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Good evening, Len. Good evening, Asami. So, in this bundle of conversation that we started,
I thought there's a little something that we can dig into, which was our thoughts on education,
as often it is. And particularly, you wanted to, you do want to share about this interesting class
that you took in college. Yeah. So, yeah, as you were saying, we were chatting before,
it's very often about education. And I think in this case, we were talking sort of off the
tail end of education and classes and new tools or AI, and kind of how maybe teachers can approach
classes. Now, I'm going to try not to push a particular perspective that I see on this,
but I am going to share what I thought was a unique class way back when. This was not about AI,
right? Which we will have like, what, 300 episodes about in the future.
We will be able to have many, many, many more of those episodes at any point in time,
but this one is not. And so, I thought of this class, because, you know, we're talking about
how classes can deliver information. We're talking about also the sort of shifting baseline
for information. So, some stories that we were told in elementary school are not being taught now.
Curriculum Zeitgeist. I think if you heard it anywhere else, we started it.
Yes. Yeah. If you heard it anywhere else, that's the stamp.
Copyright to us. Right. Yes. Are we allowed to just
copyright things freely? I don't actually know. I thought that's how copyright works. Like,
I thought we just claim it like that. Well, then again, there is the question
of whether copyright works or not. But let's not get into that now.
Yeah, not. So, there was this class,
it was a history class. It was a US history class. And perhaps what many people are used to
or accustomed to in a history class, specifically, I think, is a fountain of dates and people and
events in relatively chronological order, perhaps with some reasons, like set reasons for
X country person did Y, and then we had Z. Right. Some kind of cause and effect
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relationship tied together in one way, shape or form.
Right. Type stuff.
Yes. And that's what a lot of history textbooks, at least the ones that I had seen,
were. Right. Or at least the material being delivered was that.
And this could be for a number of reasons. It can be because of the ways that curriculum
is required. Right. It can be for testing purposes. It can be for anything. However,
at university, not grad school, so at undergrad, and here I took a class on US history and the
class did not do this. It also used a different type of textbook. Now, I wish I could remember
the name of this textbook. I don't. So, sorry to both the teacher and the textbook.
We can we can leave things mystery. Yeah, it's a mystery. But this really,
this textbook was set up to have a series of essentially short time periods or events,
like the names of a particular time, a particular era in US history. And perhaps it came with
the title that hinted at what the history was about. The one that's coming to me right now,
and I do not remember all the details for this, but it's called, I think, the Trail of Tears,
which is not it's not right. It's not a good positive. This is a very sad, very tragic story.
However, there is a lot or there was at that time. I'm not sure where they are now.
There was a lot of uncertainty around it, sort of like various aspects and details were fuzzy,
and it deserved the attention of historian scholars. In this class, in this textbook,
it was essentially introducing the time period around the event. So it had a little background
section. And then it gave some like primary sources and a little bit of summary of these ideas.
And it built up this this bit of context without without positioning there and there to be an X
happened and then Y happened and then Z happened. So it was now that you have all this information,
try to answer some of these questions like what do you think could have occurred within this
context and space and why sort of try to build the story around that. And it allowed the student
to take the time to digest a lot of historical information and do a what a researcher does in
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that field and be to be able to prepare themselves for like, how do I approach an unknown topic?
Right? How do I approach this and try to build my understanding of it and then maybe compare it with
others? Right? So yeah, it was a unique history class. I think that it would be great to see more
of that because having a history class that floods you with information of dates and times is
exhausting, at least to many people. This was less exhausting. So it made for a more engaging class.
Yeah. And also, you were saying this before, but this is how, you know, professional historians
approach their work, right? They don't know every single detail of all of, let's say, American
history. But, you know, what they end up doing is they pick a question from a certain era and
go dive, you know, take a deep dive. And they might refine question, they might take a step back and
re-ask the questions. But that's kind of like, that's the whole exercise for these historians.
And then I guess, write a book about it, right? But so that's sort of more, you know, if you are
especially, I'm guessing that this happened earlier in your college? Yeah, this was maybe first or
second year, I think. Like, you know, if the history department is trying to entice students
to become history majors, I think this is like a good litmus paper type experience, right? Like,
do you like research or do you just like memorizing historical facts? Because those are two very
different things. Very different, yes. And in high school, maybe up until that point,
most of the history in standard public school education is taught in a way where you just cram
information and facts, which is, I think it's a necessary step. I akin this to be like, you know,
taking Orgo One, where you learn that carbon bonds to four things, generally, right? Like,
these might be really boring facts, but like, you kind of need to know, to like have a chemical
intuition about any molecules you've never seen before, right? You can take a look, I think both
you and I have enough organic chemistry background, even though it's been rusty, completely admit,
I have not thought about it in a while. But if somebody shows me a molecule's like, you know,
structure, one, I can understand what those structure means, right? You can also understand
what the structure means. And two, we can probably pinpoint like, oh, that's a little
odd part. I've never seen that before. Right. And also, we can probably even tell like, oh,
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this looks like it's going to be really reactive, or like, it's going to be really dissolving in
water or things like that. And like, if you don't have that basic concept of polarity,
or carbon bonding, things like that, you don't get to have this kind of instincts. And I think
in history, the boring memorizing years and events part is just kind of that's what needs to happen
to get to the fun part of history. I can talk about this more in the next episode, but I did
not have that education, because I have a little unusual background. But I see, so you didn't have
the sort of baselining of history? No, I didn't. Up until very quite recently, embarrassingly,
I did not know. I had a huge gap in my history knowledge, where like, I couldn't put two things
together. And, you know, for you guys, who, if I may make fun of a little bit, I feel like Americans
love spending all of their time on US histories. And you know, like, it's only like, what, 300
years, and you spend like four years of your high school learning it. Yeah. Yeah, there is
there is a lot to say, I want to, I am in agreement with you on that. Let me touch the chemistry
note for a second and connect it with that idea of a baseline. And then maybe we can end and carry
this into the next one. Because I want to hear about how you've maybe accustomed to that. When
you mentioned this idea of having enough context, enough of a baseline, to begin to ask questions
to begin to be able to see something. And I think the term was like a, an innate sense, a feeling.
Yeah, that something is right or wrong. Intuition. There it is. That's the word I was forgetting.
You know, just sometimes my English brain shuts off. That's just normal. And so this intuition
that you have to build, there needs to be quote, unquote, enough. Now, yeah, what that means,
what enough is like, I think varies for each person. And I don't think we necessarily need as
much as people might believe we need. Before you can be taught how to ask questions, and to sort of
gain more information. And then maybe with that new information, you can then have somebody like
guide you on taking important pieces from it, right? And be like, this is why this piece is
important. Let's walk through how you can identify that in the future. This interchange is really
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important. In chemistry, I did find it to be super useful because you were mentioning
the idea that you can look at, say, a molecule, and you're like, oh, like these particular regions
are probably more reactive. Right, it leads you to a certain number of questions that are
probably closer to the heart of more interesting questions, instead of like, what is this
bunch of lines and, you know, C's and H's. Right. You have, say, a, the baseline for that is that
you know what the letters represent. And you know what the lines represent. So you can now read,
which I think is a fair word, read the molecule. Yeah, yeah. And then it's now you can take that
baseline and you can start adding things to it. Like, ah, do you remember how that
electronegativity trait that we talked about is involved? Yeah. Like, so that actually starts
pulling it. Now, now you start to look at that molecule and you don't see a line, a carbon,
a line, an oxygen. You see electron, right? You see electron density throughout this molecule.
And that's different, right? That's hard to build up to. But it takes seeing a lot of them as well.
And it takes some iteration as well as that foundation. So yeah, it's a tug of war, right?
Between these two things. I agree. And I think a lot of the reasons why people have traumatizing
memories of high school chemistry is because teachers or the curriculum focus a lot more on
getting them, like shoving them with facts. And, you know, these rules, which are, yes, important.
But like, I think that a good instructor can make a better balance of shoving facts down to these
young minds, but also helping them connect these dots and, you know, make them have a glimpse of
where you're heading towards. So that you know that these facts shoving are not for nothing.
And because fact shoving is easier to evaluate, right? You get it? Yes. Or you don't know,
and it's easier to grade. It's easier to test.
I'm bringing the viewers. I'm over here.
Len is hyperventilating.
That really nails it. I think the essence being, if you can see that there's more ahead of you,
and you feel like you've maybe been given the tools and the starting lenses to look through,
then you're feeling more prepared, right? You're feeling more as if you can engage with this topic.
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Your U.S. history class and university, I think, actively try to foster that lens. Like,
what kind of lens do you want to have? And what sort of questions do you want to, you know,
slice through these layers of history in order to answer your question that
hopefully matters to you, right? Right. Exactly. Asami, you nailed it.
That was the connection I was going to make. All right.
Done. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us on x at
Eigo de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
