Pluto’s identity crisis hits the classroom

In the classroom
Even as scientists are arguing over the "plutoid" designation, with some saying they won't use the term, educators are already latching onto it.

Change is the name of the game in science, according to Gerry Wheeler, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association.

"Basically, it's a teachable moment for science teachers, because it shows the dynamic nature of science," Wheeler told SPACE.com. He added the NSTA will spread news of the plutoid category to science teachers in the fall.

Elementary school science teacher Lucy Jensen agrees: "Pluto has made it interesting studying our planets this year." She teaches at Joliet Public School in Montana. "Our only problem we now have is buying new material, such as posters, videos, DVDs and game/study materials that need to be updated," she said.

Jensen added that while her fourth-grade students were more upset than the third graders about Pluto's demotion, the parents were the most upset. "It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks, and we like what we know," she said.

"Time has always been taken in the classroom to ponder the origin of Pluto. When Pluto became a dwarf planet, along with Eris and Ceres, it made it easier to explain why an object of Pluto's small stature could be classified," high-school teacher Milman said. "Now we will just need to teach them more new definitions."

Milman added that "dwarf planets" is an easier term for students to grasp compared with plutoids. "Objects of Pluto, Eris and Ceres' size are too small to be called planets so they were called dwarf planets. That was easier for the students to understand," she said.

Yet many students are still unaware of the change made in 2006.

"My fourth graders still consider Pluto a planet," said Bev Grueber, a science teacher at North Bend Elementary in Nebraska. "We do extensive oral reports on the planets to meet a state standard, and everyone jumps for joy when they get Pluto. Last year, I left Pluto out of the draw and they asked where it was, so they still consider it a planet regardless of what the space scientists tell us the definition of that planet is."

Aram Friedman, who founded Ansible Technologies Ltd. in New Jersey, travels to schools to teach about astronomy using a portable planetarium. In a typical fifth-grade class, he teaches students the features of the inner planets and the outer planets. Pluto, he says, doesn't fit into those categories. That makes sense to kids.

Publishing lag
Many science textbooks have only recently caught up with the dwarf planet concept.

For publisher McGraw Hill Education, the 2008 elementary and secondary school science textbooks describe Pluto as a dwarf planet.

Middle schools with the current Holt Science and Technology textbooks would see Pluto defined as a dwarf planet. McDougal Littell Science took a slightly different approach.

"We didn't say how many planets there were, so we didn't have to make a lot of changes. We explained, historically, that it had been classified as a planet when it was discovered," said Dan Rogers, vice president and director of Holt McDougal's science and health product development.

McDougal's teacher's edition included a detailed explanation of Pluto's dwarf planet status.

"One of the reasons we were cautious is because we thought the whole thing was unresolved and was going to change again," Rogers said. "We're in the process of developing a brand new program, a new set of books."

In "Traveler's Guide to the Solar System," an astronomy book published in 2007 for kids age 8 to 10, the author notes, "Earth is the third of nine planets (some say eight, some say ten, but nine is kind of traditional), orbiting our local star, the Sun."

Starry Night, astronomy software that includes educational resources, refers to Pluto as a dwarf planet, according to content director Pedro Braganca. (Starry Night is a division of Imaginova Corp., which also owns SPACE.com.)

And soon, educational publishers may need to re-update material. Word has it astronomers are vowing to pursue a reinstatement of Pluto as a planet.

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