experimentation is performed repeatedly as the students predict the

94 Teaching Minds experimentation is performed repeatedly as the students predict the effects of various modifications of the worm’s anatomy. Describing their conclusions is important—the project’s goals; the worm’s anat- omy, physiology, and behavior; and the interaction of anatomy and function. SPORTS MEDIC The core of this rotation is four athletic injuries. In each case the stu- dents examine the patients, describe their observations in detail, and perform a formal differential diagnosis. The students must use judg- ment and modeling to predict the effect of providing a competitive athlete with an artificial bone implant. DESIGNER GENES This rotation has three primary activities. In all three, evaluation plays a role as they discuss genetically modified animals, crops, and muscles. Describing, planning, and influence all are involved as the students prepare a congressman for hearings. All four of the social processes come into play in formal debates. What should be clear here is that what the health sciences curricu- lum seems to be about and what it is actually about are very different things. It seems to be about teaching health sciences content, when what it is really about is having students practice various cognitive processes that occur again and again throughout life. This was the goal of the design, pure and simple: to help students practice thinking. It really doesn’t matter what arena they are thinking in. We get them interested in thinking by having them think about something that interests them and is connected to a world they may wish to explore later on in life. They may indeed learn something about that world as well, but the point is the cognitive process-based education, not the subject-based education. I thought of the idea of building SCCs instead of using the normal set of courses that constitute most students’ school year when I took a job with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as the Chief Education Officer of its new West Coast campus, located in Silicon Valley. There HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023840