Research Groups: Louis Pasteur

Introduction

This is a script that could be rehearsed and performed or read through once and used straight away to stimulate questioning and discussion. It is in six parts so you could use one part for each lesson followed by inquiry. Used in this way, there is enough work here to last half a term for, say, a class or 10 or 11 year olds.

If the script is performed, it could be done in Readers' Theatre style with performers holding scripts in their hands.

Research Groups
The idea of 'research groups' is that they are groups of imaginary children or young people who are interested in finding things out. However, what they find out comes from different perspectives or seems problematic. The groups talk about the problems. In this sense the script is in the tradition of a written dialogue.

This research groups script
In this case the script, about Louis Pasteur and his discovery of a vaccine for anthrax, raises issues about causation, knowledge, fame, ethics and science. The research I did for the script uncovered interesting information about a rival of Pasteur's called Max Von Pettenkoffer who rejected germ theory. I also found out that Pasteur was contracted by the Australian government in 1857 to wage biological warfare on the rabbit population.

I have used this script with pupils aged 10 and above with success.

Extra resource: A mystery about the causes of anthrax
I attach a mystery activity about the causes of anthrax as raised by the characters in the story in Part Three of the script. I suggest you allow the pupils to explore their own categories for the statements. They will probably come to choose headings such as 'likely causes', 'not causes', 'possible causes'. It would be necessary for them to rank the causes in order of being most influential or perhaps the first or last in the chain of causes. The following ideas about causes may be useful in your debriefing with students about their categories and their conclusions concerning the mystery.

Ideas about causes (to help you prepare for discussions with pupils)
A cause is usually thought of as part or all of an explanation of why something (an effect) happened. Consider the following Q and A.

Q. ‘Why did John fall on his way to school?’
A. ‘He stepped on a banana skin.’

Philosophers and others have asked many questions about causes but they haven’t always agreed on their answers. Here is a selection of popular ideas from the last 200 years or so:

• First we should say that there can be more than one cause. John slipped on a banana. He might also have been clumsy and couldn’t stop himself falling.

• A cause cannot come after an effect. It usually comes before. A banana skin had to be there before John could slip on it.

• We should think about two kinds of things: conditions and causes. Conditions are all those things that an effect couldn’t have happened without. ‘Bananas are sold in shops’ is a condition. John wouldn’t have slipped on one if they weren’t. But is banana selling a cause of his slipping? No, because a cause must have a stronger connection. Plenty of bananas are sold that don’t cause accidents so the connection between banana selling and slipping isn’t strong.

• Causes are things that fit in with patterns. People who buy bananas normally don’t fall over. People who step on them often do. There is a pattern.

• In science, things are most often chosen as causes if scientists can repeat the causes and effects – all other things being equal. If the same weight was put on a banana skin and given the same kind of push, would it always slip?

• Not everything can be repeated in an experiment. But we can guess that causes are things that could be changed or could have been different. They might be out of the ordinary. So John walked to school every day but he didn’t fall over. Then one day he did something different – he stepped on a banana skin. The different thing is likely to be the cause.

• Causes are things that fit in with patterns. People who buy bananas normally don’t fall over. People who step on them often do. There is a pattern.

• Causes are often the last things that happen before the effect. Ask what John did just before he fell.

• First look at the conditions and then use your judgement to choose the ones that seem most likely to have caused the effect.

• Some causes can seem more important if they are things that people do deliberately. If John slipped on a banana skin we could say the banana skin caused him to fall. If Peter threw it in John’s way deliberately, we would say the most important cause was that Peter threw it.