Polar Bears and Penguins
My wife is student teaching in kindergarten this semester. It’s great to hear her stories each day when she comes home. Kids cry when they get it trouble. They sulk off into corners and refuse to even eat lunch if they’re mad. They abruptly change course, apologize, and promise to be good the rest of the day (and sometimes even are!). It’s great.
The story the other day made me cringe though. The kids have vocabulary words each day. This day, the word was penguin. As the teacher explained what penguins were, she made connections with previous words of the day. The day before, the word was polar. And the day before that, the word was arctic.
Yes, the teacher described penguins by connecting them to the word arctic. My wife (the better half that she is) did what I surely would have been unable to do. She kept her mouth shut. But it did not escape her notice that a biological fallacy was passed on to the little ones. She intends to inform the teacher, gently.
Now just so we’re clear, penguins are totally confined to the southern hemisphere. This is not the place where Santa Claus resides, nor is it the home of large, white, unusually acquatic Ursids.
Penguins and polar bears inhabit different ends of the world. Don’t let Coca Cola, your kindergarden teacher, or anyone else pull the fur over your eyes.
Chris Mooney expresses his frustration with the Coke ad at :
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2006/01/popular_misunderstandings_of_e_1.php
Thanks keiths,
I had to use a little trickery to make sure your link didn’t get wider than my site’s layout… I think it’s all working now.
Anal-retentive historical note:
“Arctic” as I understand historical usage, has become much more specific than it used to be; in the 19th Cent. “arctic” referred to either polar region. I grant you, my source is Stephen King’s wonderful short story, “The Crate.”
Just like, 150 years ago, “reptile” meant any land-dwelling cold-blooded animal, and “amphibian” included crocodilians. I fielded a question about that not too long ago.
That’s what I get for not paying attention to what appears in the anchor tag…
Here’s the correct link.
Good stuff Dan.
Having an interest in taxonomy, I’ve been well aware of the problems with the word reptile for some time. We’ve often referred to lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocs as reptiles. Reptiles are a paraphyletic group, a no-no in taxonomy. Its historical roots are so deep however that nobody really wants to change it. Imagine if you told someone that they should call birds a reptile! It just wouldn’t work.