 14 July 2008. Web. 17 June 2012.

In this piece, Troop showed his passionate love of science and the reason behind this love. Troop loved science because he found in it the key that unlocks his imaginations and it helped him to put forth his ideas and hypotheses, “an element of science that is all too often not provided in schools”. Troop self-educated himself (this is a very crucial point that we will make a good use of it in the essay). He further stated that science provides him with the answers of how many things work, and why does it work that specific way, which, when he understands it, it puts him in an empire-state-of-mind.

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Feb. 2011. Web. 16 June 2012.



Physics!" (interview)." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 June 2012.


"What Do Scientists Do?" What Do Scientists Do? N.p., n.d. Web. 16 June 2012.



June 2012.

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The questions of the paper

- Why is science important ?- Why do many people hate science ?- How can we make people love science ?- Why is that even important ?

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journal 4:

Methodology

I was surveying on ‘why do people hate science?’ and it consists of two parts; the

questionnaire survey and an interview with .... . The questionnaire was about 15 yes/no, rating and

few words to answer questions. The first two questions were ‘do you know your talent? if yes what

is it? and if no, why so?‘ targeting to know how many people actually knew their talents which

reflects the way they were raised by their schools and parents, did they help them getting familiar

with their selves and talents? or diid they not? The next three questions were targeting parents and

whether they know their children’s talent or not. The sixth question ‘are you familiar with the

‘interactive learning’ concept?’ and this was mainly to show the unconscious incompetent

percentage, that is the percentage of people who do not even know that they are supposed to help

their children learn and understand what they took in school in a friendly manner that helps the

children’s minds to digest the information. The seventh question in fact showed the outcome of the

science education that we received and how did it shape our image about science, this was ‘

describe science in a word or two.’ The eighth question was to know how does people feel the

importance of science in their lives, and to what extent they think science is getting into their lives.

This was the rating question. The ninth question, ‘why is the sky blue?’ shows the percentage of

people who are scientifically literate, that means the percentage of people who have the basic

science knowledge to, at least, describe the every-day phenomenons around them. The purpose of

the tenth and the eleventh questions were to show two things; how many people fit to each category

of knowledge in science, and do people consider history, psychology, sociology as sciences too. The

former is tested simply by the percentages on each response, the latter is tested by the relative

percentages between the two questions. The twelfth question was only another way to ask about the

age, because some people have problems saying their age, specially women because they always

want to feel young so they may opt to skip the question instead of writing 31, for example. Plus that

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I only wanted to know how much experienced they were in life, so what they do for living can

reflect this more efficaciously than the age question. The fourteenth was about the gender, and I

wanted to know if females have better chances to know their talents over males. The last and my

favorite question is ‘do you like to take similar surveys again?’ It seems trivial and insignificant, in

fact it tests the mood of the person taking the survey, which I believe is the mood that the

questionnaire leave on the person taking it. And this, most importantly, reflects what s/he feels

when they just talk about science.

I posted the survey on www.freeonlinesurveys.com and asked my friends from Facebook

and the black berry messenger to take it. I have got 101 responds up till now, but that is because it

was posted on the twenty-third of june, so I believe this number will increase if I have more time.

There are 3 age groups; the students 17-21, small married men/women 25-35, and old married men/

women 40&above. So far it is almost equal percentages of males and females taking the survey. In

fact the good thing is that the survey is taken from different countries too, reflecting different

cultures and different education exposures.

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The survey questionnaire

1- Do you know your talent? Y/N

2- If yes, what is it ? If no, why so?

3- Do you have children ? Y/N (if no jump to question nu.6)

4- Do you know his/her/their talent(s)? Y/N

5- If yes, what is/are it/they? If no, why so? (please list them from the oldest to younger)

6- Are you familiar with the ‘interactive learning’ concept?

7- Describe science in a word or two.

8- Rate the importance of science in your life from 1 to 10. (1 means it is more of a luxury,10 means it is indispensable)

9- Why is the sky blue?

10- How much do you know about quantum physics? a- huh ... b- I think I know what you mean c- I have a grasp of it d- I know much

11- How much do you know about darwinism evolution? a- man, give me a break b- They were talking about it in National Geographic or something c- Roughly , something d- A lot

12- What do you do for living? (student is an option)

13- Are you happy doing what you do? Y/N

14- Male/ Female

15- Do you like to take similar surveys again? Y/N

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The paper drafts

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First draft

Muhammad Farrag

RHET 201

Prof. Michael Gibson

The first Draft (D1)

28 June 2012

Does 1+1 must equal 2 ?

Intro:

A couple of days ago, I was talking to a friend of mine when he mentioned this writer called

Shakespeare, or something, and how talented he was in writing plays, he dabbled in poetry.

However, he was stunned when he knew that I have never heard of him before, he told me that it is

like someone telling you he have never heard of Beethoven or Picasso, for example. Off-course I

knew Shakespeare, but I did that on purpose; I shot back “if I were to tell you the very same story,

professing an ignorance, of Faraday, Lenz, Planck, Schrodinger I do not think this time you will be

joking, like I was”. This is the problem, in fact. Very few people know who these scientists are, and

the sad thing is that the rest of the people do not give a shit, yet those are the Beethovens and the

Picassos of science. I remember the school days, when anyone who loved science was called a

‘geek’ or a ‘nerd’, which was not the best thing to be called with when you are a kid, on the

contrary, students who were more into music, acting and playing soccer were the cool guys in

school. The phenomenon of hating science is increasing; the question is, why is that? Who did that?

Who is it to blame? How to diminish this phenomenon? Or is that normal and I am just

exaggerating the importance of science in our lives?

Lit. Review:

Why is that? Mainly because of three main reasons. The education system needs to be

renewed, the way science is taught to kids needs to experience an utter change, the way parents

Farrag 25

25

raise their children needs a bit of change too.Lets start with the education system; the current

education system has two main brutal flaws, the first is the hierarchy of the subjects. Putting

mathematics and physical sciences at the top of the list, music and art at the bottom, and in between

we have the social sciences, forces the teachers and the students to concentrate on their brains the

most and focus less on any other part of their body, which is not the main reason of education.

Education is, according to the internet definition, the mean by which teachers deliver knowledge,

information and skills to their students, so it is obvious that knowledge is not the only stated thing.

However, the practical definition of education that we are experiencing and getting nowadays is

only stating knowledge in the list of things that need to be delivered from the teachers to students.

Education needs to strongly focus on developing the point of strength of every student, an teach

them how to enhance it, use it, and utilize every thing around them to their benefit. This point of

strength, could be dancing, speaking, fighting, playing a musical instrument, as well as researching,

and all of these are equally probable to happen in a person. Unfortunately our current education

system is mainly focusing on the brains of the students, which only makes it better for the students

with the researching skills, and, on the other hand, ruins the life of every other student. Thus, many

students start to realize that they are dumb and fail to believe in themselves being great people

because of the very low grades they are getting, which all of them are almost sciences. Due to the

immaturity of the students, the first feeling that accompanies this realization of failure is science-

hatred, not the educational-system-hatred (Ken Robinson). The second flaw in the educational

system is that it kills creativity. Brian Greene, a physicist in Colombia University, recounted in one

of his speeches that he was once in a second primary class and he asked them a division question

‘how do you do three into six?’ a girl came up on the board, drew a big six and put a three into it.

He said “This was not the answer I was expecting, but it was a six into three and she did it. She did

not care about being right or wrong, she just decided to give it a shot” This story showed the

creative spirit of kids and the indifference in doing mistakes, which so quickly vanishes in a

Farrag 26

26

community where doing a mistake is the biggest crime that you can ever commit. This fear of doing

mistakes brings along the fear of doing anything new, and therefore leashing our imagination and

creativity from going out beyond the stars and exploring the unseen world. This deprive the minds

from the ability to sense the beauty of science. Einstein once said “logic can take you from B to A,

but imagination can take you anywhere” and anywhere is the place you need to go to acquire the

science-sensation. As a result, students do not get this science-sensation, and start thinking of

science as drag and boring (Brain Greene, Ken Robinson, and The Daily Beast). The next problem

that we should consider when talking about the hopes of a more science-loving community is the

way science is taught in schools. We begin life as kids, as little scientists, and this can be easily

deduced from the kind of questions we ask when we are young, like what is this? How does this

work? Why? Where? What? Which shows the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this

spirit does not last long because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focus much on the details

and pay no attention to the real thing, the big picture; the teachers are really worried by us solving

this equation or balancing this reaction, and they are not keen about enhancing our ability to explore

and create nor are they keen about explaining the real concept of superstring theory or the theory of

relativity, for example. Hence, we do not understand how important science is, let alone

imagination, and yet science become lifeless. However, believing in the importance of delivering

the core concepts of the theory, and why is it important to conduct researches in such fields, brings

science to life. Therefore, kids will fall deeply in love with science, because they will find the

answers to all of their random questions, specially questions that they do not find their convincing

answers in the replies of their parents or teachers. The real disaster is that this destructive way of

teaching is carried by the students who will further teach their kids and so on an so forth. Professor

Walter Lewin, a physics professor in MIT, he has been teaching there for 40 years and he just set

the right track that teachers must follow when considering teaching such an interesting subject as

science http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw (Brian Greene, Walter Lewin, Mary

Farrag 27

27

Carmichael, Troop, and Tim Seldin). Finally, parents have to admit that their kids will never stop

learning, and specially in the age-range between three and eight because this is the the age where

their explorative souls reach its optimum activity. So parents should never say that this topic is too

hard for our children to swallow at this age, children are always willing to understand theories as

long as it is made simple enough to be understood, no matter how exclusive it is. Not only this, but

actually children also sometimes encounter some of the so-called ‘hard science topics’ in their daily

lives. For example, when children goes to participate in some tournaments or competitions they

notice that only the best can win, and in order to be the best you have to takeout the best; this is a

perfect analogy for the theory of evolution, and the ‘survival to the fittest’ concept. Moreover,

parents need to help teachers in the process of delivering the real message. Parents must be more

familiar and make a better use of the ‘interactive learning’ concept, which means helping their kids

to find answers to their random questions themselves, and explaining science theories in a simple

way that can be grasped by kids using simple experiments and some video aids, to help them more

with the imagination part. We can also take Richard Feynman’s father as a perfect example for

parents to follow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgAQV05fPEk (Walter Lewin, Richard

Feynman, Neil De grass Tyson, and Tim Seldin).

Is proper science education that important? Or can we just survive this one? Well, here

comes the scientific literacy in action. John Kador in " The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy” showed

how misery it can be if we continued to be scientifically illiterate. He stated that the scientific

literacy paves the way for maximizing the benefits from any field - even if it is a non-science one.

He then stated that a scientific illiterate is one who can not explain neither understand the simple

science theories, for example a result like this shows scientific illiteracy “only 47 percent of

American adults were able give an approximation of how much of the Earth’s surface is covered

with water, and 50 percent thought that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs.” Another article by

Farrag 28

28

by Robert Hazen called "Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" where he defined the

scientific literacy as the background knowledge that gives a person the ability to tackle the normal

science issues of our time like any other subject. From this perspective he stated that even some

scientists are somehow scientifically illiterate, because they know much in their fields, but not even

simple facts in other fields. With the same spoken, most of the college graduates are scientifically

illiterate. The problem is that the majority of the world’s population are scientifically illiterate

which made us intangible of the world around us, as science discoveries are so rapidly blending

with our everyday life (from our house bells that we ring to the mobile phones that we carry). This

said, Robert illustrates that we must enhance the education in each single stage we go through to be

more considering of conveying, at least, the basic knowledge of science that decreases the statistics

of the scientific illiteracy. This said, it shows why Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist and he is doing

drug research, had such a point of view in his article "A Chemist Responds to Slate's David Plotz's

Claim That Not Enough Students Are Going into Science and Engineering." He is convinced that

we do not need much more scientists, in fact we need better scientists. He cited himself as an

example to support his claim, because he mentioned that what they lack when they go to the

laboratory and spend time on new drug structures and new ways to find them is new ideas not

labour force. So, it is obvious that a bright scientist will help much more than a bunch of average

scientists. ( Robert Hazen, John Kador, and Derek Lowe)

How to reduce this phenomenon of hating science? An article of in BookRags called "How

to Not Hate Science" tackled this problem and was mainly talking to people who already hate

science. The article first divided the science into different categories, each category has its fields,

then asked the reader to follow the steps. You must at first take a look on each field and decide

which one are you interested the most. Second, try to make it interesting, for example by watching

movies. Third, excel in a single concept of the science you chose and start teaching it to people.

Last, spend good time in the laboratory and invent, because this is the fun part in science, when you

Farrag 29

29

actually do things and bring what was on the book to real life experience. This will help you realize

the importance of science. Also, Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg were discussing the fact

that many scientific discoveries defies the deepest understandings and beliefs our children have, and

that what makes them do not like science in " Edge: Why Do Some People Resist Science”. They

mentioned the example of the spherical nature of the Earth as a scientific discovery, that defies that

fact that one can stand on any point on the sphere and remain still. They further cited the way the

children learn in general, from their teachers and parents; the children notice the difference in

school and at home, where teachers use the scientific discoveries to explain things that is not even

trusted by the parents of these children. And here comes an vital point that a children get the

information from the most credible source from their point of view. So that decides if he will trust

the teacher or his parents. However, if we acted collectively to convey the same good education

both in schools and in homes, it will extremely affect the conception of science in the kids’ minds

(BookRags, and Paul Bloom & Deena Skolnick Weisberg).

Methodology:

I was surveying on ‘why do people hate science?’ by the means of a questionnaire. The

questionnaire was about 15 yes/no, rating and few words to answer questions. The first two

questions were ‘do you know your talent? if yes what is it? and if no, why so?‘ targeting to know

how many people actually knew their talents which reflects the way they were raised by their

schools and parents; did they help them getting familiar with their selves and talents? or diid they

not? This showed that 55% only of the people actually knew their talents, which indeed reflects that

this is the only percentage who received a good education.The next three questions were targeting

parents and whether they know their children’s talent or not; in fact this was really shocking,

because 95% of the parents who did the survey did not know their children’s talents, which proves

the fact that the bad education is carried by students who will further raise their kids in the same

manner. Thus, an exponential rate of growth to bad education system (from 55% to 95%). The sixth

Farrag 30

30

question ‘are you familiar with the ‘interactive learning’ concept?’ and this was mainly to show the

unconscious incompetent percentage, that is the percentage of people who do not even know that

they are supposed to help their children learn and understand what they took in school in a friendly

manner that helps the children’s minds to digest the information. This question got a 47% yes and

53% no, and my question here is, how do we look forward to better educated community when

almost only half of us knows how to properly educate? The seventh question in fact showed the

outcome of the science education that we received and how did it shape our image about science,

this was ‘ describe science in a word or two.’ Most of the replies were unexpectedly positive, and

by most I mean over 95%, merely three or four replies who saw that science is boring and

complicated. The eighth question was to know how does people feel the importance of science in

their lives, and to what extent they think science is getting into their lives. This was the rating

question. This was even weirder, because it showed that 40% only thought of science as

indispensable and 19% rated it as very important. This means that 59% of people feel the

importance of science in our lives, which is the small percentage that we were waiting for as a result

of the bad education system. However, the paradoxical part is why did many people sent positive

feedbacks in the seventh question, like ‘explaining the universe’, ‘Real magic’, ‘ knowing the

world’. The ninth question, ‘why is the sky blue?’ shows the percentage of people who are

scientifically literate, that means the percentage of people who have the basic science knowledge to,

at least, give a scientific explanation for the every-day phenomenons around them. Barely 25%

knew the right answer, which give a great solid evidence that we need a proper science education

that can fulfill us with the basic science information we need in order to arouse our reasoning skills

and put it in action. The purpose of the tenth and the eleventh questions were to show two things;

how many people fit to each category of knowledge in science, and do people consider history,

psychology, sociology as sciences too. The former is tested simply by the percentages on each

response, which are 44% like physical sciences like, physics, chemistry, and biology, and about

Farrag 31

31

75% like the social sciences like history, psychology. The latter is tested by the relative percentages

between the two questions which is obviously large, and this means that not many people realize

that there is another category of science called social sciences, and that they only looked on science

as the study of physics, biology, and chemistry.The twelfth question was only another way to ask

about the age, because some people have problems saying their age, specially women because they

always want to feel young so they may opt to skip the question instead of writing 31, for example.

Plus that I only wanted to know how much experienced they were in life, so what they do for living

can reflect this more efficaciously than the age question. The fourteenth was about the gender, and I





when they just talk about science. 73% said yes we would like to take similar surveys, which

reflected that talking about science put them in a good mood, or at least in an okay one, and this

reflects also the very deep love of science in each person.







cultures and different education exposures (1 from Canada, 3 from the US, 1 from Sweden, 4 from

the UK, 1 from Ukraine, and 98 from Egypt). I was supposed to interview an important figure in

this field of science education to add much more credibility to my paper, however, I see that this is

not the perfect timing that I should do that, I think I still need to be more informed about the topic

Farrag 32

32

and more indulged into it to be able to come up with effective and to-the-point (there was another

expression or a word for that, can you write it down) questions.

Conclusion:

“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn”

one of my favorite quotes to Albert Einstein, and this is supposed to be the way in which students

are educated. I have a direct message to the teachers and parents; Children have the ability to learn

and explore, they do not need your assistance to do that, in reality, they do need you to guide them,

to show them how to think, not what to think, to provide the conditions in which they can excel and

pioneer in whatever field they are talented in. There is a story that Ken Robison once said, perhaps

some of you already know it, but it is worth recounting. There was this girl who could not stand

still, she is always hyper active, and her mom came so many times to school upon requests from her

teachers suffering from her lack of concentration, maybe you know now that she suffered from

ADHD (Attention Deficiency Hyper Disorder), however this was in the late 30s when ADHD was

not yet discovered, and so it was not a condition that one can fall under. Her mom took her to the

doctor, told him her case, the doctor then asked her mom if he can talk with her only for 2 minutes

without her daughter. The Doctor put on some music, left the girl alone in the room, and took her

mom outside to another room where they can see her daughter. The doctor asked her mom to

observe. A bit by bit, the girl started dancing with synchrony on the music. The doctor turned to her

mom and said your daughter is not sick, she is a dancer, and my advise is to take her to a dance

school. The mother followed the advice and took her to the dance school, and there, the girl was

fascinated by the community, she said that she can see and communicate with people like her, who

could not stand still. She joined. She then became one of the most well-known ballet dancers, and

she was a multi-millionaire. The morale of the story is a message to parents and teachers; do not

ever be low of your youngsters’ talents. Should it be properly taken care of, it will yield the best

person s/he can actually be. Narrowing down this to our very core concept of the essay, I see that

Farrag 33

33

we must help our kids by knowing which category of science do they fit in and start to get involved

with them in this field. Even if they just do not fit in any of the science categories, we must give

them a better science education to be, at least, scientifically literate people. A life without science

could be fulfilling, for sure, but it will be bereft of something that gives life context in meaning.

Believe it or not, science is an indispensable thing that no one can live without. Its because of

science that we have M.R.I., CT Scanners, mobile phones, GPS, spaceships, satellites Cars, air

conditioners, heaters, elevators, and even your door bell. This shows that science is involved in

every detail of life, from the most trivial to the most vital. These diverse angles of the problem

should be tackled seriously and simultaneously, to embark on a cultural shift where science

becomes an appreciated thing by all Earth citizens.

Farrag 34

34

works cited:


N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .


2009. Web. 16 June 2012.




2002. Web. 23 June 2012.



June 2012.


Web. 19 June 2012.



June 2012.


2012.




Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.

Farrag 35

35






June 2012.

Farrag 36

36

Appendix A














14- Male/ Female


Farrag 37

37

Second draft

Muhammad FarragRHET 201


The second Draft (D2)

28 June 2011

Must 1+1 equal 2 ?

Intro:


Shakespeare, or something, and how talented he was in writing plays, and a bit of dabbling in

poetry that he did in his time. However, he was stunned when he knew that I had never heard of him

before, acting as though I had just implied that I had never heard of Beethoven before. I knew

Shakespeare of course, but I did that on purpose; I shot back “if I were to tell you the very same

story, professing an ignorance, of Faraday, Lenz, Planck or Schrodinger, I would assume that you

would be as nonplussed as I had pretended to be, and unlike me, you would not be kidding”. This is

the problem, in fact. Very few people know who these scientists are, and the vast majority of

populace could not care less about the Picassos and Shakespeares of Science. I remember back at

school, when anybody who displayed the slightest interest in science would immediately suffer the

dire consequences of being labelled a geek; incomparable of course to their holiness: the music

experts and the soccer fanatics. The phenomenon of contempt and disregard towards science is

increasing; and the questions that beg themselves are: Why is that? Who did that? Who is it to

blame? How to diminish this phenomenon? Is this newfound norm acceptable or am I just

exaggerating on the basis of a very particular personal love of the natural sciences.

Lit. Review:

Farrag 38

38

Why is there an increasing disregard toward science? The answer lies in the diagnosis of

three factors, the education system, the way science is taught, and the way parents raise their

children.

Lets start with the education system. The current education system has two main brutal

flaws, the first is the informal importance of subjects and the second is that it kills creativity. The

educational hierarchy is constructed to give more importance to science subjects and less

importance to non-science subjects. Even though, the formal definition of education, according to

wikipedia, is the mean by which teachers deliver knowledge, information and skills to their

students. Accordingly, skills can be drawing, music or other non-science activities. However, now-

a-days, education is being redefined in schools, to be the transfer of knowledge only. Education

needs to strongly focus on developing other point of strength of every student, which could be

dancing, speaking, fighting, playing a musical instrument, as well as researching. Even though all

of these are equally probable to happen in a person, unfortunately our current education system is

mainly focusing on the brains of the students. Thus, many students with non-science related talents

are made to believe that they are dumb, and fail to believe in themselves because of the very low

grades they are getting. Due to the immaturity of the students, the first feeling that accompanies this

realization of failure is science-hatred (Sir Ken Robinson). The second flaw in the educational

system is that it kills creativity. Brian Greene, a physicist in Colombia University, recounted in one

of his speeches that he was once teaching a second primary class, where he asked them ‘how do you

do three into six?’. It was meant as a division question. However, a girl came up on the board, drew

a big six and put a three into it. He said “This was not the answer I was expecting, but it was a six

into three and she did it. She did not care about being right or wrong, she just decided to give it a

shot” . This story showed the creativity in kids and the indifference in doing mistakes. These

qualities vanish in a community where doing a mistake is the biggest crime that you can ever

commit. The fear of doing mistakes brings along the fear of doing anything new, and therefore

Farrag 39

39

leashing our imagination and creativity from going out beyond the stars and exploring the unseen

world. This deprive the minds from the ability to sense the beauty of science, and as Einstein once

said “logic can take you from B to A, but imagination can take you anywhere” and anywhere is the

place you need to go to acquire the science-sensation. As a result, students do not get this science-

sensation, and start thinking of science as drag and boring (Brain Greene, Ken Robinson, and The

Daily Beast).

The second problem that we should consider when talking about the hopes of a more

science-loving community is the way science is taught in schools. We begin life as kids, as little

scientists, and this clear in our questions, like what is this? How does this work? Why? Where?

What? Which shows the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this spirit does not last for

long, because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focus much on the details, and pay no

attention to the real thing, the big picture. Teachers feel its more important if we solve an equation

or balance a reaction and they completely ignore to enhance our ability to explore, create and

understand things out of the man-made scope given in the curriculums. Thus, we do not understand

how important science is because we fail to integrate it with real life or “the big picture”, and yet

science become lifeless. However, believing in the importance of delivering the core concepts of the

theory, and why is it important to conduct researches in such fields, brings science to life. Things

like the real concept of superstring theory or the theory of relativity, for example, are extremely

vivd and full of creativity. Therefore, kids will fall deeply in love with science, because they will

find the answers to all of their random questions, specially questions that they do not find

convincing answers to in replies of their parents or teachers. The real disaster is that this destructive

way of teaching is inherited. Professor Walter Lewin, a physics professor in MIT, he has been

teaching there for 40 years and he just set the right track that teachers must follow when considering

teaching such an interesting subject as science http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw

(Brian Greene, Walter Lewin, Mary Carmichael, Troop, and Tim Seldin). Finally, parents have to

Farrag 40

40

admit that their kids will never stop learning, and specially in the age-range between three and eight

because this is the age where their explorative souls reach its optimum activity. So, parents should

never say that this topic is too hard at this age, children are always willing to understand theories as

long as it is made simple enough to be understood, no matter how complex it is. In addition,

children sometimes encounter some of the so-called ‘complex science topics’ in their daily lives.

For example, when children go to a tournament or a competition, they notice that only the best can

win, and in order to be the best you have to takeout the best; this is a perfect analogy for the theory

of evolution, and the ‘survival to the fittest’ concept. Moreover, parents need to help teachers in the

process of delivering the real message. Parents must be more familiar and make a better use of the

‘interactive learning’ concepts, which means helping their kids to find answers to their random

questions themselves, and explaining science theories in a simple way that can be grasped by kids

using simple experiments and videos. This will help them more use their imagination. We can also

take Richard Feynman’s father as a perfect example for parents to follow http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=HgAQV05fPEk (Walter Lewin, Richard Feynman, Neil De grass Tyson, and Tim Seldin).

Is a proper science education system important to establish? Or is the current educational

system satisfying the criteria of scientific education? Well, if the current educational system is

producing scientific literate people then the current system is suerly satisfying the criteria of

scientific education. But otherwise, the system will prove itself flawed. We will start by citing John

Kador in " The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy” and how he showed how miserable it can be if we

continued to be scientifically illiterate. He stated that the scientific literacy paves the way for

maximizing the benefits from any field - even if it is a non-science one. He then stated that a

scientific illiterate is one who can not explain neither understand the simple science theories, for

example a result like this shows scientific illiteracy “only 47 percent of American adults were able

give an approximation of how much of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, and 50 percent

thought that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs.” Another article by Robert Hazen called "Why

Farrag 41

41

Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" where he defined the scientific literacy as the background

knowledge that gives a person the ability to tackle the normal science issues of our time like any

other subject. From this perspective he stated that even some scientists are somehow scientifically

illiterate, because they know much in their fields, but not even simple facts in other fields. With the

same spoken, most of the college graduates are scientifically illiterate. The problem is that the

majority of the world’s population are scientifically illiterate which made us intangible of the world

around us, as science discoveries are so rapidly blending with our everyday life (from our house

bells that we ring to the mobile phones that we carry). This said, Robert illustrates that we must

enhance the education in each single stage we go through to be more considering of conveying, at

least, the basic knowledge of science that decreases the statistics of the scientific illiteracy. This

said, it shows why Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist and he is doing drug research, had such a point

of view in his article "A Chemist Responds to Slate's David Plotz's Claim That Not Enough

Students Are Going into Science and Engineering." He is convinced that we do not need much more

scientists, in fact we need better scientists. He cited himself as an example to support his claim,

because he mentioned that what they lack when they go to the laboratory and spend time on new

drug structures and new ways to find them is new ideas not labour force. So, it is obvious that a

bright scientist will help much more than a bunch of average scientists. ( Robert Hazen, John

Kador, and Derek Lowe)

How to reduce this phenomenon of hating science? An article of in BookRags called "How

to Not Hate Science" tackled this problem and was mainly talking to people who already hate

science. The article first divided the science into different categories, each category has its fields,

then asked the reader to follow the steps. You must at first take a look on each field and decide

which one are you interested the most. Second, try to make it interesting, for example by watching

movies. Third, excel in a single concept of the science you chose and start teaching it to people.

Last, spend good time in the laboratory and invent, because this is the fun part in science, when you

Farrag 42

42

actually do things and bring what was on the book to real life experience. This will help you realize

the importance of science. Also, Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg were discussing the fact

that many scientific discoveries defies the deepest understandings and beliefs our children have, and

that what makes them do not like science in " Edge: Why Do Some People Resist Science”. They

mentioned the example of the spherical nature of the Earth as a scientific discovery, that defies that

fact that one can stand on any point on the sphere and remain still. They further cited the way the

children learn in general, from their teachers and parents; the children notice the difference in

school and at home, where teachers use the scientific discoveries to explain things that is not even

trusted by the parents of these children. And here comes an vital point that a children get the

information from the most credible source from their point of view. So that decides if he will trust

the teacher or his parents. However, if we acted collectively to convey the same good education

both in schools and in homes, it will extremely affect the conception of science in the kids’ minds

(BookRags, and Paul Bloom & Deena Skolnick Weisberg).

Methodology:

I was surveying on ‘why do people hate science?’ by the means of a questionnaire. The

questionnaire was about 15 yes/no, rating and few words to answer questions. The first two

questions were ‘do you know your talent? if yes what is it? and if no, why so?‘ targeting to know

how many people actually knew their talents which reflects the way they were raised by their

schools and parents; did they help them getting familiar with their selves and talents? or diid they

not? This showed that 55% only of the people actually knew their talents, which indeed reflects that

this is the only percentage who received a good education.The next three questions were targeting

parents and whether they know their children’s talent or not; in fact this was really shocking,

because 95% of the parents who did the survey did not know their children’s talents, which proves

the fact that the bad education is carried by students who will further raise their kids in the same

manner. Thus, an exponential rate of growth to bad education system (from 55% to 95%). The sixth

Farrag 43

43

question ‘are you familiar with the ‘interactive learning’ concept?’ and this was mainly to show the

unconscious incompetent percentage, that is the percentage of people who do not even know that

they are supposed to help their children learn and understand what they took in school in a friendly

manner that helps the children’s minds to digest the information. This question got a 47% yes and

53% no, and my question here is, how do we look forward to better educated community when

almost only half of us knows how to properly educate? The seventh question in fact showed the

outcome of the science education that we received and how did it shape our image about science,

this was ‘ describe science in a word or two.’ Most of the replies were unexpectedly positive, and

by most I mean over 95%, merely three or four replies who saw that science is boring and

complicated. The eighth question was to know how does people feel the importance of science in

their lives, and to what extent they think science is getting into their lives. This was the rating

question. This was even weirder, because it showed that 40% only thought of science as

indispensable and 19% rated it as very important. This means that 59% of people feel the

importance of science in our lives, which is the small percentage that we were waiting for as a result

of the bad education system. However, the paradoxical part is why did many people sent positive

feedbacks in the seventh question, like ‘explaining the universe’, ‘Real magic’, ‘ knowing the

world’. The ninth question, ‘why is the sky blue?’ shows the percentage of people who are

scientifically literate, that means the percentage of people who have the basic science knowledge to,

at least, give a scientific explanation for the every-day phenomenons around them. Barely 25%

knew the right answer, which give a great solid evidence that we need a proper science education

that can fulfill us with the basic science information we need in order to arouse our reasoning skills

and put it in action. The purpose of the tenth and the eleventh questions were to show two things;

how many people fit to each category of knowledge in science, and do people consider history,

psychology, sociology as sciences too. The former is tested simply by the percentages on each

response, which are 44% like physical sciences like, physics, chemistry, and biology, and about

Farrag 44

44

75% like the social sciences like history, psychology. The latter is tested by the relative percentages

between the two questions which is obviously large, and this means that not many people realize

that there is another category of science called social sciences, and that they only looked on science

as the study of physics, biology, and chemistry.The twelfth question was only another way to ask

about the age, because some people have problems saying their age, specially women because they

always want to feel young so they may opt to skip the question instead of writing 31, for example.

Plus that I only wanted to know how much experienced they were in life, so what they do for living

can reflect this more efficaciously than the age question. The fourteenth was about the gender, and I






reflected that talking about science put them in a good mood, or at least in an okay one, and this

reflects also the very deep love of science in each person.







cultures and different education exposures (1 from Canada, 3 from the US, 1 from Sweden, 4 from

the UK, 1 from Ukraine, and 98 from Egypt). I was supposed to interview an important figure in

this field of science education to add much more credibility to my paper, however, I see that this is

not the perfect timing that I should do that, I think I still need to be more informed about the topic

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45

and more indulged into it to be able to come up with effective and to-the-point (there was another

expression or a word for that, can you write it down) questions.

Conclusion:



are educated. I have a direct message to teachers and parents; children have the ability to learn and

explore, they do not need your assistance to do that, in reality, they do need you to guide them, to

show them how to think, not what to think, to provide the conditions in which they can excel and



still, being consumed by incessant hyperactivity, and her mom came so many times to school upon

requests from her teachers suffering from her lack of concentration, maybe you know now that she

suffered from ADHD (Attention Deficiency Hyper Disorder), however this was in the late 30s when

ADHD was not yet discovered, and was therefore not identifiable yet. Her mom took her to the

doctor, and recounted her case, after which he requested an exclusive conversation with her, in the

absence of her child. The Doctor put on some music, left the girl alone in the room, and took her



mom and said your daughter is not sick, she is a dancer, and my advice is to take her to a dance

school. The mother followed the advice and enrolled her in dance class, and there, the girl was

fascinated by the community, having finally managed to communicate with people like her, who


became a multi-millionaire. The moral of the story is a message to parents and teachers; do not ever

underestimate your youngsters’ talents. Should these talents be carefully honed, they have the

potential to help these children achieve maximal self actualization. Narrowing down this to our very

Farrag 46

46

core concept of the essay, I see that we must help our kids by knowing which category of science

they fit in and start to get involved with them in this field. Even if they do not fit in any of the

science categories, we must give them a better science education so that they can be, at least,

scientifically literate people. A life without science could be fulfilling, for sure, but it will be bereft

of something that gives life context in meaning. The impact of science on the lives of those

contemptuous of it is ironic, for the people most likely to scorn geeks are the very same ones who

cannot live without their phones, ipods and high tech vehicles... It is because of science that we

have M.R.I., CT Scanners, mobile phones, GPS, spaceships, satellites Cars, air conditioners,

heaters, elevators, and even your door bell. This shows that science is involved in every detail of

life, from the most trivial to the most vital. These diverse angles of the problem should be tackled

seriously and simultaneously, to embark on a cultural shift where science becomes an appreciated

thing by all Earth citizens.

Farrag 47

47

works cited:


N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .


2009. Web. 16 June 2012.




2002. Web. 23 June 2012.



June 2012.


Web. 19 June 2012.



June 2012.


2012.




Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.


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48





June 2012.

Farrag 49

49



N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .



2009. Web. 16 June 2012.





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2002. Web. 23 June 2012.





June 2012.


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Web. 19 June 2012.




June 2012.



2012.


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Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.




Farrag 53

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Feb. 2011. Web. 16 June 2012.








June 2012.

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Appendix A














14- Male/ Female


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Third draft

Muhammad Farrag

RHET 201


The third Draft (D3)

28 June 2011

Must 1+1 equal 2 ?

Intro:





Shakespeare of course, but I pretended that I did not know him on purpose; I shot back “if I were to

tell you the very same story, of Faraday, Lenz, Planck or Schrodinger, I would assume that you


the problem, in fact. Very few people know who these scientists are, and the vast majority of the



dire consequences of being labelled a geek, incomparable of course to their holiness: the music


increasing; and the questions that beg themselves are: Why is that? Who did that? Who is to blame?

How can we diminish this phenomenon? Is this newfound norm acceptable or am I just

exaggerating on the basis of a very particular personal love of the natural sciences?

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Lit. Review:


three factors: the education system, the way science is taught, and the way parents raise their

children. Let’s start with the education system.

The current education system has two main brutal flaws, the first being the informal

importance of subjects. The educational hierarchy is constructed to give more importance to science

subjects and less importance to non-science subjects. Even though, the formal definition of

education, according to wikipedia, is the mean by which teachers deliver knowledge, information

and skills to their students. Accordingly, skills can be drawing, music or other non-science

activities. However, now-a-days, education is being redefined in schools, to be the transfer of

knowledge only. Education needs to strongly focus on developing other points of strength of every

student, which could be dancing, speaking, fighting, or playing a musical instrument, as well as

researching. Even though all of these are equally probable to happen in a person, unfortunately our

current education system is mainly focusing on the brains of the students. Thus, many students with

non-science related talents are made to believe that they are dumb, and fail to believe in themselves

because of the very low grades they are getting. Due to the immaturity of the students, the first

feeling that accompanies this realization of failure is science-hatred (Robinson).

The second flaw in the educational system is that it kills creativity. Brian Greene, a

physicist, teaching at Colombia University, recounted in one of his speeches that he was once

teaching a second primary class, where he asked them, “How do you do three into six?” It was

meant as a division question. However, a girl came up to the board, drew a big six and put a three

into it. He said, “This was not the answer I was expecting, but it was a six into three and she did it.

She did not care about being right or wrong, she just decided to give it a shot.” This story showed

the creativity in kids and the indifference in making mistakes. These qualities vanish in a

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community where a mistake is the biggest crime that you can ever commit. The fear of making


creativity from going out beyond the stars and exploring the unseen world. This deprives the minds

from the ability to sense the beauty of science, and as Einstein once said “logic can take you from B

to A, but imagination can take you anywhere” and anywhere is the place you need to go to acquire

the science-sensation. As a result, students do not get this science-sensation, and start thinking of

science as drag and boring (Greene, Robinson, and The Daily Beast).



scientists, and this is clear in our questions, like: What is this? How does this work? Why? Where?

What? all of which show the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this spirit does not last

for long, because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focus much on the details, and pay no


or balance a reaction and they completely ignore enhancing our ability to explore, create and


how important science is because we fail to integrate it with real life or “the big picture”, and so

science becomes lifeless. However, believing in the importance of delivering the core concepts of

the theory and the vitality of conducting scientific experiments in such fields brings science to life.

Things like the real concept of Superstring Theory or the Theory of Relativity, for example, are

extremely vivid and full of creativity. Should we be more aware of these conceptions, kids will fall

deeply in love with science, because they will find the answers to all of their random questions,

especially questions they do not find convincing answers to in the replies of their parents or

teachers. The real disaster is that this destructive way of teaching is inherited. Professor Walter

Lewin, a physics professor at MIT who has been teaching there for forty years, has just set the right

track that teachers must follow when considering teaching such an interesting subject as Science.

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What caught my attention is that he is very keen not to make a mistake in the lecture, although he

goes through many experiments in the lecture which make it acceptable to make a mistake. He

practices, or I would rather call it choreographs, the lecture three times before giving it. He said,

“...it is in a way a performance, whereby I cannot go wrong even if I tried”. http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw (Greene, Lewin, Carmichael, Troop, and Seldin).

Finally, parents have to admit that their kids will never stop learning, and especially in the

age-range between three and eight because this is the age where their explorative souls reach its

optimum activity. So, parents should never say that this topic is too hard at this age; children are

always willing to understand theories as long as it is made simple enough to be understood, no

matter how complex it is. In addition, children sometimes encounter some of the so-called ‘complex

science topics’ in their daily lives. For example, when children go to a tournament or a competition,

they notice that only the best can win, and in order to be the best, you have to takeout the best; this

is a perfect analogy for the theory of evolution, and the ‘survival to the fittest’ concept. Moreover,

parents need to help teachers in the process of delivering the real message. Parents must be more

familiar and make a better use of the ‘interactive learning’ concepts, which means helping their kids

to find answers to their random questions themselves, and explaining science theories in a simple

way that can be grasped by kids using simple experiments and videos. This will help them more use

their imagination. We can also take Richard Feynman’s father as a perfect example for parents to

follow. Feynman said that he was once playing with an express wagon, for him the way the wagon

moved was not understandable, he noticed this and asked him. His father did not answer in just one

word, in fact he explained the physical phenomenon and then gave him the name of it. Feynman

said that his father knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing

something. However, what really impressed me is the sentence he said in the first two seconds “he

taught me to notice thing”. A quality that we miss now-a-days. http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=HgAQV05fPEk (Lewin, Feynman, Tyson, and Seldin).

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producing scientific literate people then the current system is surely satisfying the criteria of

scientific education. But otherwise, the system will prove itself flawed. I will start by citing John

Kador in The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy and how he showed how miserable it can be if we

continued to be scientifically illiterate. He stated that according to research only 47 percent of


with water, and 50 percent thought that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs. Facts like this

made him define scientific illiterate person to be one who can not explain neither understand the

simple science theories. He said that the scientific literacy paves the path for maximizing the

benefits in any field, even if it is non-science related. In another article by Robert Hazen called

"Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" he defined scientific literacy as the background


other subject. Accordingly, he stated that even some scientists are somehow scientifically illiterate,

because they know much in their fields, but not even simple facts in other fields. By the same

spoken, most of the college graduates are scientifically illiterate. The problem is, that the majority

of the world’s population are scientifically illiterate. This made us unaware of how the world

around us is full of scientific discoveries, especially when scientific discoveries are rapidly growing

and blending with our everyday life. That been said, Robert illustrates that in order to convey, at

least, the basic knowledge of science, we must enhance the education in each single stage we go

through to be more scientifically considerate. Furthermore, Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist who

was doing drug research, had the same point of view, regarding scientific illiteracy, in his article "A

Chemist Responds to Slate's David Plotz's Claim That Not Enough Students Are Going into Science

and Engineering." He is convinced that we do not need more scientists, we need better ones. To

support his claim, he cited himself and mentioned that they lack new ideas not work force, when

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they are in the lab developing a new drug structure. Thus, a bright scientist will help much more

than a group of average scientists. (Hazen, Kador, and Lowe)

Finally, the last question. How to reduce this phenomenon of hating science? An article in

BookRags called "How to Not Hate Science" tackled this problem, and was mainly concerned with

people who already hate science. The article first divided the science into different categories, and

further divided to fields. The reader was then asked to follow the steps. First, you must take a look

at each field and decide which ones interests you the most. Second, try to make it interesting for

you self, for example by watching movies relating to the fields you chose. Third, excel in a single

concept of the science - even a simple one- from what you chose and start teaching it to people.

Last, spend quality time in the laboratory and invent, because this is the fun part in science, when

you actually do things and bring what was in the books to be experienced in real life. This will help

you realize the importance of science. Furthermore, Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg were

discussing the fact that many scientific discoveries defies the deepest understandings and beliefs our

children have, and that what makes them do not like science in " Edge: Why Do Some People

Resist Science”. They mentioned the example of the spherical nature of the Earth as a scientific

discovery, that defies that fact that one can stand on any point on the sphere and remain still. They

further cited the way the children learn in general, from their teachers and parents. The children

notice the difference in school and at home, where teachers use the scientific discoveries to explain

things that is not even trusted by the parents of these children. And here comes a vital point that a

child gets the information from the most credible source from his point of view. So that decides if s/

he will trust the teacher or her/his parents. However, if we unified our efforts to convey the same

educational message both in schools and in homes, it will extremely affect the conception of

science in the kids’ minds (BookRags, and Paul Bloom & Deena Skolnick Weisberg).

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Methodology:

We used a questionnaire to survey ‘why do people hate science? The questionnaire was

about 15 questions. The answers varied, they were yes/no answers, rating answers or word answers.

The first two questions were ‘Do you know your talent? if yes what is it? and if no, why so?‘. The

target was to know how many people actually knew their talents. This reflects the way they were

raised by schools and parents;for example, did they help them get familiar with their talents and true

identifies or not? The results showed that only 55% of the people actually knew their talents, which

indeed reflects that this is the only percentage who received a good education.The next three

questions were targeting parents. They were asked if they know their children’s talent or not. The

results were really shocking, because 95% of the parents who took the survey did not know their

children’s talents. Accordingly, proves the fact that the bad education is rooted in the students and

that there is a great chance they will further raise their kids in the same manner. Thus, and according

to the results - 55% & 95%- there is an extremely great chance of an exponential rate of growth to

bad education system . The sixth question is ‘Are you familiar with the ‘interactive learning’

concept?’. The purpose of this question was mainly to show the unconscious incompetent

percentage of peopl. They are the people who are not even aware that they are supposed to help

their children learn and understand what they took in school in a friendly manner, and are not aware

that this helps the children’s minds to digest the information. 47% of the people answered 'Yes' and

53% answered 'No'. And my question here is, how do we look forward to a better educated

community when almost only half of us know about proper education? The seventh question is

‘Describe science in a word or two’. The outcome in fact showed how the science education that we

received shape our image about science. The significant majority of the replies were unexpectedly

positive, and by 'significant majority' I mean over 95%. Only three or four replies who saw that

science is boring and complicated. The eighth question was to know how does people feel the

importance of science in their lives, and to what extent they think science is getting into their lives.

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This was the rating question. This statistics were shocking. Only 40% thought of science as

indispensable, and 19% rated it as 'Very Important'. This means that 59% of people feel the

importance of science in our lives. The result, however, was expected as a result of the bad

education system. The paradox is why did many people sent positive feedbacks in the seventh

question, like ‘explaining the universe’, ‘Real magic’, ‘ knowing the world’, and then not as many

people think highly of the importance of science. The ninth question, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ was

designed to show the percentage of people who are scientifically literate. We wanted to know the

percentage of people who have the basic science knowledge to, at least, give a scientific explanation

for the every-day phenomenons around them. Barely 25% knew the right answer, which give a

great solid evidence that we need a proper science education, that can provide us with the basic

science information we need, in order to arouse our reasoning skills and put it in action. The

purpose of the tenth and the eleventh questions were to show two things; the first is to get a statistic

of the people's inclination to favor a certain category of science , and the second is to see if people

consider history, psychology, sociology as sciences or not. The former is measured by calculating

the percentages on each response. Its results showed that 44% of people favor physical sciences -

like, physics, chemistry, and biology- and showed that about 75% also, favor social sciences - like

history, psychology. The latter is measured by calculating the relative percentages between the two

questions. The results showed that large number of people do not realize that there is another

category of science called social sciences, and that they only regarded science as the study of

physics, biology, and chemistry. The twelfth question was only another way to ask about the age,

because some people have problems saying their age, especially women because they always want

to feel young so they may opt to skip the question instead of writing 31, for example. Plus that we

only wanted to know how much experienced they were in life, so what they do for living can reflect

this more efficaciously than the age question. The fourteenth was about the gender, and I wanted to

know if females have better chances to know their talents over males. Finally, the last question, and

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my most favorite, it was ‘Do you like to take similar surveys again?’ It may seems trivial and

insignificant, but in fact it tests the mood of the person taking the survey. We believe this is the

mood that the questionnaire left on the person taking it. Most importantly, it reflects what s/he feels


reflected that talking about science may put people in a good mood, or at least that it did not have a

negative effect. This reflects the very deep love of science in each person.

We posted the survey on www.freeonlinesurveys.com and asked our friends from Facebook

and on the BlackBerry messenger to take it. We had got 111 responses until now. There are 3 age

groups; the students 17-21, young married men/women 25-35, and adult married men/women 40 &

above. So far it is almost equal percentages of males and females taking the survey. The results of

the survey represents a diversity of cultures & educational backgrounds and exposure, because it

was collected from different countries (1 from Canada, 3 from the US, 1 from Sweden, 4 from the

UK, 1 from Ukraine, and 98 from Egypt). We were supposed to interview an important figure in the

field of science education to add much more credibility to the paper. However, we still believe that

this is not the perfect timing that we should do that. We still need to gain more information about

the topic, and be more skilled in asking pin point questions.

Conclusion:








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underestimate your youngsters’ talents. Should these talents be carefully honed, they have the

potential to help these children achieve maximal self actualization. Narrowing down this to our very

core concept of the essay, I see that we must help our kids by knowing which category of science

they fit in and start to get involved with them in this field. Even if they do not fit in any of the

science categories, we must give them a better science education so that they can be, at least,

scientifically literate people. A life without science could be fulfilling, for sure, but it will be bereft

of something that gives life context in meaning. The impact of science on the lives of those

contemptuous of it is ironic, for the people most likely to scorn geeks are the very same ones who

cannot live without their phones, ipods and high tech vehicles... It is because of science that we

have M.R.I., CT Scanners, mobile phones, GPS, spaceships, satellites Cars, air conditioners,

heaters, elevators, and even your door bell. This shows that science is involved in every detail of

life, from the most trivial to the most vital. These diverse angles of the problem should be tackled

Farrag 66

66

seriously and simultaneously, to embark on a cultural shift where science becomes an appreciated

thing by all Earth citizens

Farrag 67

67

works cited:


N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .


2009. Web. 16 June 2012.




Web. 23 June 2012.



June 2012.


Web. 19 June 2012.



June 2012.

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2012.




Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.






June 20

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Bloom, Paul, and Dena Skolnick Weisberg. " Edge: Why Do Some People Resist Science . N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .


Carmichael, Mary. "Nature's Little Scientists." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 22 Nov. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.


Greene, Brian. "OP-ED Contibuter; Put a Little Science in Your Life." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 June 2008. Web. 17 June 2012.

Brian Greene, a physicist on string theory, showed how the human turn from little scientist into a scientifically illiterate person, by narrating his time line. He started by stating the fact that science is an indispensable mean of living, and he explained how a life without science will be a mess, giving the examples of M.R.I., CT scanners, mobile phones, pacemakers to make it even more obvious, and to make the reader capture how could have life been without those amazing technologies. Greene then illustrated that all the children are little scientists, and he supported his claim by the questions the kids ask like what is this? How does this work? Why, where, what kind of questions, which showed the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this spirit does not last long because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focused much on the details - i.e solving equations and memorizing definitions - paying no attention to the big picture - i.e the theory of relativity, string theory. Hence, science became lifeless. However, the big picture is the thing of importance and is the thing that we should struggle to clarify it to children, because this is the thing that will help them love science and appreciate science because they will know its uses, and this is when science comes to life. He put it in a nutshell at the end of his speech saying that we need to make a cultural shift to give science its proper position beside music, art, literature.

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Hazen, Robert M. "Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" (ActionBioscience). N.p., 21 Nov. 2002. Web. 23 June 2012.




Kador, John. "ChiefExecutive.net." The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy. N.p., 1 Feb. 2012. Web. 17 June 2012.


"Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED Talks, June 2006. Web. 19 June 2012.

Ken Robinson, an educationalist, wanted to show that deep down inside any human being, there is a creator. This creativity is of equal importance as literacy in education and should be tackled efficiently. He then gave the example of the girl in the art class as a proof of the spirit of creation and being not afraid to mistake. From his point of view, being prepared to be wrong is the core foundation to come up with something original; he further says that unfortunately we are raised in a community that prohibits mistakes, and an educational system that educate children and take them out of their creativity simultaneously. Thus, this creative spirit is ripped off as soon as we grow up. Moreover, he sees that the hierarchy of the subjects (with mathematics and sciences at the top, and music and art at the bottom) forces the teachers and the students to concentrate on their brains more than their bodies, which is not the main reason for public education, at least from his opinion, he sees that they must be equally-professionally taught. Because he sees that as a result of this people

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will be judged solely on their academic abilities, which is absolutely not fair. However, humans must be judged on their intelligence because intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct.

Lowe, Derek. "A Chemist Responds to Slate's David Plotz's Claim That Not Enough Students Are Going into Science and Engineering." Slate Magazine. Future Tense, 16 June 2012. Web. 18 June 2012.


"Richard Feynman - Educated By My Father." YouTube. YouTube, 02 Oct. 2011. Web. 24 June 2012.


Seldin, Tim. "Child Development Institute Parenting Today." Child Development Institute Parenting Today. Child Development Institute Parenting Today, n.d. Web. 18 June 2012.


Shepherd, Jessica. "Fertile Minds Need Feeding." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 02 Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.

This was Jessica Shepherd interviewing Ken Robinson, an educationalist, and asking mainly about how schools stifle creativity? Ken Robinson has this view about the current education system as one that suppresses the creativity and intelligence of student, he said “ we don’t want to tweak in the recipe - we want a new one”. This quote illustrates his point of view of having a new educational system that rather enhance creativity. His hypothetical education system contains of two main parts; the dynamic curriculum, in which separation of subjects is prevented and mingling different concepts from different subjects is rather enhanced, to achieve the so-called ‘interdisciplinary curriculum’. More of the the dynamic curriculum is that it allows different aged students to learn the same thing at the same time, put differently, it does not believe in age as one of the criteria to learn something. The second part of the hypothetical education system is the creativity in class

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room, and this part mainly addresses teachers who still thinks of creativity as being extrovert and bright; creativity can be simply put as allowing students to take risks.


In this piece, Troop showed his passionate love of science and the reason behind this love. Troop loved science because he found in it the key that unlocks his imaginations and it helped him to put forth his ideas and hypotheses, “an element of science that is all too often not provided in schools”. Troop self-educated himself (this is a very crucial point that we will make a good use of it in the essay). He further stated that science provides him with the answers of how many things work, and why does it work that specific way, which, when he understands it, it puts him in an empire-state- of-mind.

Tyson, Neil De grass. "How to Encourage Little Scientists? Get Out of the Way!" PBS. PBS, 05 Feb. 2011. Web. 16 June 2012.


"Walter Lewin, MIT Professor: "All of You Have Now Lost Your Virginity... in Physics!" (interview)." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 June 2012.

If we were to speak about the right way of teaching, Walter Lewin, a physics professor in MIT, has a total grasp of it. Professor Walter mentioned in his interview that his role is to explain scientific discoveries to any man walking in the street in a such a way that he can picture the whole idea and make use of it. Moreover, he called the teachers who just narrate science as boring topic and as a result making students hate science, ‘criminals’ he further explained “ they miss golden opportunities, they made it dull and boring, and so people begin to hate physics”. He also tackled a serious problem which is carrying on the bad teaching from their teachers to their sons when they become fathers, so their children will also teach their children the same misery, and so on and so forth. This link might also help teachers to know what does it mean to be a good teacher http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw


This Article shows exactly the scientific way of thinking. First scientists figure out a problem or a question, they then make the hypotheses, which is roughly the answer of the question. The next step is to check for the validity of this hypotheses, so they start conducting experiments; if the results of many different experiments holds to the same conclusion, which is the hypotheses, then this is true, otherwise it is not (and by otherwise I mean not a single experiment fails to give the same

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conclusion). In fact, reaching the conclusion from the experiments depends on the preliminary observations. And finally, publishing the then-called discovery to reach the world.

"Why My Kids Hate Science." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 24 Feb. 1991. Web. 17 June 2012.


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Appendix A










10- How much do you know about quantum physics? a- huh ...

b- I think I know what you mean c- I have a grasp of itd- I know much

11- How much do you know about darwinism evolution? a- man, give me a break

b- They were talking about it in National Geographic or something c- Roughly , somethingd-Alot

12- What do you do for living? (student is an option) 13- Are you happy doing what you do? Y/N14- Male/ Female15- Do you like to take similar surveys again? Y/N

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The final draft

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Muhammad Farrag

RHET 201


The third Draft (D3)

28 June 2011

Science Through Different Eyes

Intro:





Shakespeare of course, but I pretended that I did not know him on purpose; I shot back “if I were to

tell you the very same story, of Faraday, Lenz, Planck or Schrodinger, I would assume that you


the problem, in fact. Very few people know who these scientists are, and the vast majority of the



dire consequences of being labelled a geek, incomparable of course to their holiness: the music


increasing; and the questions that beg themselves are: Why is that? Who did that? Who is to blame?

How can we diminish this phenomenon? Is this newfound norm acceptable or am I just

exaggerating on the basis of a very particular personal love of the natural sciences?

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Lit. Review:


three factors: the education system, the way science is taught, and the way parents raise their

children. Let’s start with the education system.

The current education system has two main brutal flaws, the first being the informal

importance of subjects. The educational hierarchy is constructed to give more importance to science

subjects and less importance to non-science subjects, even though the formal definition of

education, according to Wikipedia, is the mean by which teachers deliver knowledge, information

and skills to their students. Accordingly, skills can be drawing, music or other non-science

activities. However, now-a-days, education is being redefined in schools, to be the transfer of

knowledge only. Education needs to strongly focus on developing other points of strength of every

student, which could be dancing, speaking, fighting, or playing a musical instrument, as well as

researching. Even though all of these are equally probable to happen in a person, unfortunately our

current education system is mainly focusing on the brains of the students. Thus, many students with

non-science related talents are made to believe that they are dumb, and fail to believe in themselves

because of the very low grades they are getting. Due to the immaturity of the students, the first

feeling that accompanies this realization of failure is science-hatred (Robinson).

The second flaw in the educational system is that it kills creativity. Brian Greene, a

physicist, teaching at Colombia University, recounted in one of his speeches that he was once

teaching a second primary class, where he asked them, “How do you do three into six?” It was

meant as a division question. However, a girl came up to the board, drew a big six and put a three

into it. He said, “This was not the answer I was expecting, but it was a six into three and she did it.

She did not care about being right or wrong, she just decided to give it a shot.” This story showed

the creativity in kids and the indifference in making mistakes. These qualities vanish in a

community where a mistake is the biggest crime that you can ever commit. The fear of making

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creativity from going out beyond the stars and exploring the unseen world. This deprives the minds

from the ability to sense the beauty of science, and as Einstein once said “logic can take you from B

to A, but imagination can take you anywhere” and anywhere is the place you need to go to acquire

the science-sensation. As a result, students do not get this science-sensation, and start thinking of

science as drag and boring (Greene, Robinson, and The Daily Beast).



scientists, and this is clear in our questions, like: What is this? How does this work? Why? Where?

What? all of which show the explorative spirits of the kids. Unfortunately, this spirit does not last

for long, because of the disastrous ways of teaching which focus much on the details, and pay no


or balance a reaction and they completely ignore enhancing our ability to explore, create and


how important science is because we fail to integrate it with real life or “the big picture”, and so

science becomes lifeless. However, believing in the importance of delivering the core concepts of

the theory and the vitality of conducting scientific experiments in such fields brings science to life.

Things like the real concept of Superstring Theory or the Theory of Relativity, for example, are

extremely vivid and full of creativity. Should we be more aware of these conceptions, kids will fall

deeply in love with science, because they will find the answers to all of their random questions,

especially questions they do not find convincing answers to in the replies of their parents or

teachers. The real disaster is that this destructive way of teaching is inherited. Professor Walter

Lewin, a physics professor at MIT who has been teaching there for forty years, has just set the right

track that teachers must follow when considering teaching such an interesting subject as Science.

What caught my attention is that he is very keen not to make a mistake in the lecture, although he

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goes through many experiments in the lecture which make it acceptable to make a mistake. He

practices, or I would rather call it choreographs, the lecture three times before giving it. He said,

“...it is in a way a performance, whereby I cannot go wrong even if I tried”. http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw (Greene, Lewin, Troop, and Seldin).

Finally, parents have to admit that their kids will never stop learning, and especially in the

age-range between three and eight because this is the age where their explorative souls reach their

optimum activity. So, parents should never say that this topic is too hard at this age; children are

always willing to understand theories as long as they are made simple enough to be understood, no

matter how complex they are. In addition, children sometimes encounter some of the so-called

‘complex science topics’ in their daily lives. For example, when children go to a tournament or a

competition, they notice that only the best can win, and in order to be the best, you have to takeout

the best; this is a perfect analogy for the theory of evolution, and the ‘survival of the fittest’ concept.

Moreover, parents need to help teachers in the process of delivering the real message. Parents must

be more familiar and make a better use of the ‘interactive learning’ concepts, which means helping

their kids to find answers to their random questions themselves, and explaining science theories in a

simple way that can be grasped by kids using simple experiments and videos. This will help them

more use their imagination. We can also take Richard Feynman’s father as a perfect example for

parents to follow. Feynman said that he was once playing with an express wagon, and for him the

way the wagon moved was not understandable, when he noticed this, he asked him “why is that”.

His father did not answer in just one word, he rather explained the physical phenomenon and then

gave him the name of it. Feynman said that his father knew the difference between knowing the

name of something and knowing something. However, what really impressed me is the sentence he

said in the first two seconds “he taught me to notice things”. A quality that we miss now-a-days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgAQV05fPEk (Lewin, Feynman, and Seldin).

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producing scientific literate people then the current system is surely satisfying the criteria of

scientific education. But otherwise, the system will prove itself flawed. I will start by citing John

Kador in his book “The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy” and how he showed how miserable it can be

if we continued to be scientifically illiterate. He stated that according to research only 47 percent of


with water, and 50 percent thought that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs. Facts like this

made him define scientific illiterate person to be one who can not explain neither understand the

simple science theories. He said that the scientific literacy paves the path for maximizing the

benefits in any field, even if it is non-science related. In another article by Robert Hazen called

"Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?" he defined scientific literacy as the background


other subject. Accordingly, he stated that even some scientists are somehow scientifically illiterate,

because they know much in their fields, but not even simple facts in other fields. By the same token,

most of the college graduates are scientifically illiterate. The problem is, that the majority of the

world’s population is scientifically illiterate. This made us unaware of how the world around us is

full of scientific discoveries, especially when scientific discoveries are rapidly growing and

blending with our everyday life. Robert illustrates that in order to convey, at least, the basic

knowledge of science, we must enhance the education in each single stage we go through to be

more scientifically considerate. Furthermore, Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist who was doing drug

research, had the same point of view, regarding scientific illiteracy, in his article "A Chemist

Responds to Slate's David Plotz's Claim That Not Enough Students Are Going into Science and

Engineering." He is convinced that we do not need more scientists, we need better ones. To support

his claim, he cited himself and mentioned that they lack new ideas not work force, when they are in

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the lab developing a new drug structure. Thus, a bright scientist will help much more than a group

of average scientists. (Hazen, Kador, and Lowe)

Finally, the last question. How to reduce this phenomenon of hating science? An article in

BookRags called "How to Not Hate Science" tackled this problem, and was mainly concerned with

people who already hate science. The article first divided the science into different categories, and

further divided it into fields. The reader was then asked to follow the steps. First, you must take a

look at each field and decide which ones interests you the most. Second, try to make it interesting

for yourself, for example by watching movies relating to the fields you chose in the first step. Third,

excel in a single concept of the science - even a simple one- from what you chose and start

teaching it to people. Last, spend quality time in the laboratory and invent, because this is the fun

part in science, when you actually do things and bring what was in the books to be experienced in

real life. This will help you realize the importance of science. Furthermore, Paul Bloom and Deena

Skolnick Weisberg were discussing the fact that many scientific discoveries defies the deepest

understandings and beliefs our children have, and that what makes them do not like science in the

article " Edge: Why Do Some People Resist Science”. They mentioned the example of the spherical

nature of the Earth as a scientific discovery, that defies that fact that one can stand on any point on

the sphere and remain still. They further cited the way the children learn in general, from their

teachers and parents. The children notice the difference in school and at home, where teachers use

the scientific discoveries to explain things that is not even trusted by the parents of these children.

And here comes a vital point that a child gets the information from the most credible source from

his point of view. So that decides if s/he will trust the teacher or her/his parents. However, if we

unified our efforts to convey the same educational message both in schools and in homes, it will

extremely affect the conception of science in the kids’ minds (BookRags, and Paul Bloom & Deena

Skolnick Weisberg).

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I used to work in an organization called Nutty Scientist. It is an organization where which

my workmates and I used to teach science to kids age-ranging from 4-12 in an interesting way. We

used to explain complex scientific theories, by the means of simple and interesting experiments; for

example, there was a show called “the ice-age show”, this show was mainly focusing on the uses of

carbon-ice. The ice-age show had many experiments some of which are making comets, and

blowing balloons. We used to make comets using the carbon-ice, honey, sand, water, and a plastic

bag, by applying pressure on the plastic bag , this whole mixture is turned to a small comet. The

second experiment I mentioned was blowing a balloon; we blew balloons by just putting the a piece

of carbon-ice in the balloon and tying it. Approximately, after one minute the carbon-ice sublimates

(turns from solid to gas without passing through the liquid phase) into carbon dioxide, and this

carbon-dioxide automatically blow the balloon. There was another section in the organization called

the drama section where my workmates used to make plays about the lives of scientists, and the

way they reached their famous discoveries, for example there was a small play about how Sir Isaac

Newton discovered gravity. A guy sitting under an apple-tree when suddenly he is hit from above by

a falling apple. He then asks himself the same questions Sir Isaac Newton used to ask himself “Why

did the apple fall? why did it not rise up? if the stem holding the apple was a bit taller, would the

apple still fall? if the stem holding the apple was so tall that it was holding the moon, why didn’t the

moon fall? This must have a reason behind it.” This is how Nutty Scientist deceivers science to

kids. I can only say that some kids cry when they are leaving mansion (the place where we conduct

experiments and play plays), and if this reflects something, it is that they are extremely attached to

the place because they find in it the answers to all of their WH questions, and thus they feel relived

there. Some other kids start to explain what they have learned this day to their parents when they

come to pick them up before even getting into the car, and this reflects that the kids deeply fell in

love with the material they were taught in the organization. http://www.nuttyscientists.com/

preindex.php this is the organization link, it s a worldwide organization.

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Methodology:

I used a questionnaire to survey ‘why do people hate science? The questionnaire was about

15 questions. The answers varied, it were yes/no answers, rating answers or word answers. The first

two questions were ‘Do you know your talent? if yes what is it? and if no, why so?‘. The target was

to know how many people actually knew their talents. This reflects the way they were raised by

schools and parents;for example, did they help them get familiar with their talents and true identify

or not? The results showed that only 55% of the people actually knew their talents, which indeed

reflects that this is the only percentage who received a good education.The next three questions

were targeting parents. They were asked if they know their children’s talent or not. The results were

really shocking, because 95% of the parents who took the survey did not know their children’s

talents. Accordingly, this proves the fact that education is rooted in the students and that there is a

great chance they will further raise their kids in the same manner. Thus, and according to the results

- 55% & 95%- there is an extremely great chance of an exponential rate of growth to bad education

system . The sixth question is ‘Are you familiar with the ‘interactive learning’ concept?’. The

purpose of this question was mainly to show the unconscious incompetent percentage of peopl.

They are the people who are not even aware that they are supposed to help their children learn and

understand what they took in school in a friendly manner, and are not aware that this helps the

children’s minds to digest the information. 47% of the people answered 'Yes' and 53% answered

'No'. And my question here is, how do we look forward to a better educated community when

almost only half of us know about proper education? The seventh question is ‘Describe science in a

word or two’. The outcome in fact showed how the science education that we received shape our

image about science. The significant majority of the replies were unexpectedly positive, and by

'significant majority' I mean over 95%. Only three or four replies who saw that science is boring

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and complicated. The eighth question was to know how does people feel the importance of science

in their lives, and to what extent they think science is getting into their lives. This was the rating

question. This statistics were shocking. Only 40% thought of science as indispensable, and 19%

rated it as 'Very Important'. This means that 59% of people feel the importance of science in our

lives. The result, however, was expected as a result of the bad education system. The paradox is

why did many people sent positive feedbacks in the seventh question, like ‘explaining the universe’,

‘Real magic’, ‘ knowing the world’, and then not as many people think highly of the importance of

science. The ninth question, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ was designed to show the percentage of people

who are scientifically literate. We wanted to know the percentage of people who have the basic

science knowledge to, at least, give a scientific explanation for the every-day phenomenons around

them. Barely 25% knew the right answer, which give a great solid evidence that we need a proper

science education, that can provide us with the basic science information we need, in order to

arouse our reasoning skills and put it in action. The purpose of the tenth and the eleventh questions

were to show two things; the first is to get a statistic of the people's inclination to favor a certain

category of science , and the second is to see if people consider history, psychology, sociology as

sciences or not. The former is measured by calculating the percentages on each response. Its results

showed that 44% of people favor physical sciences - like, physics, chemistry, and biology- and

showed that about 75% also, favor social sciences - like history, psychology. The latter is measured

by calculating the relative percentages between the two questions. The results showed that large

number of people do not realize that there is another category of science called social sciences, and

that they only regarded science as the study of physics, biology, and chemistry. The twelfth question

was only another way to ask about the age, because some people have problems saying their age,

especially women because they always want to feel young so they may opt to skip the question

instead of writing 31, for example. Plus that I only wanted to know how much experienced they

were in life, so what they do for living can reflect this more efficaciously than the age question. The

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fourteenth was about the gender, and I wanted to know if females have better chances to know their

talents over males. Finally, the last question, and my most favorite, it was ‘Would you like to take

similar surveys again?’ It may seems trivial and insignificant, but in fact it tests the mood of the

person taking the survey. I believe this is the mood that the questionnaire left on the person taking

it. Most importantly, it reflects what s/he feels when they just talk about science. 73% said yes we

would like to take similar surveys, which reflected that talking about science may put people in a

good mood, or at least that it did not have a negative effect. This reflects the very deep love of

science in each person.


and on the BlackBerry messenger to take it. I have gotten 111 responses until now. There are 3 age

groups; the students 17-21, young married men/women 25-35, and adult married men/women 40 &

above. So far it is almost equal percentages of males and females taking the survey. The results of

the survey represents a diversity of cultures & educational backgrounds and exposure, because it

was collected from different countries (1 from Canada, 3 from the US, 1 from Sweden, 4 from the

UK, 1 from Ukraine, and 98 from Egypt). I was supposed to interview an important figure in the

field of science education to add much more credibility to the paper. However since not so many

people are concerned with this topic, the public figures I was supposed to interview were already

taken as source in the paper. We still need to gain more information about the topic, and be more

skilled in asking pin point questions.

Conclusion:


one of my favorite quotes for Albert Einstein, and this is supposed to be the way in which students




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underestimate your youngsters’ talents. Should these talents be carefully honed, the children will

achieve maximum self-actualization . Narrowing this down to our very core concept of the essay, I

see that we must help our kids by knowing which category of science they fit in and start to get

involved with them in this field. Even if they do not fit in any of the science categories, we must

give them a better scientific education so that they can be, at least, scientifically literate people.

Furthermore, we need more organizations that inculcate the love of science deep inside the kids’

souls, briefly, more of organizations like Nutty Scientist. A life without science could be fulfilling,

for sure, but it will be bereft of something that gives life context in meaning. The impact of science

on the lives of those contemptuous of it is ironic, for the people most likely to scorn geeks are the

very same ones who cannot live without their phones, ipods and high tech vehicles... It is because of

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science that we have M.R.I., CT Scanners, mobile phones, GPS, spaceships, satellites Cars, air

conditioners, heaters, elevators, and even your door bell. This shows that science is involved in

every detail of life, from the most trivial to the most vital. These diverse angles of the problem

should be tackled seriously and simultaneously, to embark on a cultural shift where science

becomes an appreciated thing by all Earth citizens.

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Works Cited


N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .


2009. Web. 16 June 2012.




2002. Web. 23 June 2012.



June 2012.


Web. 19 June 2012.



June 2012.


2012.




Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.


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June 20

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N.p., n.d. Web. 17 June 2012. .



2009. Web. 16 June 2012.





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2002. Web. 23 June 2012.





June 2012.


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Web. 19 June 2012.




June 2012.



2012.


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Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012.




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Feb. 2011. Web. 16 June 2012.








June 2012.

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Appendix A














14- Male/ Female


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The last journal

Journal 5:

My experience through writing the paper

I was thinking about this topic - why do people hate science - since the beginning of 2012,

and this I-search paper gave me the opportunity to write my own opinion about it; it was just like a

relief for my brain to empty it on a paper.

I am really upset with the current education system and that was the main reason behind

writing this paper. The steps that I’ve went through while writing the paper was really helpful; the

first journal was brainstorming about the topic. It was more of emptying my mind to start to think

clearly and chronologically. The second journal was getting the first few sources for my topic, and

this was getting me in the mood of writing. The third journal was the to get the rest of the sources

that I used in my paper, and I think this was the step where the outline of the paper was starting to

get clear; I already had the first half of the paper written in my head then. The fourth one was

journaling about the survey questionnaires that I’ve distributed in 2 or 3 days, and this was the

second part of the paper. By then I almost had the paper written in my mind, it was about time to

drain it into my beloved mac.

After finishing the first draft, ooh before this, it was the first time in my life that I spend a 5

or 6 hours on my mac writing a paper, I mean, I barely spend that time reading about physics or

watching movies. However, after writing the first draft, I was feeling like that was the masterpiece

of my life, I had a conference with mike, he told me there are some mistakes in the grammar and

the language but, the content is great. I don’t know what did he mean by the word “some”, but for

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me this was the main reason of writing a second and a third draft. The funny part is that I added a

paragraph in the final draft, which doubtlessly will have “some” grammar and language mistakes,

so I don’t know why the hell didn’t I put this paragraph in the second or the third draft.

Walking along the timeline of the course and my work, we are now here in the fifth journal

where I am supposed to write my experience through out the writing the paper, and I can say it out

loud that this is the best paper I’ve ever written in my life, yes my English is that bad; I really don’t

enjoy language courses, any language, but this one, maaaaaaaaaaan. I-love-I-search. This could be

my motto, I’ll think about it.

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