Beautifully written piece whose premise I disagree with.
At least in the UK (the States may be different), you are taught many of the concepts and underlying reasoning that the author bemoans not having learned.
At A-Level standard, you are taught the physical basis of epigenetic modification (what he describes as switching genes on or off - although that in itself is a too-binary simplification, it's more to do with up- and down-regulation of expression). You're also taught other fascinating processes such as alternative splicing - where a single gene can express many different proteins.
During my first year of undergrad at a so-so Russell Group university, the history of biology featured prominently in lectures - especially those on the evolution of genetics as a field. The inherent fuzziness of categories and concepts in biology was also made very clear. I distinctly remember a lecturer telling us (in response to a question about why we say bacteria don't have membrane-bound organelles, when the topic of the lecture - the magnetosome - was clearly an exception to this rule) that when we say something is 'always true' in biology, we mean it happens 80%+ of the time, and when we say something 'never happens' in biology, we really mean that it happens less than 20% of the time.
I do agree that there is sometimes a bit too much of an emphasis on rote learning the chemical minutiae at the expense of the broader, more important concepts (Krebs cycle, anyone?) - but I think this case is overblown by the author.
I took high school bio in the US, and mostly agree with both of these:
> you are taught many of the concepts and underlying reasoning that the author bemoans not having learned
> there is sometimes a bit too much of an emphasis on rote learning the chemical minutiae at the expense of the broader, more important concepts (Krebs cycle, anyone?)
But note that the author was almost certainly only talking about high school biology.
I think the situation is that in the US, an AP Biology (bio class for seniors in high school) teacher has to trade off teaching the concepts with teaching to the AP test all the seniors will take, and that test prep does involve stuff like memorizing the Krebs cycle so that you can forget right after the test. My teacher did a pretty good job of this balance and I got a lot out of it, but mileage may vary. Next, the kids will do well on the test and that will let them dodge their university's biology requirement. That class would have been much better. (I'm was in exactly this camp.)
At least in the UK (the States may be different), you are taught many of the concepts and underlying reasoning that the author bemoans not having learned.
At A-Level standard, you are taught the physical basis of epigenetic modification (what he describes as switching genes on or off - although that in itself is a too-binary simplification, it's more to do with up- and down-regulation of expression). You're also taught other fascinating processes such as alternative splicing - where a single gene can express many different proteins.
During my first year of undergrad at a so-so Russell Group university, the history of biology featured prominently in lectures - especially those on the evolution of genetics as a field. The inherent fuzziness of categories and concepts in biology was also made very clear. I distinctly remember a lecturer telling us (in response to a question about why we say bacteria don't have membrane-bound organelles, when the topic of the lecture - the magnetosome - was clearly an exception to this rule) that when we say something is 'always true' in biology, we mean it happens 80%+ of the time, and when we say something 'never happens' in biology, we really mean that it happens less than 20% of the time.
I do agree that there is sometimes a bit too much of an emphasis on rote learning the chemical minutiae at the expense of the broader, more important concepts (Krebs cycle, anyone?) - but I think this case is overblown by the author.