Ambrosian Science has been on my mind for years. When I tried to boil the "why" of it down into just one cohesive story, I couldn't do it. So here are five.
Story #1: When I was being homeschooled, there weren't a lot of good options for science curricula. My mother chose the best one she could find, but in my mind, it left a lot to be desired. There weren't enough pictures, and what pictures it had were not of very high quality. There were no resources to dive deeper into particular topics. And if you couldn't figure out how to do the labs from the written description, on your own, you were stuck. Not to mention the whole thing was blatantly evangelical...perhaps better than the blatantly secular options, but still. I made it through and went on to study science in college, but wished there were some better options out there for my younger siblings.
Story #2: In college, my genetics professor turned out to be an under-the-radar Thomist. In his class I first encountered the Catholic approach to biology, and was very confused, because I'd never heard about concepts like the hierarchy of being, or contingency. And I very likely never would have, if I'd had a different professor. Being introduced to the rudiments of Thomistic philosophy opened up a whole new world to me, and I wished I could have experienced science through this Catholic lens the first time around, instead of having to relearn everything later.
Story #3: After college, and after a few jobs in the medical products manufacturing field, I found myself teaching at a Catholic high school. Here I was surprised to learn that, although there were Catholic history books, Catholic literature books, Catholic language studies (ecclesiastical Latin) and even a Catholic art course, we were still using the same old secular science books that you might find at any public school, and it was up to me, the teacher to Catholicize them. I wished there were a curriculum I could use where this was already done for me.
Story #4: Upon leaving my teaching career to start a new one as a mother, I realized that homeschoolers don't have Catholic science books either, and neither do they have teachers to Catholicize the secular or Protestant ones. They just have moms--often overworked and under-thanked--who usually don't have the time or confidence to go "off-book" as I found myself frequently doing. I therefore decided I needed to write a book to help them out.
Story #5: As proof of concept, I tried teaching the most difficult student I could possibly get my hands on...my youngest brother. Through trial and error, I learned that students actually learn best when the material is presented in a few different ways at once. If you hear it explained to you as you read the words and see a picture of it, you are way more likely to remember than if you just read a textbook with too few (and often irrelevant, and motionless) pictures. Video, then, seemed to be the best format for teaching.
So I decided to solve all these problems. I would build a resource to help Catholic parents teach their kids science, even if science was not their strongest suit. It would be grounded in Thomistic philosophy, dynamic enough to reflect updates in research, and presented in multiple formats to reach kids of all learning styles. It's my belief that school is only painful and frustrating when you don't understand what's being taught, and I don't want that to get in the way of students enjoying science.
The name is in reference to St. Ambrose of Milan, who is patron of (amongst other things) learning and students. He was also known for his eloquence in preaching, a.k.a. his "honey tongue." I pray that through his intercession, the study of science may be sweet as honey for our students.
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