Chicago Tribune – Heidi Stevens
“”Kids come out of the chute liking science,” NASA astronaut Mae Jemison told me. “They ask, ‘How come? Why? What’s this?’ They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it’s discovering the world around us.” Then something happens. “Once we get them in school, we turn science from discovery and hands-on to something you’re supposed to do through rote memorization,” said Jemison, who was the first African-American woman to travel in space when she flew the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1992…”When you have teachers saying, ‘I don’t have enough time for hands-on activities,’ we need to rethink the way we do education,” Jemison said. “The drills we do, where you’re telling kids to memorize things, don’t actually work. What works is engaging them and letting them do things and discover things.””(more)