Hey science teachers -- make it fun

High school science teacher Tyler DeWitt was ecstatic about a lesson plan on bacteria (how cool!) -- and devastated when his students hated it. The problem was the textbook: it was impossible to understand. He delivers a rousing call for science teachers to ditch the jargon and extreme precision, and instead make science sing through stories and demonstrations. (Filmed at TEDxBeaconStreet.)

Let me tell you a story.

It's my first year as a new
high school science teacher,

and I'm so eager.

I'm so excited, I'm pouring
myself into my lesson plans.

But I'm slowly coming
to this horrifying realization

that my students just might
not be learning anything.

This happens one day:

I'd just assigned my class
to read this textbook chapter

about my favorite subject
in all of biology:

viruses and how they attack.

And so I'm so excited
to discuss this with them,

and I come in and I say,
"Can somebody please explain

the main ideas and why this is so cool?"

There's silence.

Finally, my favorite student,
she looks me straight in the eye,

and she says, "The reading sucked."

(Laughter)

And then she clarified.

She said, "You know what,
I don't mean that it sucks.

I mean I didn't understand a word of it.

It's boring, who cares, and it sucks."

(Laughter)

These sympathetic smiles
spread all throughout the room now,

and I realize that all of my other
students are in the same boat,

that maybe they took notes or memorized
definitions from the textbook,

but not one of them
really understood the main ideas.

Not one of them can tell me
why this stuff is so cool,

why it's so important.

I'm totally clueless.

I have no idea what to do next.

So the only thing I can think of is say,

"Listen. Let me tell you a story.

The main characters in the story
are bacteria and viruses.

These guys are blown up
a couple million times.

The real bacteria and viruses are so small

we can't see them without a microscope,

and you guys might know
bacteria and viruses

because they both make us sick.

But what a lot of people don't know

is that viruses
can also make bacteria sick."

Now, the story
that I start telling my kids,

it starts out like a horror story.

Once upon a time,
there's this happy little bacterium.

Don't get too attached to him.

(Laughter)

Maybe he's floating around in your stomach

or in some spoiled food somewhere,

and all of a sudden,
he starts to not feel so good.

Maybe he ate something bad for lunch.

And then things get really horrible,

as his skin rips apart,

and he sees a virus
coming out from his insides.

And then it gets horrible
when he bursts open

and an army of viruses
floods out from his insides.

"Ouch" is right.

If you see this, and you're a bacterium,

this is like your worst nightmare.

But if you're a virus and you see this,

you cross those little legs
of yours and you think,

"We rock."

Because it took a lot of crafty work
to infect this bacterium.

Here's what had to happen.

A virus grabbed onto a bacterium

and it slipped its DNA into it.

The next thing
is that virus DNA made stuff

that chopped up the bacteria DNA.

And now that we've gotten rid
of the bacteria DNA,

the virus DNA takes control of the cell

and it tells it to start
making more viruses.

Because, you see, DNA is like a blueprint

that tells living things what to make.

So this is kind of like going
into a car factory

and replacing the blueprints
with blueprints for killer robots.

The workers still come
the next day, they do their job,

but they're following
different instructions.

So replacing the bacteria
DNA with virus DNA

turns the bacteria into a factory
for making viruses --

that is, until it's so filled
with viruses that it bursts.

But that's not the only way
that viruses infect bacteria.

Some are much more crafty.

(Laughter)

When a secret agent virus
infects a bacterium,

they do a little espionage.

Here, this cloaked, secret agent virus

is slipping his DNA
into the bacterial cell,

but here's the kicker:

It doesn't do anything
harmful -- not at first.

Instead, it silently slips
into the bacteria's own DNA,

and it just stays there
like a terrorist sleeper cell,

waiting for instructions.

And what's interesting about this is now,
whenever this bacteria has babies,

the babies also have
the virus DNA in them.

So now we have a whole
extended bacteria family,

filled with virus sleeper cells.

They're just happily living together
until a signal happens

and bam! -- all of the DNA pops out.

It takes control of these cells,
turns them into virus-making factories,

and they all burst,

a huge, extended bacteria family,

all dying with viruses
spilling out of their guts,

the viruses taking over the bacterium.

So now you understand
how viruses can attack cells.

There are two ways:

On the left is what we call the lytic way,

where the viruses go right in
and take over the cells.

On the [right] is the lysogenic way

that uses secret agent viruses.

So this stuff is not that hard, right?

And now all of you understand it.

But if you've graduated from high school,

I can almost guarantee
you've seen this information before.

But I bet it was presented in a way
that it didn't exactly stick in your mind.

So when my students
were first learning this,

why did they hate it so much?

Well, there were a couple of reasons.

First of all, I can guarantee you

you that their textbooks
didn't have secret agent viruses,

and they didn't have horror stories.

You know, in the communication of science,

there is this obsession with seriousness.

It kills me. I'm not kidding.

I used to work
for an educational publisher,

and as a writer, I was always told
never to use stories

or fun, engaging language,

because then my work might not be viewed
as "serious" and "scientific."

I mean, because God
forbid somebody have fun

when they're learning science.

So we have this field of science
that's all about slime

and color changes.

Check this out.

And then we have, of course,
as any good scientist has to have ...

explosions!

But if a textbook seems too much fun,

it's somehow unscientific.

Now another problem

was that the language in their textbook
was truly incomprehensible.

If we want to summarize that story
that I told you earlier,

we could start by saying,

"These viruses make copies of themselves

by slipping their DNA into a bacterium."

The way this showed up in the textbook,
it looked like this:

"Bacteriophage replication is initiated

through the introduction of viral
nucleic acid into a bacterium."

That's great, perfect for 13-year-olds.

But here's the thing:

There are plenty of people
in science education

who would look
at this and say there's no way

that we could ever give that to students,

because it contains some language
that isn't completely accurate.

For example, I told you
that viruses have DNA.

Well, a very tiny fraction of them don't.

They have something called RNA instead.

So a professional science writer
would say, "That has to go.

We have to change it to something
much more technical."

And after a team
of professional science editors

went over this really simple explanation,

they'd find fault
with almost every word I've used,

and they'd have to change anything
that wasn't serious enough,

and they'd have to change everything

that wasn't 100 percent perfect.

Then it would be accurate,

but it would be completely
impossible to understand.

This is horrifying.

You know, I keep talking
about this idea of telling a story,

and it's like science communication
has taken on this idea

of what I call the tyranny of precision,

where you can't just tell a story.

It's like science has become
that horrible storyteller that we all know

who gives us all the details
nobody cares about,

where you're like, "Oh, I met
my friend for lunch the other day,

and she was wearing these ugly jeans.

I mean, they weren't really jeans,
they were more like leggings,

but I guess they're actually
kind of more like jeggings,

and you're just like,
"Oh my God. What is the point?"

Or even worse,
science education is becoming

like that guy who always says, "Actually."

You want to be like,

"Oh, dude, we had to get up
in the middle of the night

and drive a hundred miles
in total darkness."

And that guy's like,
"Actually, it was 87.3 miles."

And you're like, "Actually, shut up!
I'm just trying to tell a story."

Because good storytelling
is all about emotional connection.

We have to convince our audience

that what we're talking about matters.

But just as important is knowing
which details we should leave out

so that the main point still comes across.

I'm reminded of what the architect
Mies van der Rohe said,

and I paraphrase,
when he said that sometimes,

you have to lie
in order to tell the truth.

I think this sentiment is particularly
relevant to science education.

Now, finally, I am often so disappointed

when people think that I'm advocating
a dumbing down of science.

That's not true at all.

I'm currently a Ph.D. student at MIT,

and I absolutely understand
the importance of detailed,

specific scientific
communication between experts,

but not when we're trying
to teach 13-year-olds.

If a young learner
thinks that all viruses have DNA,

that's not going to ruin
their chances of success in science.

But if a young learner
can't understand anything in science

and learns to hate it because it
all sounds like this,

that will ruin their chances of success.

This needs to stop ...

and I wish that the change could come
from the institutions at the top

that are perpetuating these problems,

and I beg them,
I beseech them to just stop it.

But I think that's unlikely.

So we are so lucky that we have resources

like the Internet, where we can
circumvent these institutions

from the bottom up.

There's a growing number
of online resources

that are dedicated
to just explaining science

in simple, understandable ways.

I dream of a Wikipedia-like website

that would explain
any scientific concept you can think of

in simple language
any middle schooler can understand.

And I myself spend most of my free time

making these science videos
that I put on YouTube.

I explain chemical equilibrium

using analogies to awkward
middle school dances,

and I talk about fuel cells

with stories about boys and girls
at a summer camp.

The feedback that I get
is sometimes misspelled

and it's often written in LOLcats,

(Laughter)

but nonetheless,
it's so appreciative, so thankful

that I know this is the right way
we should be communicating science.

There's still so much work
left to be done, though,

and if you're involved
with science in any way,

I urge you to join me.

Pick up a camera, start
to write a blog, whatever,

but leave out the seriousness,
leave out the jargon.

Make me laugh. Make me care.

Leave out those annoying details
that nobody cares about

and just get to the point.

How should you start?

Why don't you say,
"Listen, let me tell you a story."

Thank you.