learning through storytelling
I've always been really drawn to stories that explore a person's humanity. When I was a kid, I loved learning about history. I would fall asleep watching The History Channel and Discovery Channel because I was so curious why ancient Egyptians would mummify their dead, wondering what value they get out of that act personally or culturally, or what cultural story it served. I used to watch documentaries about the Civil War and WWII because I was just so fascinated with the ideas of the time, and how those ideas manifested in some pretty crazy ways that impacted people's day-to-day lives and experiences.
As a kid, I would also create these massive Lego and Lincoln Log worlds with little Lego people where I'd come up with these storylines and basically play make-believe. I was that super cool kid in elementary school and junior high who collected coins. The oldest coin in my collection is from the 1500s. I loved imagining the people who may have used a coin for their day-to-day life. What were they saving up for or purchasing? What did they do to get that coin? How much did that coin mean to them?
I ended up getting two degrees in history, but I feel like I lost my love of storytelling in the drama of academic competition and hyper-fixation on grades and performance. But over the last 18 months or so, I've rekindled my love of stories without even knowing it. I finally got back into reading fiction after so many, too many, years of bland academic nonfiction. I started reading Bear blogs where people share slices of their daily life. I read Humans by Brandon Stanton (the Humans of New York guy) and absolutely loved reading and seeing slices of people's lives from all over the world, a multitude of cultures.
In a recent reflection, I put it all together: I love stories about people's humanity. Their daily lives, their discoveries, their thought processes, their journeys.
And then I realized something else: science was always my weakest subject in school even though I was interested in it. But science is rarely ever taught through storytelling. It's mostly facts: "Mercury is closer to the Sun so you might think it's the hottest planet, but actually Venus is because it has such a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide." That's a fact and it's hard for my brain to latch onto that and retain it. But I bet if it was presented as something like, "up until such-and-such year, scientists thought Mercury was the hottest planet. But then an unknown astronomer living in Siberia, John Doe, discovered through xyz scientific method that somehow, Venus is hotter than Mercury because of it's thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. John Doe had spent 30 years studying space despite no support from his family or culture, but he believed understanding our place in the universe was important. He was able to make this discovery through xyz tools and the knowledge of the day. Although he wasn't hailed for his discovery, it would be picked up by the next important figure in scientific history." That was all completely made up, but something like that.
I know those kinds of books and resources exist, looking at the most important and overlooked people in science. I'm going to read some of it because I think it's the exact approach to science that I've been missing my whole life.