System Thinking: Rethinking the Teaching and Learning of Biochemistry?

I joined the university with no member of my immediate family studying sciences at the tertiary level, my mum had done some part time studies in Languages and Education which helped and shaped my outlook to learning. My first week in school, I was sitting at the Frustration Zone - I did not know this at the time, it was a comfortable place with trees and sitouts for students - when a young man walked up to me and introduced himself, he suspected I was a fresher and wanted to help. After exchanging pleasantaries and learning about the course I was about to study, he whined the whole evenings about how most people have to seek escape from the misery of biochemistry in their second year and how this course domicile in the Natural and Applied Sciences Faculty was the hardest to progress in. This was the first real world feedback from a person studying sciences at the tertiary level, it was honest and demoralising. Almost a decade after graduation from the University, I would not blame Micah for his thoughts. The outlook to teaching biochemistry in Nigeria Universities has to change drastically, this change does not necessarily make it easier, but it makes it more interesting and most importantly wakens the consciousness of the learners to a more important mental thinking pattern, system thinking. System thinking is a way of thinking that considers all the elements of a whole system and how the interfere with each other, their levels of interactions and ways adjusting them could influence various outcomes. This is literally the core of biochemistry, studying the network of interactions in a biological system. In the teaching and assesment of biochemistry, there are glimpses of systems thinking without it being mentioned. For instance, learning about a pathway would entail learning about the pathways or enzymatic reactions for the synthesis of the starting substrate(s), the various pathways it intermediaries or end point substrates feeds and most importantly how these various steps are regulated. This is full fledge systems thinking and this has helped me a lot in life and as a data scientist. Rather than focusing the attention of students on cramming the nomenclatures of the enzymes and their ability to replicate the structural formula of these macromolecules which have no importance in the the real world, efforts towards channeling their creativity at understanding the reasoning behind these reactions and making emphasis on systems thinking at each point would prove to be valuable to these budding researchers and the research community in the long run. I think one of the most influential courses I took studying for a bachelors in Biochemistry was titled BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR REASONING, another mention was BIOENERGETICS both courses had a lot to do with systems thinking how various biochemical reactions and pathways are coupled to maintain homeostasis and the implications of slight deviations. Whereas, it would be great for a student to recognize the structure of aspartate or glutamate and be able to replicate them without googling it does not enhance to think scientifically if they do not understand why they negatively charged at neutral and the implications of accepting a proton which is functionally important. I believe that teachers in the subject should rethink where they place emphasis when teaching and assessing the students’ comprehension of the subjects else biochemistry graduates would always continue to become chemistry and biology teachers whereas they passed through a vary rigorous training that is capable of transforming their minds to comprehend any societal problems better than most people, for from good understanding of the problem can we start to drive towards a sustainable solutions.