School beckons--this is a repeat from a couple of Augusts ago, a reminder to me.

Idleness is the enemy of the soul. And therefore, at fixed times, the brothers ought to be occupied in manual labor; and again, at fixed times, in sacred reading. ... there shall certainly be appointed one or two elders, who shall go round the monastery at the hours in which the brothers are engaged in reading, and see to it that no troublesome brother chance to be found who is open to idleness and trifling....

The Rule of St. Benedict, ca. 530, Medieval Sourcebook

Discussions of the soul in any context can be dicey, and discussing it as a science teacher in a public school could be grounds for dismissal, understandably so.

(I suppose could wander to the chasm's edge by asking if there's any empirical evidence supporting the myth that a soul weighs 21 grams, but I best save that for college sophomores in a coffee shop chat.)


This post is not about souls.
It's about idleness.

Science requires reflection: "free" time, wandering thoughts, curiosity.

Reflection does not, of course, always lead to science, but I'd wager that the Benedictine order recognized it could lead to bigger problems than hirsute palms and astigmatism. Free time, wandering thoughts, and curiosity can be just as disastrous in a classroom of humans metamorphosing into their adult forms.

Teaching content to a docile audience is easy. Here's the curriculum, here's the test. Do well often enough, and you will be successful.

A huge chunk of the Teaching for Dummies section at Barnes and Noble is dedicated to tips on inducing docility in students. /me waves to Mr. Wong. And I've eagerly read just about all of them.

Some of us are coarse enough to articulate the threat:

You need your diploma to get a job so you don't starve.
(Make sure you sneer contemptuously when you spit this out,
and make sure you don't add voice to its silent ending "...you ungrateful bastards.")

The bell rings. 48 minutes later, it will ring again. Little time for idleness.

I'm the elder in the classroom. I scan for idleness and trifling. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room.

Still, if one of my students (substitute "wackadoodle" for "troublesome brother") should happen to stumble on a spark that threatens order, a spark that has a real chance at lighting a relevant fire in the classroom, I've got a canister of propane sitting on the desk.

The picture on the bottom left is from the New York Times, which did, indeed, tackle science and the soul.

And I blame the Benedictines for a huge chunk of toaday's problems--they turned time into a commodity.

READ MORE - On idleness

That's a Tesla coil. It makes lightning.

It was built by a friend of mine--here's where he talks about it. It's worth a read (or two).

We did some incredibly stupid things back in high school, and we still have all our digits (amazing) and no juvie records (also amazing).

***

Ms. Lehman was my high school chemistry teacher--she regularly made things gurgle, glow, boom, and smoke. She had a perpetually amazed look on her face, but maybe that was her perpetually scorched eyebrows. She loved chemistry.

We dabbled a lot in lab--not something openly encouraged, but if you had a clue of what you were testing (and not just randomly mixing chemicals), you could try it.

I wanted to make laughing gas--nitrous oxide. My chemistry was OK, but not great, and I figured I might generate some if I poured nitric acid on a penny. Something went wrong, or rather, matter behaved as matter will, and a billowing red-brown cloud of toxic fumes erupted from the flask. Pennies are not just copper, maybe I misread the metal reactivity table, who knows....

I had enough sense to get it under the fume hood. I did not get expelled.

While I still light things on fire in class, I don't ignite hydrogen bubbles. I don't (intentionally) blow things up. I don't keep snakes in the class, nor spiders, or anything else that might prove upsetting. No potassium dropped in water. No microwave plasma balls.

Heck, I went through a whole year in class without leaving a stain on the ceiling.

***

Would you try this in class? (I'd modify it, of course--the lack of safety goggles is appalling, and why use your mouth when a squeeze bulb would do.)

As my class leaves on Fridays, I dismiss them with a question.

What do we practice? Safe science!

But if real science about teasing the unknown, can it be truly safe? Will any of my students be building lightning boxes in their garages when their in their 50's?

A confession: Ms. Lehman was absent the day I made NO2--she wasn't stupid.
She did take into account my explanation, though, and
while she officially chastised me, I think I saw her wink when she did....

READ MORE - "Mad science" is redundant

Here's a problem I've posed to my students a few times:

I like to ride my bicycle, just for the sheer joy of it. I burn a lot of calories doing it. Where does the energy come from?

Well, um, food, no?

Very good! How does the energy stored in food get converted to my feet pushing the pedals.

Longish discussion with some hair-pulling and tongue-clicking, but we eventually slosh our way through cellular respiration and oxygen and mitochondria and all the trivia you need to master to get past your sophomore year in high school.

What happens to the food? Where does it go? (If you're lost, breathe on your hand....)

Again, some trepidation, but we get there: CO2 and water?

Excellent! Every time I ride my bike to school, I'm spewing off CO2--am I contributing to global warming?

Silence. The short ("obvious") answer is yes, but my lambs have learned this much--the short "obvious" answers are rarely so.

It's a different kind of CO2?

No, I tell them, it's exactly the same...and it is.

***

John Tierney flaunted his twisted knickers in The New York Times a couple of years ago--it's a fun column to read, despite his usual smugness--but he misses a fundamental point. While CO2 is CO2 is CO2, the source of the CO2 matters.

The source of our CO2 is, of course, food, and for most of us in the States, our food uses a lot of fossil fuel to make, especially meats.

Michael Bluejay bikes. A lot. He also thinks. A lot. He's developed a Bike vs. Walk vs. Drive calculator that allows you to enter all kinds of data to find you transportation carbon footprint.

Assuming I'm a regular American, the amount of fossil fuels used for the food that fuels my biking (190# at 12 mph) matches that of our Civic: a 3 mile trip uses about 9 ounces of petroleum for either trip.

And the news for eco-fanatics gets worse--I release 20% more CO2 than my car does over the same distance!

***

The big difference, of course, is that jamming a McDonald's milkshake into the gas tank of a car will not work--cars need fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide that has been trapped for millions upon millions of years back into the atmosphere.

And in early summer, I'm not a regular American--when I eat homegrown tomatoes and hand-raked clams, nibbling wild cherries and mulberries, my food bill approaches 0 gallons of fossil fuels.

I bike without a care, no matter what Mr. Tierney's smugness level is.

I am an admitted tree-huggin--squirrel-kissin' ecofanatic.
I do not, however, weigh only 190 pounds--I need to lose about 14 to get there again.

I really don't like John Tierney, or anyone else who's smart enough to get it,
but would rather sell a half-truth for his own gain than seek truth .

The old bike drawing is from Victoriana.

CO2 model from Wikimedia commons--by Jacek FH

READ MORE - Bicycles are killing the planet!

Today there are no good jobs for a high school dropout in the legal economy.

None.

Arne "The Scarecrow" Duncan

Arne is an arse.

Farmers feed us.
Musicians, actors, and professional athletes entertain us.
Masons, carpenters, and roofers build our shelters.

If Arne's point is that the economy is swirling in porcelain right now, well, OK, but that's not what he means.

I don't like idiocy in general, but it's particularly hard to take from a spoiled rich mama's boy who's never held a real job in his life.

Really, Arne--what have you done?

***

I am not anti-education. We spent about a quarter million dollars on our kids' education, money well spent.

We did not spend the money to prepare them for corporations; we did not spend the money to prepare them for some certification needs. We spent the money to help develop a better sense of the world, the world that exists outside gold-tinted glass windows trapping the happy squirrels inside.

Each earns a living, and neither needed a high school diploma to do what they do today. And both are part of the "legal" economy.

The poster is from Roger Hallander's blog....

READ MORE - I really don't like Arne

I get bored during tests, and I tend to get restless. ("Dr. D, you're making too much noise.")

Kids like routines, and here's mine:

1) Pass out the test bunnies, giant cockroach, praying mantis puppet, and a half dozen felt mice. (Talismans in science class, who would've thunk?)

2) Pass out tests.

3) Pass out pencils. ("It will cost you 5 points." Dr. Deeeeeeeee, no fair..... "Have I ever taken a point away?")

4) Get out the magic pipette.

The magic pipette started out as the magic wand ("magic's" a bit redundant, I suppose), then transmogrified into a magic pipette when I misplaced my wand.

During a test, each child gets to use the magic pipette for one question--it will mysteriously land on the right answer.

It started out as a gimmick by a very bored teacher, but I've kept it because it gives me good information. God forbid, it also gives a few kids an extra few points.

What have I learned?

The most confused kids won't even use it--a hard lesson for me to learn. Children feeling defeated will not take help.

If everyone's using it for the same couple of questions, something's likely wrong with the question.

Kids hate it when they already picked the right answer, even if it was chosen completely at random.

My magic pipette won't ever rival Madeline Hunter, but for a few kids, giving away an answer serves as an act of kindness in a world that increasingly frowns on such.

My felt mice and test bunnies are handmade by Jessica Pierce.
If you are easily offended, avoid "Bunnies What Swear" category.

READ MORE - Magic pipette

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'

A few years ago, when I was still playing doctor, the FDA released a "Public Health Notification" regarding plasticizers in IV tubing. Back in 2002, when King W sat on the throne, the gummint advised that hospitals avoid DEHP (if possible), particularly for very young males.

I stormed over to the Chair of Pediatrics (not an unusual event) and showed him the memo. He got excited, and talked to the NICU folks, who were already aware, and had made the changes that were financially feasible.

Watch an old war movie. Look at the IV fluids.

Me: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Pediatric Chair: Yes, Mike? [exasperated look].
Me: Are you listening?
Pediatric Chair: Yes I am.
Me: 'Glass bottles.'

Oh, yes, glass safety was raised--I keep forgetting about those pesky babies escaping from their isolettes, tossing glass bottle around when the nurse isn't looking.

***

BPA is in the news--the FDA has raised concerns about bisphenol-A (BPA), used in plastics. Yep, the same BPA declared safe in 2008.

Unlike most potential toxins, BPA (and DEHP) mimic hormones--BPA was specifically designed as a synthetic estrogen and noted as such back in 1936 (Dodds and Lawson, Nature 137: 996).

Hormones work in minute quantities. Very minute.

I will be squeezing last summer's peaches into a food grade plastic bucket today, along with a few pounds of honey, some chlorinated water, and yeast. The peaches will thaw in the same bowl my mom used decades ago, and I will think of her.

Next week I will transfer the bubbling mess into a glass carboy.

And this is where I am supposed to preach moderation and sanity--we all use plastic and chlorinated water--it's safe, why feed the scaremongers and tinfoil hat crowd?

Why indeed....

Because we are deliberately putting a compound designed to act like estrogen into our food!

And Sylvester McMonkey McBean?


National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is sponsored (and controlled) by AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company descended from Imperial Chemicals Industries (ICI), the inventors of polyethylene, the same stuff treated with BPA to make it more useful for packaging.

ICI makes tamoxifen, a key drug used for treating breast cancer. ICI also makes huge amounts of organochlorines, associated with breast cancer.

Breast cancer rates for women here have risen from less than 1 in 20 rate before 1940 to a 1 in 8 chance today. Next October, during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, check out how much of the official NBCAM literature mentions environmental causes of breast cancer.

So, yeah, everybody's doing it, drinking BPA, and look, we're all healthy, really.

It's a testament to the power of propaganda that the plastics industry uses a known hormone mimic to package food, and the onus falls on those who think this might be a bad idea to show the link between BPA and ill effects.




(During my mom's last week of consciousness, I carried her to the bathroom, her bones settling into my arms as easily as her nightgown. She died before her 60th birthday. So, yeah, maybe I'm emotionally invested in this--doesn't change the facts, though.)

Images (other than my own) lifted from other websites--
I figure both are icons of culture and fall under Fair Use
in a blog that makes no money and has a readership the size of the Walton family.
If anyone knows otherwise, drop me a line....)

READ MORE - Sylvester McMonkey McBean and the FDA

WACKADOODLE: "Well, why is there gravity?"
ME: "I've no idea, that's a religious question."
WACKADOODLE: "It's not a religious question! Why is there gravity?"
ME: "OK, maybe not a religious question, but it's one science cannot answer."

Today in class

I love my wackadoodles, the students swimming in the lowest depths of the class rankings, who keep questioning everything, a prescription for disaster in public schools.

This particular wackadoodle unearthed one of my prejudices. If a question worth answering cannot be answered by science, I label it religious. Some thoughts I should keep to myself.

***

Teaching (on a good day) reflects the fine line between ordered cortical thought and the mad, wise ramblings of the limbus. I have been reading Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil, and I suspect that that's where my odd assertion about religion popped up.

I heard gravity, started thinking grace, and, not expecting the question, gave an unexpected answer.

I might consider rediscovering my frontal lobe.

I am hired by the town to teach a curriculum tailored to meet the requirements of the state. As long as public school remains public I am OK with this. (I trust the collective wisdom of the good folks in Bloomfield over the maniacal machinations of Bill Gates or Mike Feinberg or their puppet Arne Duncan.)

You cannot teach science without bumping up against limits of knowledge.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Simone Weil

"What it is to know" is not limited by science, especially by the narrow view of what passes for science education here in the States.

Ah, look, there's an amoeba....and there's a corpse plant....over here is a yeti crab.

If you can look at a yeti crab and not wonder at the whole absurd and loving complexity of the biosphere, you may want to reconsider teaching children--they are far more interested by the fact that a yeti crab exists than its molecular make-up, and questions of existence put you on dangerous ground in a science classroom.

Charles Darwin was closer to the truth than we give him credit for.

And gravity? This inexplicable pull every object has towards every other object in the universe?


It may be a religious question after all.

The flying dancers are from the North Shore Civic Ballet.
The yeti crab is from the Pacific Ocean.

READ MORE - Grace and gravity

Spring, finally.

Again.

I tend to wander away from the monitor once the sun heads north. In January puny words sustain me--in April germinating seeds do. I will become more scarce here as the sun arcs higher in the sky.

Leslie and I wandered along the edge of the world again today--a small flock of loons hunting by the ferry jetty called to each other. A bit later, a crow grumbled at us as we approached.

Crows never grumble at us in February.

***

Not so long ago I caught one of my students artistically applying ink to a mailbox, which would be fine if the mailbox was his. It is not.

I live in the same town I work, which is unusual these days in north Jersey, so reporting the child to the authorities was not in anyone's best interests.

Not saying I did, not saying I didn't.

Yesterday I planted basil and zinnias and oregano and cosmos. Today I put some garlic cloves in the ground. Tomorrow I'll plant more tomatoes or maybe peppers, egg plants or maybe nicotianas, who knows.

I'll run out off ground long before my interest wanes.

My neighbors mostly plant grass. Not the good kind like wheat or oats or corn. Kentucky blue grass (which would be interesting if it were truly blue). Chewings fescue. Bermudagrass. All clipped before they give off a hint of sexuality.

Straight. Green. Inedible.

At least I can eat my dandelions and wild purslane.

***

Should the authorities wish to pursue my graffiti artist, he may pay a fine. He may spend some time in the youth house. It will cost money, my money, and not much gets solved.

I have a better idea. I am short of land, but not of seeds.

Guerrilla gardening.

***

Guerrilla gardening is like graffiti, except it results in something useful.

Find a piece of land, and surreptitiously plant something. In these parts, think Indian. Corn, pumpkin, squash, blueberries, beans, sunflower--these were all here before the Europeans came.

The Europeans destroyed a lot of things, but they have yet to destroy the climate. (Give us credit, though, we're working on it.) If you plant a pumpkin in New Jersey, it will grow. So will a sunflower or a bean or a blueberry bush. They will grow if loved, but better yet, they will grow if neglected.

Pick a property with an absentee owner. We have plenty here in Bloomfield.
Plant a pumpkin seed.
Wait.

The child gets to buck the system. The neighborhood gets a few pumpkins. Passers-by get a chance to smile at a misplaced sign that God loves us even when we're not kneeling in a pew.

I know that God or nature or life or whatever you want to call all this matters, and I know I cannot understand any of it. That's as much as I know anything, and it's enough.

We plant seeds in the classroom, and they grow. The children are amazed, as they should be. (I am amazed, too, every time it happens, as I should be.)

I do not, of course, advise my students to break the law. I do not push them into lives of crime, sowing illicit vegetables around town.



Still, John Chapman is one of my few heroes, and I would be proud if one of my students emulated him.

READ MORE - Guerrilla gardening

Here in New Jersey students are now required to pass three years of science to get a diploma. While this does wonders for my job security, it takes a special kind of reasoning to figure that if two years fails to produce a scientifically literate litter of children, then three years ought to do the trick.

Few children have the curiosity and the capacity needed to become professional scientists. The same could be said for becoming accomplished pianists, master carpenters, or licensed harbor pilots.

We have imbued science with mysticism and romance and holiness. Might have made more sense to throw our faith in agriculture, but science won, and now we're so efficiently removed from the earth that most of our children have never seen a wheat berry.

This is not to demean science. The thrust, however, should be on thinking, no matter what the discipline. A high school biology course that surveys ecology, genetics, protein synthesis, evolution, biochemistry, taxonomy, respiration & photosynthesis, cellular reproduction, DNA technology, evolution, and so on in less than 180 days in about 140 hours of class time cannot adequately address critical thinking.

Problem-solving comes in a lot of flavors and cuts across disciplines. If we're losing the battle against Japan or China or India (pick your favorite foreign country whose children's success is threatening the American Way), it's not because our children cannot recall how many electrons dance on the head of a pin.

If we want to develop a science "class", we will need to identify the children who show early aptitude and interest, and then help them develop the discipline needed to carry on professional research. Elitist? Perhaps. Not sure I'd want my kids selected for that track--professional science looks like a lonely existence to me, no matter how the sexay the NSTA wants to dress it.

We can keep the back door open for the late bloomers. In the meantime, we might consider putting a priority on thinking again, in every discipline. Even in science.

Fancy vocabulary words does not guarantee fancy thinking, even if it is cute to hear a 4th grader say "photosynthesis."

READ MORE - Science is a subset of thinking

Idleness is the enemy of the soul. And therefore, at fixed times, the brothers ought to be occupied in manual labor; and again, at fixed times, in sacred reading. ... there shall certainly be appointed one or two elders, who shall go round the monastery at the hours in which the brothers are engaged in reading, and see to it that no troublesome brother chance to be found who is open to idleness and trifling....

The Rule of St. Benedict, ca. 530, Medieval Sourcebook

Discussions of the soul in any context can be dicey, and discussing it as a science teacher in a public school could be grounds for dismissal, and understandably so.

(I suppose you might live on the edge by discussing if there's any empirical evidence supporting the myth that a soul weighs 21 grams, but I would save that for college sophomores in a coffee shop chat.)


So this post is not about souls.

It's about idleness.

Science requires reflection: "free" time, wandering thoughts, curiosity.

Reflection does not, of course, necessarily lead to science, but I'd wager that the Benedictine order recognized it could lead to problems (other than hirsute palms and astigmatism). Free time, wandering thoughts, and curiosity can be disastrous in a classroom of humans metamorphosing into their adult forms.

Teaching content is easy to a docile crowd. Here's the curriculum, here's the test. Do well often enough, and you will be successful.

A huge chunk of the Teaching for Dummies section at Barnes and Noble is dedicated to tips on inducing docility in students. /me waves to Mr. Wong. And I've eagerly read just about all of them.

Some of us are even coarse enough to articulate the threat:

You need your diploma to get a job so you don't starve.
(Make sure you sneer contemptuously when you spit this out,
and make sure you don't add voice to its silent ending "...you ungrateful bastards.")

The bell rings. 48 minutes later, it will ring again. Little time for idleness.

I'm the elder in the classroom. I scan for idleness and trifling. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room.

Still, if one of my students (substitute "wackadoodle" for "troublesome brother") should happen to stumble on a spark that threatens order, and if that spark has a real chance at lighting a relevant fire in the classroom, I've got a canister of propane sitting on the desk.


The picture on the bottom left is from the New York Times, which did, indeed, tackle science and the soul.

READ MORE - On idleness

Doug Johnson pointed the way to the American Library Association's "READ" mini-poster generator.

I was temporarily confused by his post, which he amended for those of us still using training wheels.




Your turn!

READ MORE - Read!

Kids know a thing or two about cars. Or pretend to. It’s not like the olden days when you’d fidget with a carburetor (“Oh, so that’s what a gasoline fireball looks like” with singed eyebrows, looking more surprised than your already very surprised look.)

So I no longer ask sophisticated questions about cars. But I still ask questions.

What makes a car go?

After a variety of answers, you work your way to gasoline as fuel, planning to eventually work your way to hydrocarbon bonds and photosynthesis and all that. But not yet.

Some students are already in over their heads. Not every family has a car and kids have better things to ponder than gas stations. So make it even simpler:

What comes out of the tail pipe?

Again, you plow through a variety of answers, go through a side discussion on smoke, break up the fight when someone comments on someone else’s family hoopdie, then finally get back to a refined version of the question:

What do you observe coming out of the tailpipe of a well-tuned 2008 Honda Civic on a 70 degree day?

Well, now the answers are fewer. “Um, nothing…?” Before you get any farther, explain to your Wackadoodles that you are not looking for them to go play with a tailpipe. They’re hot, and even a finely tuned car may spew out more than carbon dioxide. Maybe when I have tenure I’ll go there, but not yet.

So now I stand there, waiting. The Pause©.

The students know something’s up. It’s an easy question. What do you see coming out of the tailpipe? “Nothing” is not cutting it. Finally, someone will offer that well, once they saw some water come out of it, maybe leftover rain, but water nonetheless. (I do not ask them how they know it’s water—no sense encouraging the Wackadoodles).

Give them the dead stare. Nod.

Yes, that’s right. It’s water. But it’s not rain.

Again, The Pause©

“Er, Doc D....OK, so it's water...what's that got to do with biology?”

You know they don't believe you, but students pacifying teachers in awkward moments has a long tradition in classrooms. You think it's a teachable moment. Time to throw aerobic respiration at them.

Before you get too enamored of your fine contextual scaffolding, admiring your anticipatory set setting the stage for authentic learning by cognitive apprentices, remember it's actually just a room of children trying to deflect their delusional teacher back into their reality. They'll say anything at this point to steer your delusional butt back to the classroom.

The Sirens are calling—you want to be the Erudite Educator, instilling the Krebs cycle into the masses. The kids win, anything to get their teacher away from this silly nonsense about water in tailpipes.

Don't do it. Take two deep breaths. Forget about NCLB, NJASK, HSPA, EOC Biology Exam. Forget about tidying things up. Silently say over and over:

No confusion, no science, know confusion, know science....

I grab my handy-dandy propane torch, fire it up. Now the kids think I've completely lost it—some are texting wildly under their desks, thumbs moving for dear life.

What's coming out of the torch?

“Well, Doc, um, fire?”

What do you observe?

“Doc, I just said fire...like, um, you're holding it.”
I rephrase the question--

What besides fire is coming out of this propane nozzle?

“Ah, gotcha Doc, I know where you're going—carbon dioxide!”

I shrug. I can't see it, smell it, taste it, so I'll admit that's what the books say, but give a look like I'm not convinced.

What else?

Silence. The Pause©

I point the flame at a cool mirror and write my name in condensation.

“That's soot, Doc.” My name fades away.

Nope. Water.

And I let them spend the last few minutes of class trying to disprove it—and, of course, they cannot, and we have a grand time trying to figure out if the condensation from the flame is the same stuff as the condensation on the bathroom mirror, and away we go.

They still may not believe that the tailpipe has water in it. But they're closer than they were an hour ago. And maybe, just maybe, mitochondria will be a tad more interesting this time around.

READ MORE - Musing on mufflers: introducing aerobic respiration

My brightest student two years ago was a freshman in the "Career Options" track. Everyone knows what Honors and College Preparatory means, and the remainder end up in the bargain bin. (This year the Career Options track has been renamed the Pre-college Prep, or the PCP track--bet it doesn't take a month before students start calling it the Dust track.)

Cristian had a track record--bright students in the PCP track had to work to get there. Cristian was the King of Whatif. "What if we try this...What if we try that?" Cristian, however, was also the King of Contraptions, and would quickly follow his questions with workable set-ups.

So we tried them.

Of course, other students seeking fame or attention or a way to blow off a lesson would also interrupt, but without the flair of Cristian.

Over time I discovered more Cristians in my low level classes. Brilliant, impulsive, and (well) unstructured young adults with curious minds. Because it's public education, because it's the world of jocks and nerds and dirtbombs and goths and geeks, and because I had no way to classify my bright but behaviorally challenged Cristian types, I gave them a name.


To be a Wackadoodle, you need to take a hands-on approach to science, not a problem for many of my students, who somehow made it through their first 14 years without maiming, blinding, or deafening themselves with a variety of home-made "experiments" gleaned from YouTube.

You also had to practice Safe Science. Otherwise, you're in the less-publicized Knucklehead Club. (I never put any individual students in the Knucklehead Club, though I would occasionally admonish someone that their behavior might get them into the club.)

And, finally, your idea had to be in the same universe as the unit lesson.

My own two kids, now adults, were both charter members of the club. My daughter, now on this Earth for over a quarter century, proudly called me one day to report she had done some silly, dangerous stunt (which I won't describe here, for obvious reasons). After she told me all the cool things about it, she paused as I inhaled deeply for the Father Knows Best speech.

Before I could induct her into the Knucklehead Club, she said "And I was wearing safety goggles!"

Spoken like a true Wackadoodle.

Are you a jock, punk, nerd, geek, prep, goth, or wackadoodle?

wackadoodle you experiment with all kinds of crazy stuff and you come to your own conclusions and refuse to let the dominant culture make you what you're not

READ MORE - The Wackadoodle Club