As I pointed out on Sunday, I think it’s essential we excite kids about science. A lot of people think science is dry and boring, and that is utterly wrong: science is not boring, but it’s often presented that way.
So what do we do?
One group has decided to tackle this issue head-on and talk to kids about their attitudes toward science. Called Connect a Million Minds World Wide, they’re holding a town hall-style online meeting to discuss it. And they got some interesting folks to participate: Al Gore, astronaut Sally Ride, and MythBusters My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™ and Jamie Hyneman. This interactive session will be on November 17th at noon Eastern (US) time.
I think this is a fantastic idea. If you’re a middle school teacher or have middle school age kids, I think you should tune into this. We absolutely must encourage our children to engage in science, and what better way to find out how to do that than to simply ask them what they think about it?
November 15th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
That title makes it look like you’re trying to bring about the Singularity, Phil;-)
November 15th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Perhaps a misconception of more concern than science being dry and boring is this: “Science is HARD.” I wonder whether any of the kids will make that point.
If so, I hope the participants get across the idea that many worthwhile things seem difficult at first, but with practice and experience and determination, these things become easier and even enjoyable. This is true not only for people who study science, but it is also true for people who want to play an instrument, or acquire the skills of a cheerleader, or write an entertaining story, or play a sport, or make artistic drawings….
November 15th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
You’re friends with Adam & Jamie? I’m so jealous.
I know engineering isn’t as “cool” as science, but there is also an engineers week in Feburary. I don’t know why all this is done during cold months.
November 15th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I tutored a high school student in physics last night. I saw the material provided by the teacher and it was horrible. Rough scribblings that were hard to read, incomplete diagrams, and nothing that would convey the idea. The girl told me how this guy acts in the classroom. He is not interested in them learning at all. He is more interested in getting them to keep quiet and not bother him until it is time to go. There are 30 or so kids in the classroom and I will bet that almost all of them will end up hating physics because of this. A better teacher could have really introduced them to the subject in a way that they could learn and maybe get a feel for how interesting physics actually is.
Part of the problem is some of the science teachers out there. I had a good one. Not everyone agreed with me but she was good. With the resources available today I bet she can really teach. However, there are some teachers out there who may know the subject but just cannot teach. They are not cut out for that line of work. Of course, this is not just a problem isolated with science education.
November 15th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
@AMercer – I agree completely. My HS physics teacher was the same. And while he did do all of the normal and “cool” demonstrations of Newtonian physics, he never explained them in anyway that made them more compelling than a 5 minute distraction in an otherwise boring class.
I didn’t get interested in physics until I was 35. I picked up a science magazine and read an article about light being both a photon and a wave. The description of the famous experiment was so amazing to me that I became an avid reader on the subject.
That is why I am convinced that people like Phil are needed to spark the interest in our youth. Its a dry boring subject if they have to memorize a series of laws and definitions, its an awe inspiring subject if they read books like Phil’s and see how cool it really is.
November 15th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
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November 15th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I had a science teacher in eight grade that spent several days discussing UFOs. She told us about the UFO she seen, she brought in a four hour 1992 miniseries called Intruders that we watched in its entirety throughout that school year. We all thought that was pretty awesome when we were 13. We would bring it up occasionally so she’d get sidetracked talking about aliens again instead of making us, you know learn useful things. Only now do I realize how wrong that was.
Not exactly high caliber teachers in schools here in Indiana.
November 15th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Teachers can make huge differences. I’ve been very lucky to have some great ones (& the odd bad one too) although most of the science I’ve learnt myself via reading and stuff on my own. I was always very curious, loved science fiction, spent most of my lunchtimes in the school library and grew up on Isaac Asimov – his factual science and other essays as well as his SF tales. The number of times I snuck an SF novel into the book I was supposed to be reading in class ..
The mental image the “Connect a Million Minds” creates for me is brain surgery – a whole huge, hu-uuge lot of brain surgery – with strings of neurons and tubes of grey matter being sown together permanently attaching hundreds of thousands of people at the exposed bloody skull a la Dr Moreau-like in some bizarre attempt at artifically creating a gestalt mind and human telepathy or FSM knows what else! Unwieldly, messy and very creepy! Yikes!
November 16th, 2010 at 8:05 am
I guess the political and policy aspects of science should be explored as well. But, Al Gore? That one threw me off a little. Al Gore isn’t personable and doesn’t have what could be termed, a spark. His lectures and interviews give a distinct ‘meh’ feeling. And I don’t mean he needs to jump around and ‘act’ all exited. There’s so many other people who could spark with a younger audience and who portray a passionate ‘science is life’ message. People who can connect with them and show that science is fascinating and, as already pointed out, easy to grasp if taught and presented well. To inspire further exploration. Frankly, Phil is someone that comes to mind but also Dave Suzuki, Bill Nye, even Randall Munroe and Alton Brown (not as silly as it sounds.)
Al Gore or not, the whole thing sounds awesome and reminds me of the Copernicus Science Center related projects in Poland. A portion of funding and resources are directed to touring exhibits bringing science experiments to towns and villages. Kids and their families can engage with real world experiments that otherwise would be just abstract formulas in textbooks taught by resource thin teachers who themselves are not science teachers. I could be making Poland sound like a third world country but I know that this sort of stuff is also needed in the US. It’s needed everywhere.
November 16th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Well, actually, I think we need to admit that sometimes science *is* dry and, well, not boring, but certainly tedious.
But most professions are like that. I design cool and wacky electronic devices for R&D, but there’s times when I’m checking a layout or a schematic, and it’s two weeks of staring at netlists and thousands of PWB traces on a screen. At the end of the day it’s a job, and much of it is going to be a lot of routine stuff you’ve done a thousand times before.
I think there’s a danger of overselling science as much as we’re currently underselling it.
I know engineering isn’t as “cool” as science
Excuse me???? Where did that clap trap come from?
Science
Engineering
—
November 16th, 2010 at 9:52 am
At the middle school level, 58% of U.S. science teachers are certified to teach science (life science, physical sciences, earth science, or broad-field science), while the remaining 42% are split between teachers with elementary education certification and those with no teaching certification, who may or may not have science training. I think we need to educate the teachers first.
November 16th, 2010 at 10:37 am
I passed the info along to my kids’ science teachers. I don’t know if they’ll be able to do anything on such short notice (“tomorrow at noon” isn’t much lead time), but I hope they’ll be able to do _something_.
Brown (#2):
Wasn’t there a Barbie(tm) doll that once said that?
November 16th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Hah. Even fighter pilots and sky diving instructors have their dry and tedious days. Getting children (and adults) to understand that there are processes in place and that pretty much everything requires planning, testing, funding, effort, checking and rechecking, recording, maintenance, replacement, calibration, resource management, support, knowledge, refining, repetition etc etc… All that’s the hard bit, really, but not because Science (or Engineering) is dry and tedious, but because life can be; and on top of that, not every one gets to be the astronaut or fighter pilot. Then add on to the whole mess that we increasingly live in a world where everything is supposed to be instant, entertaining and done for us. No wonder the kids are suffering.
I think efforts like “Connecting a Million Minds” fulfill multiple purposes, one of them being to try and get children to keep -wanting- to understand their world as they move into adulthood. Children tend to already want to know, it just gets sucked out of them at some point. A great science experience can be like an inoculation against mind rot and the quagmire of woo.
November 16th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“I think it’s essential we excite kids about science. A lot of people think science is dry and boring, and that is utterly wrong: science is not boring, but it’s often presented that way. So what do we do?”
There’s nothing you can do. Some people are just inherently boring and when they are allowed to become teachers then disaster follows. Here’s an idea — only allow interesting people to become teachers. If you inherently boring, you have to do research.