I noticed this story today in The Times, and it fascinated me that we would be so surprised that we could not identify a certain type of bug.  Even if the Natural History Museum has 28 million specimens there would always be bugs about they had not classified taxonomically.  I have increasingly noticed over the past months that the world of taxonomy has changed significantly from the days when I used to classify.  Now we are moving into the realms of DNA and quite substantial work is being completed in the scientific community.  A few weeks ago a noteworthy piece of work had been done on the classification of birds, and of course the dear Platypus.  All of these changes to taxonomy have opened up the wonderment of man's need to organise, collect, file away, understand etc..  The taxonomy of the animal and plant kingdom has had a resurgence in science education with the New National Curriculum at Key Stage 4.  It always amazes me how interested the kids are in taxonomy, even when they reach the more cynical ages of 15/16 and their classification of their world revolves around films, girls, games and all the other things teenage boys like to classify in the modern world.  Lack of understanding of taxonomy is a worrying trend in science, maybe because it sort of fell out of fashion and became a footnote in syllabi.  It became worryingly obvious to me whilst working in my capacity has an External Verifier of Applied Science that this lack of understanding did not only extend to young people, errors were also being made by science teachers.

I had to verify the marking procedures of a piece of work that had been assessed using an assignment against the following criteria.

1. Construct simple identification keys and describe the main characteristics within the major classification groups.

2. Explain the need to classify organisms.

3. Discuss the characteristics which are used to distinguish the major groups

The above three assessment critria may seem pretty straight forward and has scientists we can think how we would expect 15/16 year old students to present this kind of information.  The assignment designed to meet these criteria was unfortunately constructed in such a way that the students became quite confused.  The part of the assignment that caused tremendous problems was a section that asked the students to do the following:

A gardner uses a classification key to identify the difference between a millipede and centipede.  The gardner wants to keep the centipedes in the garden because they eat other bugs.  Why does the gardner need to know the difference between a millipede and centipede?

An innocent enough looking assessment question.  I had a feeling of dread when I read it before reading the learners' work.  I found what I expected various explanations by students about biological control and food chain construction in the garden.  No mention of the taxonomic classification of millipede and centipede.  This was not the fault of the learners and I had to telephone the science department of the school to discuss the problem.  Whilst on the telephone I realised that there was a general lack of understanding about what the grade criteria was asking and what taxonomy actually is.  Quite surprising really given that this is basic biology.  I have spent many summer days pond dipping, using pooters, quadrats, tree beating etc.. Students love using taxonomic keys, drawing and classifying insects and living organisms.  Sadly this part of the curriculum has increasingly shrunk and getting students outside doing practical biology is becoming increasingly less common.  The problem is that our young people (and anecdotally it seems science teachers) are not being exposed to the world around them and given opportunities to understand the innate complexity of habitats along with how the various organisms within habitats are related (or not) to one another.