This Week Inside the Capitol  >  Dynamic and Interactive Event a Hit with Teens  >  California Family Minute  >  Changing Attitudes on Childrearing and the Preborn  >  Play-Dough Lessons Teach Embryonic Stem-Cell Research

Play-Dough Lessons Teach Embryonic Stem-Cell Research


Play-Dough Lessons Teach Embryonic Stem-Cell Research
Last year’s SB 471 has become this year’s lesson plan – complete with ethical discussions drawn from the headline-making “Octomom” Nadia Suleman, and My Sister’s Keeper, a Jodi Picoult novel (and 2009 feature film) about a young girl conceived to save her older sister’s life – and play-dough used to model the development of preborn human life. SB 471, signedinto law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last October, required the California Department of Education to collaborate with California’s stem-cell agency and biotech industry to develop model curriculum to integrate stem-cell research into existing frameworks. 
Last week, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), California’s stem-cell agency created by the passage of Proposition 73 in 2004, unveiled an extensive stem-cell education portal, providing teachers with lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, video clips, and supplementary materials. Geared for high school students, the site includes four modules – two for usage with biology classes and two for use with more advanced classes. Authors of SB 471 touted the education portal as “ensuring California has a workforce with the educational and technical training needed to fill positions in the stem cell and biotech industries of the state” and “keep[ing] California on the cutting edge of tomorrow’s technology and provid[ing] us with new avenues of economic growth.”
The four units – embryonic stem cells; adult stem cells and regenerative medicine; the microenvironment and cancer; and the immune system – provide a wide variety of lessons and materials that can be adapted for different presentation levels.  The site also provides a resource to link teachers with industry professionals who can come into classrooms to help with presentations. Outreach programs from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and the Scripps Research Institute have already visited various high schools to make presentations.
One lesson plan uses play-dough models to enable students to visualize how stem cells develop from a zygote to a blastocyst. Another plan has student groups read select articles on the ethical debate surrounding embryonic stem-cell research and then present their findings to the class.  The adult stem cell unit discusses clinical trials and the 73 diseases that might be cured through stem-cell research, but will the truth – that, while usage of adult stem cells has led to cures, embryonic stem-cell research has not – be presented? 
The troubling aspect behind these lessons are that students will be discussing and debating the moral and ethical questions surrounding embryonic stem-cell research, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), and preimplantation genetic testing of preborn infants. Are science teachers prepared to lead these discussions in an unbiased manner, as the CIRM portal contends? Or will students be subjected to viewpoint discrimination, as they are in other areas of curriculum already? Parents must be aware of what is being taught in their child’s classes and be prepared to discuss such ethical and moral issues with their children. 
For more information:
·         Citizenlink’s Issue Analysis, Bioethics/Sanctity of Human Life
·         Family Research Council, Stem Cells and Biotechnology
  • Printer-friendly version