Why dissections is taught this way.
Six short essays for parents and guides. The first two explain the core of the method; the next three address the questions families actually ask; the sixth answers the one everyone is thinking about — what happens to a course like this in the age of AI.
The method
Why dissection is taught at the bench.
Dissection is invisible without the specimen. What the scalpel, the probe, and a real specimen on the tray teach about three-dimensional structure that no diagram or screen can — and why "lab-led, not textbook-led" is the whole game.
Cram, pass, forget — in dissections.
Why memorized anatomy diagrams decay especially fast without mastery — and how technique and spatial structure, once earned by doing, are retained. What "Learn → Master → Retain" replaces the test-and-move-on model with.
The demonstrations
The dissection defense.
The single moment that captures the whole course: a student at the tray, an exposed structure, and a guide asking "locate it, identify it, and explain what it does."
Observation under uncertainty.
No two specimens are identical. Natural variation, honest recording, drawing what you actually see rather than the textbook ideal — and why an observation you cannot defend is worthless.
Integration & AI
Integration: comparative anatomy.
How one idea — the same bones rearranged — pulls in history, ethics, and biology, from Cuvier and Owen's "homology" to Darwin's common descent, traced through a fish fin, a frog leg, a pig trotter, and the human hand.
AI-proof by design.
We teach students to use AI well — and we assess them in ways AI cannot touch. Why those two facts fit together.