Writers' Responsibility to Give Science Away

On January 31, 2013 Dr. Katherine Hirsh-Pasek came to give a talk at Ursinus College entitled "From the Lab to the Living Room: Where Psychological Science Meets the Common Good." During the talk, Dr. Hirsh-Pasek told us about what she called "the education pickle" that is plaguing the American education system. America is not on the list of top ten countries in math, reading, or science. In fact, we are not even close to dreaming of the top ten in any of those categories, and 50% of inner city students do not graduate high school. She attributes this to the "learning industry" in the U.S., which refers to the way children are taught and tested such that the education system has a tendency to profit from memorization, which is not necessarily the best way for children to learn. 

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek went on to tell us about studies she and her research partners have conducted in the psychological science field which aimed to find out which methods of instruction are most effective and conducive to learning. The studies she talked about were focused primarily on early childhood education, and the general findings were that guided play is the most effective method of teaching children. Guided play involves allowing children to work in an environment that is designed to point them in the direction of a certain type of knowledge or information. The idea is that when a child is pushed towards the correct answer or way of doing something, they figure it out on their own, and therefor have a better rate of retention, and greater likelihood of using the learned method in the future. 

The studies she talked about had significant findings, but Dr. Hirsh-Pasek also presented the very interesting and relevant issue of getting this scientific research out to the public in order to facilitate change. She referenced George Miller's 1969 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association, during which he discussed the difficulty and importance of "giving science away." Scientists can make important discoveries that should facilitate societal changes in many different areas, but the people who have the power to make these changes very often do not get their hands on the scientific information that would lead to these things. 

Science writers have the means and the abilities to help society by "giving science away" to the public. Studies like Dr. Hirsh-Pasek's have the ability to alter the way society is run, but they cannot have significant impact unless science writers step in and make the results of the studies readable and accessible to the general public. If science like this can be publicized, it is far more likely that it will get into the hands and minds of people with the power to have an impact. All it takes is one person to read an article, or one parent sitting in on Dr. Hirsh-Pasek's talk at Ursinus to go home and use the guided play techniques, or talk to their child's school administrators to change the life of a child who otherwise may have grown up without ever knowing their true potential.

Astronaut-Hopeful turns Science-Hater?

When you ask a little kid what they want to be when they grow up, many of them tell you they want to be a superhero, race car driver, firefighter, or a princess, but a good amount of them will also tell you things like "i wanna be an astronaut!" Preschoolers and elementary school students generally love the sciences, from astronomy to marine biology to chemistry to earth science and back. When we're young we have a curiosity about the world around us that only dissipates as we grow older. Children hunger for knowledge and ask questions about anything from the stars in the sky to the core of the Earth, and everything in between. They want to know what's going on inside their bodies and where they came from, all the way back through their own history to prehistoric times. Even for all of the answers adults give, they have another question to follow it up with, even if the question is as small as one word, "Why?" 

Although our primary schools are filled with tiny scientific minds just waiting to be nurtured and molded into scientifically literate adults, we lose this hunger somewhere along in the schooling system. I remember in elementary school, we had a science swap for an hour once or twice a weep, during which time we would travel as a class to the classrooms of other teachers of students our grade. Each teacher was a different type of "scientist" and every time we swapped rooms, they would have a hands-on lab for us to learn about earth science, electricity, chemistry, etc. Specifically, i remember making our own ecosystems in the earth science section in transparent glass Tupperware containers. We layered different types of dirt and sand, a little grass, and water, then covered the top with plastic wrap and put them all by the window, so that they would get sunlight. A couple days later, when we went back to check on our ecosystems and we could see the clouds (condensation) in the sky (plastic wrap) and when the condensation dripped down it would rain in the ecosystem and water the grass seeds in the dirt.

It is this type of hands-on, visual science that interests children and makes them want to learn and get excited about the new information they absorb. As children grow up and the science they learn becomes more difficult and complicated, they lose interest and no longer have this hunger for knowledge. Children become adolescents and young adults who are bogged down with learning facts and formulas that just confuse and get in the way of the things that interested them about science in the first place. There comes a time when the technical information that teens have to memorize comes to the forefront and the intriguing part of science falls to the back.

The science writer has a responsibility to get the original intrigue of science back into the minds and hearts of adolescents and young adults by tugging on their imagination and helping them get back the love of knowledge that they had as kids. Writers have the power to make words come alive on the page, and because of this they have the responsibility to use this power for the academic minds. They can make scientific facts, theories, and research findings into something worth reading and enrich the public's scientific literacy.