Role of Philosophy and History in Fostering Scientific Thinking in School Children:

The life and times of Albert Einstein is a good read for several reasons. The man was a silent and an adamant rebel when it came to learning. Right from his torturous days at local gymnasiums to Zurich polytechnic and forming the Olympiad academy, the man never settled for less in choosing his avenues of scientific resources.

The influence of Kent and Spinoza in shaping the ever inquisitive mind of this most intelligent man is immense. Taking a cue from this fact, can we undermine the role of philosophy and history in fostering scientific temperament in school children ?

The Present State - Apparent Challenges:

·         Teachers are constantly under the mental stress of completing their syllabus within the prescribed academic calendar.

·         If ever a teacher gets an idea of presenting a scientific concept in a novel manner, he or she is psychologically engulfed by the fear of wastage of precious instructional time in the classroom.

·         Peer pressure, personal shortcomings and lack of positive response from the school management further hinder the initiation of efforts in this direction.

·         The influence of the received formal education in science is very potent to allow a teacher experiment new ways of presenting the science subject before students.

·         The wrong perception of Philosophy as an outdated body of knowledge lacking any relevance in the present day and age is gloomy to say the least.

Role of Philosophy and History:

·         The philosophy of science categorizes the subject in several elements.

·         Each of these elements has their niche place and role in building a temperament towards science.

·         Some of these elements of vital importance are hypothesis, concept, law, principle, theory, controlled experiment, observation, data collection, analysis, interpretation and conclusion.

·         The student should be provided an understanding of these elements by the teacher.

·         Science lessons should be taught with the mentioning of these elements on the basis of their occurrence during the lecture. This constitutes the application of the elements.

·         This practice will result in the development of a perception in student where the subject will be looked at in terms of hypotheses, concepts, laws, principles, theories, and experiments to verifying the predictions of the theories.

·         Rote learning will be replaced by a sense of purpose behind the learning of each lesson in the subject.

·         Appreciation of mathematics as the language to express scientific thoughts will motivate the students to naturally embrace and learn it.

·         With the growing level of competency and confidence in science and mathematics, the students would look for avenues to prove their talents.

·         At this stage, they should be guided to study the contributions of great scientists from past with special emphasis on their human qualities and failures.

·         This will make them relate  with the great minds and they will realize that there is nothing out of the universe in being a scientist other than being childishly inquisitive in things around us.

·         The teachers can further take up the role of a facilitator from this advanced stage of cognitive development when their students would take up voluntary projects to analyze, synthesize and evaluate their undertakings on their own.