Traditions in Education

Most of the talk at education conferences, TED talks, education blogs, and curriculum planning meetings is about innovation.  How are we using 21st century tools in education?  What are we doing that is different from the way we did it.  All of that is good and right and valuable and will be the topic of a different post.

This post is about traditions.

I am a physics teacher, and today is Egg Drop Day.  If you teach physics, took physics, or know a physics teacher, you do not have to ask what I am talking about.  Egg Drop is so much a part of
physics classes that it borders on cliche (okay, it is well across the border).  Despite the fact that it is  freezing on the roof, it is one of my favorite days of the year.  Have we innovated in this assignment?  Sure.   I now require video evidence of their building the project themselves.  Will I ever change it to a different project - absolutely not.  I would never cancel or eliminate this project from the curriculum.  The only way I wouldn't go on the roof is if I were physically unable to climb the ladder (even though I am terrified of the ladder).  There are certain staples in certain classes without which you cannot claim to have taken that class.  For physics, this is the one.  Pick a class, and you can think of them as well.

- Earth Science has volcanoes and solar system models (now sans Pluto). 
- Everyone in Physical Science builds a model of the atom.  
- Art has self portraits.- Who goes through Biology without making a cell model?  That would be nobody.
- English has Shakespeare and the five paragraph essay.  - Everyone who got through fifth grade has done a state history project.
- What school wouldn't take their kids to see the dinosaurs at the natural history museum?  
- You probably grew a sunflower in second grade science.

You did these.  I did these.  Your grandchildren will do these.  Why do teachers assign the same projects year after year?  And not just one teacher, all the teachers in that subject area round the country?  Students probably think it is because teachers are lazy, not wanting to think of new ideas.  I assure you that it is not that.  We actually love coming up with new things.  We live to innovate (later - I promise).  There is a reason that we read the same papers and grade the same models year after year.

Tradition matters.

As we learned from Fiddler on the Roof, tradition matters.  It gives us landmarks.  It gives us shared stories.  Traditions connect people.  If you and I both memorized the Marc Anthony speech from Julius Caesar, we have a shared memory - even if we recited them twenty years and a thousand miles apart from each other.  As soon as someone mentions "Train A and Train B" and the speed they are traveling, all adults conjure up memories of algebra.  What my kids got from today (aside from a knowledge of impulse and wind burn) was a connection.  They are now connected to generations of physics students past and future.