Chapter 8

Multiple choice tests are good at evaluating memorized facts, but become progressively poorer indicators as one moves up to more important ways of knowing.  Do these other, less easily-measured forms of knowledge have a longer half-life?  Is lasting learning a worthy goal of education?  What does it say about our system that this question is rarely asked?   Assuming there is a long-term benefit from education,  what is it that, once learned, lasts?  Class evaluations at the end of a school year may not answer this question.  Positive student evaluations might reveal only an end-of-a-roller-coaster-ride elation—thrilling, memory-making, but evanescent.  Using America’s favorite mother lode for data mining,  Facebook, I set out to investigate.  I posted the following:  

I'm doing research for a book and am wondering if you might provide some "data". My question is: "Did it make a difference?" The long-winded version of that question is: "OK, sure, you had fun, you still carry memories of Ratcliffe's class, but did that year make any difference in your life since then? Said another way, is there any quantifiable value in the long term to your having taken my class?" I am most definitely NOT fishing for compliments here. Hey--I'm a scientist--this is all about objectivity. If you have any thoughts, please feel free to reply. 

Mr. Ratcliffe

Some early respondents took my class between six and thirty years ago. Students sometimes give a teacher high marks because they were so entertaining..  Six years would seem enough time for the fun factor to fade. Thirty years would be enough time for a student to reflect on education the second time around–watching one’s children go through school.  Here’s what they said.

Jesse Andrews took Chemistry from me.  Mind you,  I only taught it because the REAL Chem teacher quit.  Edison High either dropped the course or found someone confident/foolish enough to think he could teach a class he hadn't taken himself for 20 years. 

Jesse wrote:

WOW!  Six years later and I’m a total failure!  Just kidding!  This is my last year at Morehouse College and I will receive my bachelors of Science in Biology. Let me tell ya, there are many avenues I should’ve taken, like chemistry, for example.  I got all A’s in Inorganic, General & Organic Chemistry!

Anyone who has struggled through three college chemistry classes and earned straight A’s will confirm that such a feat is best undertaken with a strong foundation in chemistry at the high school level.  Though one might argue that Jesse’s natural talent made his A’s in college a foregone conclusion, he ended the year with a C in my chemistry class. Chemistry did not come easily to him.  I would like to think that he learned something in our class that didn’t show up on tests, but did last into college, where he put it to good use.

Brittney Moon wrote:

You made school fun. You made learning fun. You made science fun. To this day I still talk to people about my experience in your class. While I may not remember all of the science I definitely remember the experience.... And I'm not just talking about campfire on Friday. Your method of teaching was creative and a little insane at times, but in a good way. 

Coming to class everyday I could always expect to be surprised, by a new concept or activity. Not only that, but you found a way to incorporate concepts that were bigger than us as students and bigger than the class itself.... And who else could get students to volunteer to come to class before school, after school, and on weekends? That speaks volumes to the impact you had on my life specifically, but also to the lives of other students as well. 

So I guess the gist of all the rambling is that your class, and you as a teacher, definitely made an impact on my life, an imprint, a memory which has remained..... And one which will continue to remind me of what learning and science can really be, what the real world implications are. It taught me to be passionate about something because that's when you're able to make the difference.... When you're doing what you love. Brittney

The reader will note that the subject Brittney learned from me is never mentioned. Apparently time did not diminish her judgement of the class’s value, though that value appears to be subject-independent.  Such value would be completely undetectable by the Chemistry  Standards test Brittney took at the end of the year.

Jeremiah, the third respondent, a full grown family man, with career, mortgage, and all the trappings of adulthood, wrote:

Mr. Ratcliffe, I can say without question that your class had an impact on my interest in science, but quantifying it for research purposes is going to be a bit difficult. I believe I was 13 when I was in your class, and 27 years have passed since that time. I have a hard enough time remembering what happened last month so forgive my somewhat vague response. 

The things that I remember most from your class (curriculum wise) had to do with the elements, potassium (or was it sodium) reacting with water [actually, we did both], liquid nitrogen freezing items then evaporating into the air we breathe, etc. I also remember some physics based lessons - spinning bicycle wheels related to momentum. Since that time I went through high school (with very little interest in science), pursued a liberal arts degree (while dabbling a bit in earth sciences), worked in construction for a decade plus, and then ultimately returned to school to get a BS in Mechanical Engineering, something that I had always had a penchant for but was not quite ready to focus on until well past my adolescence. 

Do I think that your class had an impact on my choice?  Of course. Can I quantify it?  Only by saying that as I sat in chemistry and physics classes at CSUF, many, many times I thought of your class and related the material I was learning to lessons that I had nearly forgotten from 8th grade. Occasionally I would have similar thoughts to 11th grade chemistry at Roosevelt, but not nearly as frequently. I guess the take-away from this is that the gain was not strictly related to a particular subject ,or lesson, but more of a general love of science, or maybe more specifically relating science in a textbook to the real world around us. 

Your ability to display this relationship for your students has an immeasurable value as far as I am concerned, because at the end of the day, this is what matters. Making the learning real and getting kids (people) interested in why it matters and how it really effects the world. I think it is also worth mentioning that you are the only teacher from my education prior to the age of 30 that I am in contact with. This is not by chance. I have connected with you and been interested in what you are doing with your students because you did have an impact on my education, and I want other students to have the same benefit.

                                                                                                                    -Jer 

Jason,  from even before Jeremiah’s time (FOUR decades ago!), reported back:

My long-lasting benefits are hard to quantify.  There are, however, some very foundational qualities that I know began in your courses.  These are things I’ve valued over the years and which I hope I’ve nurtured.

You asked for “quantifiable value,” however I’m going to start with one that’s difficult to define:  You gave us a feeling of the wonder of the universe.  You brought excitement to discovering, researching, and designing.  Principles of science that you must have already taught in dozens of prior classes were presented as if you had just discovered them moments before.  I remember one occasion when you jumped into class and announced the discovery of a brand new force billions of times more powerful than gravity!  Turned out it was electricity, but I was hooked by the wonder of how you presented it.  I recall another time when you told us you had gone out to watch the sun set due west on the summer solstice [actually, it was the vernal equinox] and for the first time gotten dizzy as you felt the Earth turn through the sky.  I’ve done that a handful of times only because you happened to mention it.

I’ll move on to more quantifiable items.

I recall spending time talking about the scientific process.  You encouraged us to think things through by a certain procedure.  Sometimes this was explicit (where we had to turn it in in writing) and other times it was just necessary to complete the task.  I’ve struggled to apply that process ever since.  I consider this quantifiable because I still do it almost daily, where I sit down and review a problem and try to write out the solution and expected outcomes.

Your classes also emphasized that there is almost always a solution.  I honestly can’t remember if you explicitly made this point or if we just absorbed it.  For instance, we had to design a device that timed ‘x’ minutes.  This was unthinkable to my eighth grade mind.  But we really didn’t have a choice.  You either did it or you failed, and that turned out to be wonderful motivation.  I also recall the device you created that bubbled through the ground into a mud pit  [a five gallon version of Yellowstone Park’s bubbling Mud Pots, randomly flicking mudblurbs  and pungent sulfurous fumes]. Having to figure out what that was and how you had assembled it was a great exercise in realizing that even crazy ideas could come to fruition.  Knowing that, yes, there probably is a solution, defeats the defeatism that easily sets in.  Again, it is quantifiable not in the sense that I can attach a number to it, but in the sense that I use it almost every day of my life.

Lastly, I remember some very specific advice you gave: Take a class on mechanics.  You need to know how to use tools, fix stuff, etc.  Don’t just get caught up in academics.  If I remember correctly, you said this was something someone else had told you to tell your students.  Now, here’s my confession: I never did it.  I regret that to this day.  I did, however, consciously put myself into positions where I thought I had the chance to learn the same things that I could’ve learned in a class, and for that I’m eternally grateful.  I don’t know that I would’ve done that if I hadn’t recalled your advice.  (I’ll assume I don’t need to describe here why that advice has been so valuable over the years.)

So, to summarize the quantifiable lessons I took away from your courses:

    1.    Learn and use the scientific process;

    2.    Know that, yes, there probably is a solution if you work hard enough at it; and

    3.    Find a way to learn how to use your hands, even if that is not your natural gift.

And, of course, the not quantifiable lesson:  This universe is unbelievably awesome and exciting from the smallest cell to the deepest star, and it’s ok to get excited about that.

Again, I’m so sorry it took so long for me to answer.  (Work has been insane the past month or so.)  Thank you again for all you did for us during those Computech years.  I might be taking a tour of Computech with my fifth grade son in the next few weeks, and I hope I get to at least pop in and say hello.  I wish you the best.

                                                                                                  --Jason Epperson

I can’t resist decrying the unnecessarily sorry state teachers suffer under today by noting that both Jeremiah and Jason took my class long before there were content Standards!  Nonetheless it appears that, years ex post facto,  the science learned without strict adherence to the experts’ Standards had lasting value.  Sometimes what lasts is more elusive–a whole Weltanschauung.  The former can be evaluated easily with a Scantron®, the latter cannot.

This brings us back to Einstein’s insight.

  “Not everything that counts can be counted. . .   

We’d all love our graduates to be thinkers that take with them a positive attitude about life and learning, even if that goal, by its very nature, denies us the security of a number to prove its attainment. 

. . .and not everything that can be counted counts.  

We’ve settled for the illusion of significance that numbers provide without realizing that the most important goal, educated adults, cannot be proven by a number, be it AP, ACS, AYP,  STAR, CAASPP, SAT or GPA.  

Jesse, Brittney, Jeremiah, and Jason  suggest that students have something to tell us worth heeding:  one can learn something “more important than physics” in a class where the number of physics standards is small enough to allow teaching other things that,  thirty years later, are still seen as having “immeasurable value.”