DD’s science teacher AIBU

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Dd14 is quite an opinionated teen and has become very sensitive to even a sniff of inequality. I think it’s quite cool that she has strong beliefs but do sometimes have to tell her her to rein it in a bit..

She came down from Google classroom tonight on a fowl mood and announced that she was drafting a complaint letter to her science teacher due to an argument they had over an exercise in class...

The exercise was dividing statements into fact and opinion, ie FACT on average the sun is 150 million miles from the sun. OPINION pineapple taste good on pizza...

The final one was girls should be able to work in any area they choose which I’m sure you have guess the teacher was adamant was opinion and if had been marked down on the sheet as such...

I personally think this is less about being opinion or fact statement and more to do with it being a poor choice of example in a class of predominantly strong minded young girls but DD is very upset and angry at her teacher.

Is she being a bit immature and dramatic or does she have a point...

I’ll include the work sheet in next post.

I can't think of a gcse question where this would be relevant

Presumably you don't teach GCSE Science? There are plenty where students are asked to evaluate something based on information given, some of which is not valid evidence of the conclusion asserted.

@Frodont

We do similar activities as English teachers but with an additional layer of nuance; we expect students to be able to identify incorrect facts and opinions presented as fact in addition to straightforward facts and opinions.

Yes - English! And nuance! This is science and will no doubt provoke a ridiculously drawn out and circular discussion, wasting time which could be spent on actual, you know, science.

You've had a very poor scientific education if you don't think that there is space for debate within science. Medical ethics come up in the syllabus for GCSE, e.g. the ethical use of stem cells.

Surely if we've learnt anything over the last ten months it's that it's childish to think that there is a monolithic totem of fact called The Science, and that within the scientific community there is constant debate about the interpretation of data.

Whether it’s fact or opinion, I think the teacher should have chosen a different example!! As one other poster said, she doesn’t know her audience!

Or she knows them really well and deliberately chose it to make them think.

pretty contentious and loaded example to give...think the teacher should have kept it a bit more vanilla. Might be different if it was being used as a springboard for discussion in modern studies or suchlike.

I can see why your daughter is a bit wtf. Also the way it is worded 'girls' does just have a whiff of male superiority!!

Also think it's a shame we cannot even mention teachers without it being an accusation of 'teacher bashing' as if it is now somehow sacrosanct and beyond any kind of reproach.

I have A level Physics and did my degree at Cambridge. I worked in computer science for years.

I wouldn't write any letter of complaint to a teacher, particularly at the moment, but I would understand if my dds were made angry, even if I could see that the teacher had done it deliberately to get them thinking. There are so many other examples you could choose!

I firstly am shocked that this is what 14 year old science lesson entails. I am then shocked that your daughter thinks it is appropriate to argue with a teacher and write letters of complaint.

But it is an opinion not a fact. Not everyone can do every job, I couldn’t be a brain surgeon because I am not clever enough and I also couldn’t be a footballer because I am rubbish at sport. I think there was no need to say girls regather than “people” but nevertheless it is an opinion. But the real issue is your teens behaviour in school.

The blurb about my education was in response to the poster whi said "You've had a very poor scientific education if you don't think that there is space for debate within science".

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation

It's not a "woke opinion" to understand that girls can do any job they choose. What a revolting statement.

My point was that the discussion around the statement is vital. The statement hasn't been presented as a fact (nor is it). It's designed to challenge and make students think. Being given a load of bland obvious answers doesn't do this.

The point is that this is a school working with easily influenced young people at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives.

Young women and girls will have plenty of opportunities to come into contact with misogyny. They don't need it ramming down their throats in their science lessons as well.

This would be an appropriate statement to discuss as others have said in a debating class or something like PSHE, to talk about the issues around these outdated views.

My feeling is that the teacher probably just hasn't thought this through and has left a very outdated statement on a worksheet that was being used 10 or 20 years go. The teacher should have thought about it more and deserve all the feedback they get from OP's daughter.

But the real issue is your teens behaviour in school how do you know she's not a model student?!

In this context it is an opinion. A "should" is an opinion, or perhaps a "value" or an "ethical judgment". A "should" cannot be a "fact". What does happen is factual, what can happen is potentially factual, but what should happen - nope. The word "opinion" is might not be quite right either, but "fact" is definitely wrong.

From a philosophical point of view, in this exercise the teacher is taking an objectivist stance, that there is a clear difference between facts which can be tested by experiments and measured objectively, and subjective opinions and ethical values etc. which can't. I expect the teacher is trying to get the idea of scientific objectivism across. Objectivism (the truth about the world is outside us and we can build experiments to find out what it is) is the accepted approach in "hard science" but objectivism is a lot more contentious in anything involving people, such as social science, psychology etc., and other approaches such as constructivism and post-modernism are used instead.

So the teacher is trying to put an important distinction across. By using an example that your DD feels strongly about for very good ethical reasons, the teacher is showing that strong feelings and valid ethical positions don't create objective testable facts.

wildraisins I totally agree with you.

A badly chosen opinion.

They didn’t choose other controversial statements or that men should be allowed to do whatever job they want. Why not?

@Frodont

The blurb about my education was in response to the poster whi said "You've had a very poor scientific education if you don't think that there is space for debate within science".

Yes, that was me. Thanks for the CV but it doesn't refute my statement. You said "This is science and will no doubt provoke a ridiculously drawn out and circular discussion, wasting time which could be spent on actual, you know, science." I fundamentally disagree with you on this.

@Frodont

The blurb about my education was in response to the poster whi said "You've had a very poor scientific education if you don't think that there is space for debate within science".

This shouldn't even be a debate though in 21st century classrooms.

The school shouldn't be reinforcing the idea that "girls can do whatever they want" is even a topic that is up for discussion. It should be obvious.

Why wasn't the statement "boys can do whatever they want"?

Sorry but in this instance I don't think the school should be offering this up as a topic to be debated, particularly in the context of a science lesson. The appropriate context for it, if any, is PSHCE or possibly an English lesson if it comes up in an old text that is being read.

The final one was girls should be able to work in any area they choose which I’m sure you have guess the teacher was adamant was opinion and if had been marked down on the sheet as such

Totally agree with this "I've slept on it and still think its an outdated and inflammatory message. Is it a mixed school? Some of the boys will just see it as a chance to put the boot in. I wouldn't formally complain, but if my dd wanted to suggest other, more enlightened examples to the teacher I'd be fully behind her".

There is plenty of room to discuss the difference between fact and opinion here, and also the fact that not all opinions are good ones (for example, 'all Scottish people are miserly' is not a good opinion and also an inflammatory one) - but it seems this might now have happened. If the teacher wanted to expand the discussion to questions of sex and gender and associated behavioural expectations and social mores then simply rephrasing as "males and females should be able to work in any area they choose" would have done the trick.

Also, I'm curious as to how the teacher conveyed the difference between 'fact' and 'opinion' and what evidence they used to 'prove' that this was opinion and not fact. In other words, if one was offered the statement 'the earth orbits the sun' then there are plenty of ways of showing that this is a fact (until disproven) - what evidence was offered to show that the contentious statement was merely opinion? Or is the mere existence of a contrary opinion in the absence of empirical proof (which is harder in some cases to offer than others) good enough?

OP I feel for you.
I have a SD who too is very WOKE ...
And I have a SS who is so apathetic he doesnt have an opinion on anything ...

Both are equally trying and I long for one of them to tone it down or one of them to step it up and meet me in the middle somewhere so I can have a conversation with them...

It's a poor worksheet but I feel sorry for teachers at the moment. Poor sods must be on their knees.

This shouldn't even be a debate though in 21st century classrooms.
Of course it should - the world is still far from an equal place, even in the U.K. and raising awareness of that is no bad thing in whatever setting. Not saying it doesn’t make it so.

@Jellycatspyjamas

This shouldn't even be a debate though in 21st century classrooms. Of course it should - the world is still far from an equal place, even in the U.K. and raising awareness of that is no bad thing in whatever setting. Not saying it doesn’t make it so.

Yes, in pshe or debating or English maybe. Even then you could change the "girls" (ick) to "boys" and it would be just as valid as a question and more interesting to debate.

HRTFT but, OP have you discussed the importance of some facts and some opinions? Pineapple on pizza is not a particularly important opinion, the fact that we have limestone tiles in our kitchen is not a particularly important fact. The opinion that anyone should be able to work in any field of their choosing in an incredibly important opinion. (With caveats of course.)

@Jellycatspyjamas

This shouldn't even be a debate though in 21st century classrooms. Of course it should - the world is still far from an equal place, even in the U.K. and raising awareness of that is no bad thing in whatever setting. Not saying it doesn’t make it so.

Yes, I do agree. But in this context, awareness was only raised because the daughter complained about it - it wasn't the teacher's intention. The teacher only wanted to talk about the way the sentence was phrased and whether that made it fact or opinion. They weren't planning the (science!) lesson as a debate about sexism and mysogyny.

If it comes up in PSHE, History, English as an outdated view, great - talk about it as a ridiculous thing that people used to believe. Maybe some people still believe it these days as well - what do we think about that? Has anyone experienced it, etc etc.

But if it comes up in this context, in a science lesson, out of the blue, it just perpetuates misogyny as part of our day to day lives and it is a part of the problem.

don't think dd is being woke at all. this would have irked me 25 years ago.

Surely it's obvious that when the worksheet was originally made (in the 1960's probably!), the intended answer was "opinion" and it was meant to be very straightforward.

It's not straightforward anymore, and the fact that it is now resulting in these debates and upset teenagers shows how outdated it is and it needs to be changed.

The teacher has clearly been thoughtless/ lazy here and this worksheet hasn't been updated in decades.

I have a PhD in biochemistry. On the certificate it say ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry’.

Science is more than just n numbers, it’s about critical thinking and logical reasoning and, as this teacher was trying to demonstrate, sorting facts from opinions.

There's no way the teacher didn't know this question was going to be controversial. I imagine that's why they picked it - to create debate among the students.

So I don't think they can be surprised when some of the female students get upset by it. I would support your daughter in wording a complaint.

If the teacher really wants to cover this in a science lesson, talking about physical differences and (small) population vs (potentially large) individual variation would be a much better way to approach it.