everybody's where they need to be, but nobody's where you need them...

Leaving Bushwick late last night,

I made my way past families and their friends and their kids and their families;

enjoying their final moments of humid evening

out on their stoops

under telephone lines and dangling sneakers.

I see a young boy a couple yards in front of me

holding onto a tree for dear life.

I notice that he is wearing roller skates;

and completely baffled

by how they are supposed to work

how is he seriously supposed to move or roll or skate?

he cautiously and semi-frantically looks over his shoulder

to his friends

seeking support.

After no acknowledgement, he calls out,

"A LITTLE HELP WOULD BE NICE!"

By this point I am basically in front of him. 

We make eye contact.

No one responds.

A little farther now, I turn back around empathetically.

"Make them tighter!" I yell.

He stops moving. 

Eyes me suspiciously,

"Tighter?"

I half smile and nod.

He nods back, "Tighter."

[Dust under the rug.]

Subjectivity

"Because most of our knowledge of science is communicated to us as finished and accepted facts or theories, that is, as "final form presentation of science", we do not have any knowledge of the process of "private science," which is influenced and bounded by social, intellectual, metaphysical, and creative processes that most of us would believe to be quite "unscientific".

Thus, in examining the world of the scientist, I find that the interpersonal--that is, talk and the laboratory--is linked with ideas that emerge from the purely personal playground of imagination and wonder. The very private musing of a child finds its origins in wonder and may eventually be transformed through reflection, dialogue, and finally collaboration into a question and ultimately a theory about the world. These are the seeds that the classroom can nurture and build upon as teachers and children mutually engage in the world of science."

Amen.