{"id":1793,"date":"2011-06-04T14:20:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=1793"},"modified":"2011-07-06T14:15:30","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T21:15:30","slug":"do-but-don%e2%80%99t-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=1793","title":{"rendered":"Do, but don\u2019t learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today there was a book launching in Nelson in a children\u2019s series entitled: Learn and Do<\/strong>. The book, called\u00a0Let\u2019s Plant a Flower,<\/em> is aimed at small children and encourages them to go outdoors and do just that. What can I say, this is a worthy objective nicely presented.<\/p>\n

Yet, I have a problem with it. Certainly, I am in favour of encouraging children to go outside and interact with nature. But, while the book increases a child\u2019s sensitivity to one aspect of nature (plants), it offers the child nonsense about another (weather). To see this, you have to visit the sample pages for the book on the website for Let’s Plant a Flower<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0and turn a couple of pages (click on the lower right corner of a page). Presented is an impossible rainbow\u2014one that cannot happen in the natural world.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Red is on the outside; blue is on the inside.<\/p><\/div>\n

The drawing displays a number of unnatural features; I will mention only two.<\/p>\n

First, the colours in the book\u2019s illustration are presented backwards. In nature, the colour order of the (primary) rainbow is red on the outside, blue on the inside. Nature is not capricious on this point. See the picture to the right, the header for this blog, or for that matter, any rainbow picture.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The observer's shadow is the centre of the bow; the Sun is on the other side of the sky.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Second, the Sun in the book\u2019s illustration is positioned along the bow as if it were a buckle on a belt. In reality, if you look at a rainbow, the shadow of your head is the centre of the circular bow and the Sun is at your back. The Sun and the rainbow do not appear on the same side of the sky. That is just the way nature behaves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So what? Isn\u2019t the book\u2019s illustration merely an example of artistic licence? Possibly, and I often thoroughly enjoy artistic licence, examples being the works of, say, Picasso or Escher. But I wouldn\u2019t want my surgeon to have based his knowledge of anatomy on the works of Pablo Picasso, nor would I want my building contractor to have learned construction through the works of M.C. Escher. I would like such people to be grounded in reality.<\/p>\n

In like manner, I wouldn\u2019t want my children to learn about nature from this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today there was a book launching in Nelson in a children\u2019s series entitled: Learn and Do. The book, called\u00a0Let\u2019s Plant a Flower, is aimed at small children and encourages them to go outdoors and do just that. What can I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions\/1810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}