Category: Education

Transforming the Discussion on Race

As America is having one of its periodic discussions about race the past few weeks, it is time to consider how educators can induce a transformation to the conversation. When we talk about race, we are discussing skin color, which is determined by the amount of pigmentation in one’s skin. More specifically, a polymer (a repeating chemical pattern that forms a very large molecule) referred to as melanin.  The first time I heard of melanin was not in a biology class, but from Richard Pryor on a Tonight Show appearance.  Pryor discussed all kinds of humorous situations the high melanin level in his skin had caused.  Not really funny, it was only Pryor’s extraordinary comedic talent that made it seem so.

I know I am not alone in lacking a formal education as to what causes skin to appear in various colors in humans.  And rest assured, there are plenty of disreputable sources of information in American society to fill the void.  If we are going to have a reasonable discussion about race, it is time we educate ourselves what exactly race is.

The higher amount of melanin one has in their skin, the darker their skin will appear. This polymer also determines hair and eye color. Individuals with a high degree of melanin will have brown eyes, less melanin results in blue/green eyes. The same relationship holds with hair, the more melanin in one’s hair, the darker it is.

Melanin regulates skin color by the process of light absorption.  Light received by the skin is reflected back via a dermis layer below the melanin layer.  As the reflected light passes through melanin, it is absorbed.  The energy of the absorbed light triggers vibration in melanin molecules.  This vibrational energy is then converted to thermal energy and released as heat.  If the melanin level is low, little light is absorbed and skin appears white.  If the melanin level is high, more light is absorbed and skin appears darker.

Eye color is created in the same fashion.  Persons with low levels of melanin will have blue eyes.  The iris scatters light in the same manner as water droplets do to create a rainbow.  Blue light is scattered most and that is the color of light reflected out the eye.  Persons with high levels of melanin absorb most of the light reflected out and consequently, have darker eyes.

Thus, when we classify human beings by skin color, it is the same as if we classify by eye or hair color.

Melanin content regulates how skin responds to ultraviolet (UV) exposure as well as vitamin D production in the body.  Melanin absorbs UV radiation and having a lot of it protects against UV damage (sunburn), so dark skin is advantageous if you live around the equator.  People with high melanin content require longer exposure to sunlight to produce the necessary amount of vitamin D in the body, while people with low amounts of melanin do not require as much.  Thus, having little melanin is advantageous the farther away you live from the tropics.   Indeed, that is how evolution worked out as this map of skin color distribution from 1500 AD (before modern transportation and mass migration-voluntary and otherwise) demonstrates.

Image: Wiki Commons

The human race originated in Africa. All humans can trace their maternal ancestral roots to a single woman who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago. All humans can also trace their paternal ancestral roots to a single man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago. They were not Adam and Eve as in the biblical sense, they were one of many humans alive back then. However, those two individuals are the only ones from that era whose ancestry has survived to the current day.

The DNA of all humans is 99.9% identical. The National Geographic Genographic Project can use these small variations to trace one’s ancestral migration route from Africa.

Below is my maternal migration route (my mother was Irish).  My maternal line migrated out of Africa into the Middle East about 60,000 years ago, moved into West Asia 55,000 years ago, made their way into Western Europe about 22,000 years ago, and finally into what we now know as Ireland around 10,000 years ago.

MaternalAnd here is my paternal migration route (my father is Polish).  My paternal line made a similar migration out of Africa but took a right turn into Central Asia 35,000 years ago, eventually settling into Eastern Europe sometime around 15,000 years ago.

Paternal jpeg

As our ancestors migrated into colder climes, humans with genetic mutations resulting in an evolutionary advantage in those climes tended to survive and reproduce over those who did not. The end result, those whose ancestors migrated to Northern Europe have low levels of melanin and light skin and eye color. Light skin color is a relatively recent phenomenon, one that recent research indicates occurred 8,000 years ago.

Note that the genetic mutation that caused lighter shades of skin occurred thousands of years after human migration into Europe.  That’s right, my European ancestors, along with yours if you are white, were black upon their arrival into Europe.  That notwithstanding, skin color is used to classify individuals and justify the most cruelest behaviors targeting those deemed to have an improper melanin level in their skins.

How to change that?  I have no illusions that change will come overnight.  It will occur most probably like water wearing away on rock.  Over time, consistent pressure will wear the rock down.  As educators, we must insist any discussion involving race acknowledge precisely what the true differences are between the races, a minute, skin deep layer of polymer called melanin.  And we must insist those with racists attitudes describe in scientifically rigorous detail how that polymer contributes to the characteristics of the race being disparaged or exalted.

In a way, we need to disrupt the discussion on race in the same manner hi-tech start ups disrupt existing business models.  Why should we discuss race based on an antiquated social construct used to justify slavery?  Would we consider discussing astronomy as if the Copernican revolution never took place?  Certainly we would regard those who would to be cranks.  Any call for a discussion on race must be framed in its proper context or that discussion will be pointless.

Think of a world were people were subjected into slavery due to their eye color, or denied access to education and jobs due to their hair color. Can you imagine a world where Martin Luther King Jr. would have to say; “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their eyes, but by the content of their character?” Sounds like some sort of bizarro world, or a Twilight Zone episode. However, that is the world we live in. If you were to judge someone by eye color the same way some will judge a person by their skin color…it’s the same damn thing.

UND Capstone Projects

My alma mater, the University of North Dakota Space Studies Department, has rolled out websites for its 2015 Master’s Capstone projects.  They are:

Vision of Venus:  A mission proposal for an orbiter and two balloon systems to explore Venus.  The goal of the mission is to search for organic chemicals in the upper atmosphere of Venus.  The proposed mission would launch in 2021.

Lunar Impact Crater Explorer:  A mission proposal to explore the South Pole Aitken Basin also to be launched in 2021.  This region of the Moon contains ice and thus, is a key focus for lunar research.

Good luck to both teams with your presentations!

*Image above was taken during the Moon & Venus conjunction of March, 2012.

Replicate, Replicate, Replicate

Typically, during grade school we are introduced to the scientific method with the following steps:

Hypothesis

Gather Data

Experiment – test hypothesis

Reject or accept hypothesis

However, there is one extra step that is very important and that is replication of the original research result. Replication of results never gets the headlines, or wins a Nobel, but without it, science cannot advance. This is a vital, if often overlooked, aspect of the scientific process that guards against fraudulent work and/or erroneous findings. One such example of the replication process nullifying an original research result is the vaccination/autism link. In the late 1990’s, a research paper was published indicating a link between vaccinations and autism. Those results could not be replicated independently and were later discovered to be fraudulent.

Another controversial science paper was published around the same time as the fraudulent vaccine/autism study. That being, the hockey stick graph indicating a rapid rise in global surface temperatures during the 20th century. Unlike the vaccine/autism link, the hockey stick result was replicated independently. Also, an investigation of fraud charges against the author, Michael Mann, cleared him of any wrongdoing. Hence, the vaccine/autism link was fraudulent science that is not valid, but the hockey stick graph is a valid result confirmed independently and cleared of fraudulent charges.

In astronomy, the replication process recently nullified a discovery that attracted quite a bit of publicity. In 2014, a team of astronomers announced the detection of gravity waves in the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang. This had huge implications, as this would have confirmed the inflationary model of the Big Bang as well as gravity being transmitted via waves as predicted by Einstein in 1916. However, the replication process determined the signal the team detected in the form of polarized light was actually caused by dust in the Milky Way.

It happens, another case was the exoplanet Gliese 581g. When discovered, it was thought to be a habitable planet and garnered quite a bit of press coverage. However, subsequent observations determined the signal received was caused by hyperactivity of the star itself and not an exoplanet at all. Nor is this restricted to the natural sciences. In economics, there was a notable failure to replicate a research result that had significant policy implications during the height of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  As you can tell, a failure to replicate does not necessarily mean the original work was fraudulent, sometimes it is caused by a breakdown in methodology or misunderstanding of cause and effect.

All this can be very confusing to students and can lead to disillusionment with science unless the process is understood properly. We cannot be experts at everything, so how do we know if a scientific report is trustworthy or not? How do we know if that latest nutrition study the press is hyping will pan out in the long run? I tell my students to see if the results have been verified independently. For example, the link between lung cancer and smoking has been replicated by many studies and thus, can be trusted to be quality info. That is the hallmark of good science.

The lesson here is, never jump on an initial finding (no matter how interesting) as a conclusive result. Best to wait for replication of the original study as confirmation of those results.  Failure to do that with the autism/vaccine link has caused a significant increase in measles cases the past year.  And as we have discovered, once a concept gets lodged in a mindset, it can be very difficult to dislodge it.

So, another bit of advice on how to do good science. If we develop a “rooting” interest in a scientific result as we do at a sporting event or in politics, we have already gone off the rails are far as the scientific method goes. Nature will not bend to our wishes. We can only employ the scientific method to understand it better.

*Image at top of post is replication of Mann’s hockey stick graph courtesy NOAA.

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Sports quotations often find their way into the classroom and the workplace. Usually it is the hackneyed kind such as the one this post is named after and is of little value. However, if you dig into the work of the most successful coaches there are often little nuggets that go way beyond the value of say, “Giving it 110%.”

Bear in mind, for all the publicity and money athletes make, the work your students will do in their lives will have much greater impact on society than most sports figures. If the Seahawks gave the ball to Marshawn Lynch and he crashed into the end zone at the end of this year’s Super Bowl, outside the NFL bubble, it really would not have changed anyone’s life. That is not the case for a paralegal taking information for a legal case, a business manager making decisions that will affect the company’s employees, or a nurse taking care of a hospital patient.

That being said (another cliché) here it goes:

Red Auerbach: “It’s not what you tell your players, its what they hear.” In the book, On & Off the Court, Auerbach tells the story of his first few days as a coach at St. Albans Prep in D.C. After the first three days of practice, Auerbach realizes his players are not absorbing the techniques being taught. Finally, he pulls the team aside and says, “The object of the game is to take this ball and stick it into the hole over there…and make sure the other team doesn’t stick the ball into this hole over here.” A teacher has to meet the students on their level.

Earl Weaver: As described by Bill James in the book, Guide to Baseball Managers, Weaver was not interested in what his players could not do, only in what they could do. I tell my students that I do not want them to think about what they don’t know or are unable to do. The focus in the class should be on what they do know and can do. That is used as a foundation upon which to build their knowledge of the subject.

Bill Polian: “Ignore the noise.” In The Game Plan, Polian recalls the decision to draft Peyton Manning over Ryan Leaf. At the time, the consensus in the media was that Leaf was the better prospect due to his physical stature. However, Polian had interviewed and observed private work-outs with both quarterbacks. The information culled from these sessions made it clear Manning was the better pick despite all the howling it would bring from the fans and media. For your students, remind them not to be swayed in their decision making by those who do not have all the facts, no matter how loud they may be. And that leads to:

Chuck Noll: About Three Bricks Shy of a Load is, to this day, the best sports read I have come across. In it, Noll describes his decision making process as follows: “I don’t like to speculate…I like to make decisions based on real facts, and if you haven’t got enough facts to make a decision, you obviously can’t make it.” You might get lucky making a single gut-feeling decision, but not over the course of a lifetime. The process of decision-making should be based on facts and information rather than a feeling what might be the best way to proceed.

Vince Lombardi: From When Pride Still Mattered, former Packer lineman Bob Skoronski describes a speech Lombardi gave to his team on the meaning of love. It went, “Anybody can love something that is beautiful or smart or agile. You will never know love until you can love something that isn’t beautiful, isn’t bright, isn’t glamorous. It takes a special person to love something unattractive, someone unknown. That is the true test of love. Everybody can love someone’s strengths and somebody’s good looks. But can you accept someone for his inabilities?” Given the caricature of Lombardi we have been presented with, it’s hard to imagine him saying this. But then again, would Lombardi have been able to motivate his players year after year by simply yelling at them? Lombardi obviously had more going for him than that. And you’ll need more going for you than that in any sort of leadership position.

It’s easy to be dismissive of sports culture given the scandals of recent years. And sports alone will not prepare one for life. The fact that 78% of NFL players file bankruptcy within two years of leaving the game makes that painfully obvious. However, as in most things in life, if you look deep enough, you’ll find something useful. In the big picture sports are not everything, as Marv Levy once said, World War II was a must win. Nonetheless, coaches are teachers, and the best will have techniques and philosophies that can be applied in the classroom and in life.

Winter and Global Warming

February clocked out as the coldest month in Buffalo history at 10.90 F. Besides the grumbling about dead car batteries, heating bills, and snow-clogged streets, there are the usual doubts about global warming. In this kind of scenario, how does one address the topic with your students? For starters, do not be dismissive of their qualms. Your students are applying their life experience to reject the concept of global warming. As a teacher, you must utilize your student’s life experience to understand the concept that temperatures are rising globally even while they are shivering on the way to school locally.

The first step is to have a discussion session. The goals of this discussion should be two-fold. One is to expand the student’s perspective beyond a regional basis. Ask the students if they have ever vacationed in Florida during the Spring break. What other travel experiences have they had? Did they note a change in the weather when they traveled? It does not necessarily have to be very far. New York City and the East Coast can be significantly warmer than Buffalo, especially in the Spring.

The second set of questions in the discussion should be geared towards jarring your student’s memories to get a bigger picture on climate. In the case of Buffalo, students can be asked if they recall March of 2012. That month featured 8 days of 70 degree weather and 3 days over 80 degrees. When addressing the issue of climate change, it is important to pull your students out of the here and now. What is happening regionally cannot be extrapolated globally and what is happening now may very well be ephemeral in nature.

This sets the stage for an examination of weather vs. climate. Again, drawing upon a student’s interest may be helpful. If the student is a baseball fan, explain that a game box score is like weather and a batter’s career average is like climate. In the case of Derek Jeter, the 0 for 4’s, 2 for 5’s, 4 for 4’s that show up in the daily box scores is like weather. Jeter’s career average of .310 is like climate. One could take a look at Jeter’s game log from the 1999 season when he hit .349. Twenty-three times that year Jeter went 0-fer. Would one conclude from those games that Jeter was a poor hitter? Should one conclude from a few cold days the climate is not getting warmer or is a larger sample required?

Following this prep work, now is the time to delve into some inquiry based learning. Teaching in Buffalo, I would have the students graph out average annual temperature from 1950 to 2014 and add a moving 5-year average to smooth out the noise. The result is below:

Buff Temp

It is very important to stress this chart does not prove or disprove global warming as the sample size is too small. It is only intended to familiarize the students with the nature of climate vs. weather.

Again, a follow-up discussion with the class is required. What is the average annual temperature in Buffalo? What is the difference between the mean temperature and highest and lowest annual temperature? If the climate were to warm more than 40 F, how would that compare to the hottest year on record? How does 2014, which also featured a very cold winter, compare with other years on the chart? Is there a change in the variations in average temperature after 1980 and is that predicted at all by climate change theory?

Besides getting a feel for the nature of climate statistics, this exercise is intended to enable the class to discern between outliers and trends. Go back to the Jeter example; his 0-fers were outliers (unfortunately, for this Red Sox fan) and were not indicative of his overall hitting skills. This will come up time and time again as climate change contrarians make their case by using outliers. The most recent example is the expanding sea ice in Antarctica, which is a regional phenomenon as ice coverage is declining on the Antarctic continent, in the Arctic, and in mountain ranges around the globe.

At this point, the class should be prepared to deal with global climate. The NASA Climate Change website is an excellent resource for this (A word of caution, global temperatures use Celsius rather than Fahrenheit). The class can explore how the change in Buffalo matches or departs from global climate change. Does the post World War II dip in temperature match what happened globally? Why might that be the case? Does what happened after 1980 match? How about the brief dip in the early 1990’s? What might have caused that? Allow your students to construct their own knowledge of what is happening with the climate. The main objective for the teacher is to ensure the students are applying the Richard Feynman adage, nature will reveal itself to us as it is, not how we wish it to be.

Diversity

Many job postings for teaching positions have as a desired qualification the ability to teach a diverse student population. It is certainly understandable given the changing American demographics both now and in the upcoming decades.   What exactly should that qualification entail?

When presented with this issue in graduate school, many in my class had the first instinct to go with the role model route. That is, presenting students with a history of prominent individuals in the field that match the student’s background. My graduate adviser was quick to point out, that does nothing to help a student understand the subject material. And that, after all, is the main objective of a teacher.

As my adviser explained, the key to teaching a diverse class is to understand and integrate their life experiences into the course lesson plans. This places a premium on understanding the backgrounds of your students, preferably as the first order of business at the start of the course. By this, I mean more than a student’s racial background. You’ll want to understand a student’s life history and interests. Is the student from an urban or rural background? What are their personal interests and goals? Why are they taking the course?

In the Buffalo school system, there are many students from Somalia and Puerto Rico. Of course, most of the students are from Buffalo itself. How does one teach to a class with such a diverse background. An example of a possible lesson is below:

The seasons are dictated by the tilt of the Earth’s axis, which in turn, determines the angle of the Sun above the horizon. As an exercise, have the class calculate the amount of solar radiation received per square meter for Buffalo, San Juan, and Mogadishu on June 21 and December 21 at local Noon. Prior to the calculation, have the class discuss their personal experience of weather on those dates at those locations and make a prediction as to what the results of the calculations will be.

Using basic trig and a base unit of 1050 W/m2 of energy received by sunlight when the Sun is directly over head will yield the following results:

Energy per square meter at local Noon – watts per square meter         

City                 June 21                      December 21

Buffalo            990                             420

San Juan         1047                           783

Mogadishu     981                            945

Follow up questions for the class could be, does it surprise that Buffalo receives about the same amount of energy from the Sun on June 21 as Mogadishu? What does the energy difference between the three locations on those dates say about the seasonal changes and compare to the original class discussion.

Have the class find the average temperature for those cities on those dates and discuss the correlation. The students can use a planetarium program such as Starry Nights to see if any of the three cities experience a day when the Sun is directly overhead at local Noon. Keep in mind, this is a simplified model that does not account for variables such as cloud cover, but all scientific models make simplifications to arrive at the core of the issue.

This exercise, of course, should be tailored to fit the background of the specific class. The key point is to utilize the diversity of your class as an asset to the lesson plan.