Long, long ago, with a burgeoning family and a shrinking pocketbook, I applied to teach Remedial Science Summer School.
The class was combined 7th and 8th graders who had failed their respective sciences – in Minnesota Life Science and Earth Science. After a few seconds, I realized that trying to teach both disciplines in a compressed format in the same way that they had failed to grasp in the first place would be, as a member of Al-Anon said (in October of 1981), “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (No, Einstein did NOT say this. Or write it. Or anythinged it. See the reference below.)
The group was hostile and did everything but cross their arms over their chests, stomp their feet, and say, “You’re not the boss of me!”
What to do?
I designed a class called Alien Worlds. That first class happened three decades ago, and I’ve been teaching the class for gifted and talented young people for the past 27 years during the summer. Because of the pandemic, I didn’t do it this summer, but will (hopefully) do so next summer.
At any rate, in the original remedial class, I created teams of four students, two eight graders and two seventh graders. The eighth graders would be creating the alien star system and drawing maps from various perspectives; the seventh graders would be creating life forms to populate the planets.
Because this was a remedial science class and I didn’t have enough time to teach two separate tracks, I laid a foundation of astronomy, added planetology, and finally layers on biology – with a supposition that neither group of kids gave a rat’s sorry behind for science as it had been taught to them in the past.
I created a totally different atmosphere (so to speak) by framing the science with creativity and included cartography, art, and research – and insisting that NO ONE could snap their fingers and “poof!” stars, planets, biomes, and life forms into existence. EVERYTHING had to be within the realm of real science. This often meant arguing with students about why “cubic planets” were impossible (including, of course “accidental” segues into math, fluids, condensation, heat, and cooling…or why life on a different world would NOT allow for talking kitty cats; sexy, green, multi-breasted alien women dredged up from adolescent fantasies, or flying humans…with “accidental” detours through biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, gravity, and evolution…
While teaching that class, I also included science movies – and science fiction movies, including “Devil in the Dark” from Star Trek: The Original Series, which discussed the possibility of life based on silicon and appearing to be “rocks”; and a film I lost, but found last summer called, “Mind-Slaughter”… (which you’ll find here, I hope…yep, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVj2mgrTtU8&feature=emb_title)
While ancient (1977, 43 years old…), it poses questions absolutely in line with what I would have expected to happen at this discussion.
In it, Humans dramatically/catastrophically terraform Venus using algae. I’ve heard and read about this for so long I can’t even tell you when I first heard it. At any rate, the Wikipedia entry, which giving details about the physical aspects of terraforming Venus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#:~:text=The%20terraforming%20of%20Venus%20is,it%20suitable%20for%20human%20habitation.&text=Eliminating%20most%20of%20the%20planet's,conversion%20to%20some%20other%20form), speaks absolutely nothing to the “rightness” of doing that. Blindly. Without any kind of evaluation of if there’s even a chance of life on Venus.
Yet, we’ve been speculating on that possibility for over 200 years. (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hope-life-venus-survives-centuries-against-all-odds)
My favorite author, CS Lewis, even postulates what, while it seems patently absurd today, the surface might be like in his novel PERELANDRA ((1943)in which Venus is covered by a planet-wide ocean that (unlike the one in SOLARIS (1961, Stanislaw Lem)) is not intelligent but covered with moveable islands. More realistically, Sarah Zettel postulates a surface and atmosphere – and lifeforms – a bit more realistically in THE QUIET INVASION (2000) and even more recently, Derek Künsken’s, THE HOUSE OF STYX (2020, serialized in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, March-August) – “Terraforming Venus was first proposed in a scholarly context by the astronomer Carl Sagan in 1961, although fictional treatments, such as ‘The Big Rain’ by Poul Anderson (Astounding/ANALOG, 1954), preceded it.”
“Mind-Slaughter” gives vent to the idea that “Just because we CAN, doesn’t mean we SHOULD” (which is a quote I can’t very the origin of, but anyway), maybe we’ll be able to terraform Venus someday. But should we? Even if we don’t see shining city lights, catch snippets of coherent radio transmissions, or contact a Venusian via the psychic friends network, is no proof that there’s nothing intelligent on the surface or in the skies of Venus. We are NOT the be-all and end-all of life in the universe, and despite what scientists say, it more often appears to me that they’re mouthing platitudes while still believing that if we CAN do a thing, we dang well SHOULD!
Even if we’re “absolutely certain” that “nothing could live there, certainly not life as we know it!” Especially since the only life we know is the life on Earth, and as scientists have hammered into our heads for the past hundred or so years, we aren’t that special. While at the same time, many of THEM act as if we are and they can pretty much do as we please on Earth…
Which may lead to our undoing in the long run.
References: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/#:~:text=The%20definition%20of%20insanity%20is,or%20spoke%20the%20statement%20above.Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule
Image: https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/026/298/513/large/eldar-zakirov-eldar-zakirov-2019-the-house-of-styx-analog-cover-art-1200px.jpg?1588409959
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