Science 'Not for Normal People' 232
Ant writes "BBC News reports that teenagers 'value the role of science in society, but feel scientists are "brainy people not like them".' This was according to a recent study by The Science Learning Centre in London that asked 11,000 pupils for their views on science and scientists. From the article: 'They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did "very important work" and 70% thought they worked "creatively and imaginatively". Only 40% said they agreed that scientists did "boring and repetitive work". Over three quarters of the respondents thought scientists were "really brainy people".'"
wtf (Score:5, Interesting)
Enfin... (Score:3, Interesting)
This stigma's been pursuing society for ages. There's still some fear (call it fear, call it respect, call it heyiwonttouchititmayburn) towards science, whereas Arts are a far more familiar field.
Maybe it's got something to do with science always ending up being a filter for students; teachers make it feel as if it were designed only for 'smart' people, and somehow generate some kind of disdain from pupils.
Agreed ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nietzsche was right, mediocres are necesary, and understanding that is part of being an intelligen person.
Discriminating is not a good thing, but thinking that we are all alike is even worse. We have to accept that we are all different, and that only a small group hsa been born to change the world, and the rest has been born to go to work and watch TV. It's when you learn to accept that fact, and stop being angree at others for being simpler than you when you really grow as a person, and can really focus on the important stuff.
Re:But.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Social skills partly to blame? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's extraordinarily difficult to be interested in something, to in fact devote your life to something, that is completely outside the realm of what most people are interested in or find relevant. It's difficult to make small talk when your mind is full of astrophysics or whatnot. It's even more difficult when people consider your pursuits to be lacking in merit or pretentious. Oftentimes this leads to a lonely life full of resentment, and this arrogant attitude you mention.
Given the choice between self-perception as superior and self-perception as a failure, most everybody will choose the former, especially when the only reason they would be deemed the latter is because they chose to be interested in something most people don't, or more often than not can't, understand. The talents valued most in this society are not individual pursuits, they're society-generated traits like popularity, wealth, confidence and the like.
Re:Then perhaps.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm taking Psych. 1 now; one of the things we talked about first was the evolution of the brain -- this was intro, background material.
Homo sapiens has a brain about 2x the size of Homo erectus', and 4x the size of Australopithecus. But here's the interesting bit: Really advanced human behavior took a long time to develop after the brain for it evolved.
Our species waited around for tens of thousands of years with the right wetware, apparently doing nothing, until, all of a sudden, a whole host of behaviors emerged: Art (cave paintings), Spirituality (ritual burials), etc. And in the evolutionary timescale, this is even pretty close to things like The Emergence of Civilization.
My psych. prof used this as evidence for his own personal belief that most of the limitations placed on the human brain are socio-cultural, not biological.
Now, I switch from what I was told in class, to my own ideas: If this is true, then, what is it that happened in the intervening time -- while we were sitting around with big brains and before 'intelligence' emerged? An answer: Our memes [wikipedia.org] evolved!
The question, then: What set of thoughts and beliefs creates more intelligent people? How do we find that set?
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't get why they don't try to farm out some new tests to high school science classes. I mean come on alot of things are try this and test for a few things and repeat as many times as we can afford. I remember being sick to death of nearly all "science" classes into college. Why? Because we didn't do any thing to push the field. We just did the same experiments that some folks 200-300 years ago did and are repeating it. I know part of that is to just introduce concepts to people, but come on can't we atleast rig up "new" tests or experiments to break new ground with instead of just repeating whats been done before?
What's really bad is we are rarely told why anything is really important. It just magically is for some reason. I have a math minor and really enjoyed math. Now, I don't use 90% of it and wonder what was the point sometimes. High school kids are not stupid and can be the cheap grad labor of the future.
Before/after children's drawings of scientists (Score:1, Interesting)