Overview
Growing up as the son of immigrant parents on the streets of Brooklyn, Isidor Rabi may not have seemed to be leading a life that was particularly out of the ordinary. But he went on to become an extraordinary scientist, helping to invent radar and the atomic clock and winning the 1944 Nobel Prize in physics. When asked why he pursued a career in science rather than medicine or law like the other kids he grew up with, Rabi replied: "My mother made me a scientist. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: "So? Did you learn anything today?" Not my mother. She always asked me a different question. "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?" That difference made me a scientist."
The seemingly slight difference in his mother's question caused Rabi to see the world through a vastly different lens than his classmates. Teaching science students to question information, rather than simply absorb it, cultivates curiosity, prompts students to delve deeper into the material, and helps them identify their unique personal interests. By teaching students to question the world around them, we teach them to think for themselves. Questioning opens the door to discovery, innovation, understanding, and, of course, further questioning.
Questions aren't just important in science, though—they're a vital component to success in many careers. Questions are asked in the legal system to determine guilt and innocence, they are asked by physicians to determine how to treat their patients, they are asked by architects to create the most appropriate design of structures, and so on and so forth. Of course, it's not simply about asking any question, it's about asking good questions. Asking the right questions can make the difference between winning and losing a lawsuit, or saving and killing an ailing patient. So, what makes a good question? And how can you teach students to ask good questions?
The aim of this unit is to teach students how to develop and analyze questions and hypotheses through the lens of evolutionary medicine. More specifically, the skills I want students to have at the end of this unit are the ability to: formulate testable questions, generate proximate and ultimate explanations for phenomena, and draw conclusions from data. The main concepts my students will understand by the end of the unit are that: evolution does not have a direction or plan, our bodies are a result of evolutionary compromises, there are both proximate and ultimate explanations to every human health issue, and correlation does not equal causation.
To provide some context for this unit, I teach biology and health at a small Chicago high school where 93% of the students are from low-income households. The majority of the students are Black (93%), while the second most common demographic is Hispanic (5.7%). My health classes have an average of 18 students enrolled, although class sizes may soon increase significantly.
This unit is designed with the students in my tenth grade Topics in Health Science class in mind. Since it is framed around formulating questions and hypotheses, it can easily apply to a high school biology course or a science class at the elementary level. My students do not have much background in data analysis or experimental design, so this unit is meant to build their skills in these areas. I am allotting four weeks to cover this information, but it can be adapted to fit a shorter time span for teachers whose students already have a foundation in experimental design.
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