The Nine-Year-Old and I spent a considerable amount of time yesterday with a Science Kit Minilabs Electric Motor kit. It was harder to assemble than I had thought, largely due to the large size of my fingers coupled with an armature assembly that is only one inch in diameter. The Nine-Year-Old wandered off several times during the 150-fold wrapping of the wire around the armature assembly--a time-consuming and boring part of the assembly of the motor.
But--and here's the remarkable thing--it worked, and worked well, the first time: the D-battery drove the (unloaded) motor at some 600 rpm. The Twelve-Year-Old was impressed. The Nine-Year-Old wondered why so much energy was being dissipated in vibration and noise, and couldn't this energy be trapped and used for something?
I worry, periodically, about the kids and science. The things they deal with are--in so many ways--so far removed from basic scientific principles. You could build an AM crystal radio back when I was a kid. You can't build a DVD player. You could fix a car--change the spark plugs, look at the distributor cap, monkey with the carburetor--when I was a kid. You can't today. I thought it was really neat the first time I used a language like Fortran to have a computer sum up the numbers from 1 to 100. But their experiences with computers are much, much further from the bare metal.
Of course, people 100 years ago were probably complaining that the modern young know nothing about how to gauge the process of steelmaking by the color of the metal and the smell of the slag...
Posted by DeLong at September 02, 2002 09:10 AM | TrackbackI suspect the real problem with science education all along has been the lack of a clear sense of why science should be taught. It's all fine and dandy to say how wonderful and important science is, and how standards of living have improved because of advances in scientific knowledge, but those are not reasons to teach science. Ultimately, scientists and engineers have never formed more than the tiniest portion of society. The odds of becoming a Nobel Prize-winning physicist are smaller than playing for the NBA or making a platinum record. Being anything less than a really top physicsist will almost certainly not make you more money than a good plumber, and unless you get a professorship at a top university, teaching is not a well paid trade. Science sometimes pays well, if you're in the right speciality at the right time, otherwise, middle class is the best you can hope for. There is no crying shortage of research scientists right now and there has been very high unemployment among scientists in the past.
Most people get higher returns on educational investments in engineering, computer science or an MBA. These folks may deal to some degree in scientific knowledge, but only within narrow specialties that hardly require a real sciecne education. Silicon Valley computer shops are full of ex-science students who didn't quite make the cut for a Master's or PhD, or couldn't find the money and didn't get good enough grades for scholarships. Computing pays better, doesn't require a PhD and you don't need to be much more than basically bright to learn the trade or to do most of the work.
The thing that riles scientifically educated people is that people are ignorant of science and don't suffer for it. They read astrology columns (except Brezny - it's okay to know better and still read Brezny), demand creationism in schools and think UFO's are mutilating cattle. But the ability to live in complete ignorance of the things that sustain your life is the greatest triumph of modern times. Knowledge is so great and so distributed that it is not possible to actually personally know very much at all about the technologies that you depend on to live.
So why care if children learn science? Only a handful of dedicated and self-selecting nerds are ever going to get anywhere in science, and as far as I can tell, scientists seem to prefer it that way. As long as we don't actively discourage them, kids with that bent will find their way into labs, and as long as science is reasonably well funded, they'll keep working.
The best reason I've heard for teaching science is to help the public make better judgements about science. This goal could probably be better served by getting rid of dull chem labs and frog dissections and focusing high school and college-level GenEd science classes on current events and concepts. More of it would stick because it would be more relevant to people's lives, and some good might come of it.
Posted by: Scott Martens on September 2, 2002 03:04 PMI always believe too much knowledge is grouped under the heading "science". MOre appropiately is to divide the knowledge into 3 groups:
fundamental science, engineering and lastly technical.
"fundamental science" is the basic investigation and discovery of why things are, i.e. subatomic interactions which vreate a magnetic field
"Engineering"- application of fundamental science. How to maximize output for a given input. For the motor, investigate the minimization of noise and vibration.
"Technology"- How to build a motor.
Under these headings, it is easier to discuss the importance of each field. Fundamental Science never occupied the interest of the majority of people.
Technology training is the most ubiqutous field. Welders, doctors nurses, all are employed in the field of applying the tools engineers developed based on the knowledge scientists developed.
I am not an educator or social scientist, but I believe science education can best serve to 10 show students how to identify and investigate a problem 2) that we can discover why something occurs and develop tools based on our knowledge and 3) Not to be afraid to tinker with things.
Posted by: Jon A on September 3, 2002 05:48 AM