ALUMNI:
PARENTS:
Ever wondered how those strange assignments that our children bring home from NCCL translate into later academic life? READ ON! The following is an excerpt from a paper written by NCCL graduate Nathan Brown in order to qualify for a job as a tutor at UC San Diego. Nathan was a senior majoring in physics, and now has a Ph.D.
Rules For The First Experiment
You will drop an egg off a bridge. It is about a thirty-foot drop onto pavement. The egg must not be damaged. You can use whatever materials are available to you, you can work alone or in groups and you have twenty-four hours to design and build something.
Rules For The Second Experiment
Adjust the decade resistance box so that the output of the bridge is as close as possible to zero volts. Turn the vertical gain of the scope to its most sensitive setting (0.01 volt) or until the stray 60Hz signal is about full scale. Now ground the case of the resistance decade box and run heavy "banana plug" wires between ground contacts of the various ... (etc. for three pages)
I did the first experiment in sixth grade, in a course in which we had a contest to design and build things such as the lightest boat that could support a brick in water, or a missile-shaped projectile that would keep an egg safe. I remember riding my bike as fast as I could while holding a contraption that compared the wind resistance for different solid shapes made out of wood, and trying to make a boat out of putty (according to Archimedes it has to have a deep bottom, but everyone in the class had to figure that out on their own). I didn't know at the time that I was learning more about physics and engineering than I would learn in four years of high school and (so far) three years of college.
I did the second experiment this quarter in Physics 120A. The labs were written with so much detail and explicit instructions that they can be completed with no real understanding of what's going on. From the first experiment I learned a few things about physics. What I learned from the second experiment is what an incredible advantage I have over everyone who didn't do the first experiment.
I remember that I built a chicken wire box for the egg-drop experiment. The egg was suspended in the center with rubber bands. The first time it worked, but the rubber bands became so stretched so that the second time the egg hit the edge and cracked. A girl whom I had a crush on for several years built a beautiful parachute that didn't open. Her egg smashed all over the pavement. For some reason I find it difficult to put into words how much I've learned from doing things like that and how little I've learned in the past seven years.
Beginning in ninth grade, emphasis was placed on learning from books and proving your knowledge with written tests without actually doing anything. It gradually escalated and now that's all I do in school. I'm still not bored with learning materials from a text book and then applying it to similar situations on a test, but I'm wondering if it's worth anything.
This doesn't apply only to science. In the school I went to through eighth grade, besides spending a lot of time writing stories and researching, writing and editing our own newspaper, we used to write reports on one-word topics that were drawn out of hat. I remember drawing "London" for one topic and "paraffin" for my next. The reports could be of any length (as soon as you finished one you stuck your hand in the hat for another), in any style, from any point of view and they were not graded!
I don't know if I am evaluating myself here or the school system. What was different about my education up through eighth grade is that I went to a small private school that was designed to be different. The Newark Center for Creative Learning (NCCL), which was founded by and directed by my mother, Ann Brown. In engineering courses (I don't know what they called it then) we dropped eggs off bridges. In biology courses we went seining (dragging huge nets through the ocean at low tide), collecting sea horses, crabs, and whatever else showed up. In writing courses we published a newspaper and wrote stories and essays of our own choosing. In geography we got cold, dirty and soaking wet surveying a creek with twine and yardsticks, then made a scale model out of mud.
There is something about taking part in what you are studying that makes learning possible. Playing a role as a human, having to design something that will keep an egg safe when it hits the ground rather than just being told all of the theories and mathematical equations involved, is what learning is.