Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum How to make the next generation of scientists

I apologise for some of the 'not serious science' stuff I have been posting in the main board - I am not trying to turn SAGG into a science 'trivia' site...

...but here's another link.


I have been thinking about how I can best get my daughter thinking for herself and stimulate an interest in her surroundings and although she is still three it seems to me that the earlier the better.

I came across the following page and think it is an ideal way to give her an opportunity to experience a sense of wonder with science. It may be helpful for other parents too. They are a series of simple science toys and experiments that are easily and safely done at home with your kids, like creating a Magnetorheological fluid (one that appears solid in the presence of a magnetic field and then becomes fluid when the magnet is taken away).

http://www.scitoys.com/

Blacknad.

I have 2 daughters. My HS junior wants to be a chemist. The 8th grader wants to be a doctor (which I'm happy about, if this is her own choice and not her mother badgering her). Both of them are top math students at their school. Math is the gateway to doing well at science. Unfortunately many of the kids - especially the 'honors' kids are fakes - they suck at math, but they cheat so ferociously that no one has noticed yet. Those kids will end up as psych majors or even worse - pretending to do science (pneumatology, chasing bigfoot, etc).

The most important thing to do with your kids is spend time with them - ask them questions, listen to their questions. Read in front of them, talk to them about your interests, take time to explain to them. Play smart games - like scrabble, jeopardy, chess, etc. Read to them. Most importantly - let them see you reading and studying on your own.

Ah, great! An opportunity to sing the praises for our kids.

TFF, how right you are. Not all kids are born to be a gift to science, but spending time on them, reading, chatting, listening, is a great thing for sure. My daughter was fortunate in that she inherited her mother's brains and drive. I often used to read to her when she went to bed, and by the time she was 8 she was enjoying books like The Hobbit. When she was 6, in 1982, I bought a BBC computer. It was a great machine - 32KB RAM, 8 glorious colours and a tape drive for the programs...Anyway, I wrote a few BASIC programs so that she could practice the arithmetic functions. I told her that if she could beat my score, I would put 20 pounds in her bank account (yes, I know, I'm a materialist). A few weeks later, she phoned me at work: "Daddy, you owe me 20 pounds". That was great! Another program was about angles and coordinates. I remember her standing in the middle of the room with arms outstretched. I would say something like "270 degrees clockwise", and she would turn that way - good fun when you can make a game of it. While we were sitting at the dining table, I used to keep her amused by firing mental arithmetic at her. She pulled me into getting involved with her school projects, which was interesting!

I like to think that what I did was of some help to her. As I said, she was intelligent, so I was able to focus on that. She left school at 18 with 9 'A' levels. She, also, wanted to be a doctor at one time, then changed her mind and went for Nutrition and Dietetics. She has an honours degree, and is working toward her PhD.

Whether or not a kid's going to be turn into an scientist is not entirely in our hands, but the important thing is to ensure, as TFF said, that they get the caring, sharing, and appropriate attention.

Blacknad. I believe you've had some good advice here. I'm also sure your daughter has been fortunate in her choice of a parent!

Thanks everyone - some great advice. Red - like your very creative approach.

Cheers Terry

Blacknad.

"Whether or not a kid's going to be turn into an scientist is not entirely in our hands, but the important thing is to ensure, as TFF said, that they get the caring, sharing, and appropriate attention."

Lost my response. That's what I get for doing too many things at once. To repeat:

I don't know that we need to encourage kids to be scientists at all - but at the very least we should not discourage it. Kids should not be told that it's okay to not be good at something, especially when they haven't put all that much effort into failure. They need to see adults studying and solving problems. They need to see someone failing and not giving up. They need to develop attention spans that last longer than 20 seconds. None of this happens by accident.

Talk about smart things at the dinner table. Ask them to tell you what they learned at school and what good questions they asked. Ask them to stump you - and never, ever be afraid to say you don't know the answer.

Whatever they do, they need to know that patience and diligence will serve them well - as will be well-rounded and fearless. "Figure out what you really like doing and then go do it as well as you can."

TTF: "They need to see adults studying and solving problems..."

Yes, they learn so much from observation, and very quickly it seems. Just as they learn to speak without being taught, so they learn other skills and behaviours from their parents and others close to them, also without being taught. It's a fine feeling when your child says or does something new and you can't figure out where, how or when they learned it! After moving house, when my daughter was 4 yrs old, there were some jobs to be done; one was to refix a loose wall light. When we came home one day, she noticed that the wall light was upside down. "That doesn't make sense", she said. Ha! We had a good laugh about it, not only because she was right, but also because she had never used the phrase before!

TheFallibleFiend wrote:

"never, ever be afraid to say you don't know the answer."

And then ask them what they think.

"And then ask them what they think."
Exactly.

This effort by the Jane Goodall Institute might be a good resource. It is very youth oriented.

http://www.rootsandshoots.org/