Pickens writes "The BBC reports that four out of five parents living in the UK have been stumped by a science question posed by their children with the top three most-asked questions: 'Where do babies come from?', 'What makes a rainbow?' and 'Why is the sky blue?'. The survey was carried out to mark the launch of a new website by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills called Science: So what? So everything."
I always was interested in science, and when I was younger, it drove me to learn things on my own. While I was in high school, I substituted for a teacher a few times...
But I was always amazed at how some people were so baffled by the simplest things that are very easy to learn about.
The everyday person needs to know more science. Unfortunately, many people who do know a lot of science act religious. They treat people who don't know it as inferior, and I believe that turns a lot of people away from learning about it. Not because they think science is less valid, but in a sense, because they don't want to be like the jackass that just got done making them feel worthless.
Honestly... I think people who know a lot of science are probably the biggest problem with science education.
The question is, how many are baffled, and how many just don't care to learn it? Learning for the sake of learning doesn't seem to be popular anymore, people squeeze by with the bare minimum they can cram into their skulls so there's more space left over for American Idol, Reality TV and celebrity gossip. At least that is what I see here, I can't think of any reason it would be any different in the UK.
Learning for the sake of learning doesn't seem to be popular anymore
Schools and universities are increasingly being measures by how well they prepare people for work - i.e. education is becoming more like vocational training.
In Britain, the government has made schools a lot more centralised. Both schools are teachers have a lot less discretion.
The question is, how many are baffled, and how many just don't care to learn it?
Yep. Some people have much more pressing issues, like getting by on/below the poverty line. And maybe they don't think it's even the right stuff to be filling their kids' heads with. Yes, that should probably change, but I think there's definitely an overestimation of science's significance (in terms of awareness rather than potential) to the average person going on here.
That said... I think there is one overriding factor that could sort it all out. And it's a factor that I never see discussed in terms of parenting skills or raising kids. That factor is: your kid just asked a serious question about life. If you can't answer it, go the fuck out and find the answer, and give it to him. Basically, have some respect for the child's questions... he's obviously asking because it's important to his development in some way.
>>Please describe a point in history where it was ever popular...seriously, there will always be a distribution of intelligence, quit bitching that you're on the higher end of it.
During the space race. My mom was a literature person, but even she got interested in science and started reading a lot of Heinlein, etc., and now writes sci-fi of her own.
Honestly... I think people who know a lot of science are probably the biggest problem with science education.
The problem is not that science people are arrogant, the problem is that they come way too late in education (to properly explain the science method) at a point where all people did for the previous year was swallow factoid and regurgitate them (lower school science lesson is usually just that), and combined with the fact science is seen as nerdy/geeky and thus only for contempt. Later those same people which admire jocks and despite nerd become parents and are baffled by science question.Add to that the fact that science is sometimes seen as attacking/going against their own religious belief (in reality science as a method do not care for religion (except social science) what cannot be falsified is ignored)...
When I was young I had a book called "Weet je waarom... ?" ("Do you why... ?") which contained funny and informative answers to general questions. From silly kid questions to just generally how the world works. Beats google every time for kids, everyone should have one of these [google.com] in their house and look up stuff with their kids for fun.
My folks had an Encyclopedia set. The World Book Encyclopedia. When we learned about sperm and eggs and embryos and fetuses in school, I became curious as to how the man's sperm got into the woman. Not only was I curious, I was concerned. I certainly didn't want something like that happening: fathering a child simply by kissing a girl or holding her hand, so I figured I better find out before I got in trouble. So I pulled out the first "S" volume.
The article on "Sex" (human) starts out quite dry enough, describing relationships between the sexes and how they develop and change as children mature. It discusses dating and marriage and religious and social influences on intersexual relationships. Then finally the mechanics. As I recall, the description read like this: "A man and woman lie close together. The man places his penis inside the woman's vagina." This made a real impression on me: I figured I'd have to do quite a bit of growing before I could lie down next to a woman, take hold of my penis, and pull it over to the her vagina and plug it in like an extension cord! I was a little disappointed by how dull this sounded, but at the same time relieved that I wouldn't be accidentally spreading my genes around by casual contact.
From the numbers you provided, the sample groups were inadequate. Over the years, I've met many people, and had the opportunity to learn a lot about them. There are stereotypical and astereotypical people in every group. In a sampling of say 10 people, they may all be complete idiots, or rocket scientists. Looks are frequently deceiving.
The IQ scores are almost always skewed. It's not how "smart" you are, but how educated you are. For example, I've known poor farmers who were not well educated, but through what they have been educated in, it's apparent that they are smart. A good farmer can repair his own equipment, sometimes with minimal tools. He can raise crops even in adverse conditions. He can raise cattle from birth to slaughter, and take care of any problem along the way. One in particular who would score miserably on a standardized IQ test, and never completed high school could look at the symptoms of an animal, and treat it properly. He kept his 40 year old truck on the road without ever taking it to a mechanic, and could revive almost any piece of farm equipment. He could solve real world logical problems in a heart beat. He wouldn't have a prayer solving an algebraic equation, could barely spell, and had no clue what to do with a computer though. He was never taught those skills.
Then again, his neighbor would be hard pressed to repair a fence. Was he stupid? I don't know, I didn't know the neighbor well enough. Maybe he had simply never needed to repair a fence, and had never been taught. Could you?
I personally know someone, approximately 30 years old, who usually scored just over 100 on an IQ test. She had never finished high school. She recently started taking GED classes. Now that she has picked up the required skills, she retested and scored 138. She didn't get any smarter in a matter of weeks. She simply gained the skills required to score better on the IQ test. Because I knew her personally, I knew she was smart. With the new score, she now believes it. What is Pi? What is an acute triangle? What does E=MC^2 mean? If you were never taught such things, those would mean absolutely nothing to you.
Someone else I know was convinced she was stupid. She was told so for too many years. She decided to prove them wrong, and is a better programmer than I am now, fluent in several programming languages. I don't know her IQ score, but I'm confident in seeing her ability in fields that she has the skills in that she's brilliant.
I've known people who score very low. I tried to tutor someone who was mentally retarded in reading. I was teaching him letters, which took a while. We then started on words and sounding them out. He could accomplish simple words, but it was difficult at best for him. He was told that he would never read, because he was too stupid. It was more that the extra time wasn't spent with him on it. He'll never be a rocket scientist or a surgeon, so yes, his IQ was low. And he is white of European descent.
To be on topic, if you were never told why the sky was blue, would you know the answer? What if it simply wasn't important to you at the time you were told? You'd likely forget. Grouping "parents" into one general category is insane. Almost everyone can be a parent. Well, I'd say a decent percentage of Slashdot readers won't, because of social ineptness.:) I'm a parent of 3, and father-like figure to more. Sometimes the children are afraid to ask. "Where do babies come from?" may be too mysterious a question. I was asked recently about sex by a friend's son. He was afraid to ask his mother, and his father avoided the question. I answered age appropriately, and then told him it was fine to tell his mother. His reponse? "I can't talk to mom about stuff like that. She's a girl
I was extremely lucky. My science teacher was a research scientist who quit researching for the specific purpose of "teaching correctly". It didn't matter what the cirriculum was, she forced you to reason your way to answers.
I realized just how effective this was in my Freshman biology class when the student next to me, who was someone you'd probably refer to as a "typical black teen male" turned to me and said, "Man... you can't avoid learning in this class... yesterday I was makin' myself a sandwich and when I pulled the mayonase out I started thinking about what an immulsion was..."
But teaching at that level is absolutely exhausting... the trick, I've learned, is to show people that things follow a logical path. People, especially young people, just wait until someone tells them what happens next. Often they don't even attempt to figure out on their own what happens next. Really good science teachers challenge you to do that first. Everything else follows.
People, especially young people, just wait until someone tells them what happens next.
Nonsense. Young people are naturally curious. Only after years of exposure to a spoon-feeding "educational system" do they become mindless drones waiting to memorize the next factoid. If we can change the system to work WITH their natural curiosity, it won't be difficult to motivate them - the hard part will be trying to keep them focused on just one topic.
People, especially young people, just wait until someone tells them what happens next.
Nonsense. Young people are naturally curious. Only after years of exposure to a spoon-feeding "educational system" do they become mindless drones waiting to memorize the next factoid. If we can change the system to work WITH their natural curiosity, it won't be difficult to motivate them - the hard part will be trying to keep them focused on just one topic.
Nonsense. Anyone with experience with young children (say 2 to 5 years old) will know that kids are curious, but incredibly lazy. So they ask, "why?" and wait for an answer. And then they ask "why?" about that. And then "why?". And then "why?". And then "why?".
If you don't teach them how to reason for themselves, then they behave exactly as the original poster describes. They just wait until someone tells them what happens next. It is work to show children that they can reason for themselves, or investigate causes on their own.
I will give you the gift of science but curse you with such poor spelling nobody will pay any attention to what you say because they are too incandescent with rage. *evil laughter*
Unfortunately, your rant isn't all that misplaced, although this may not be the perfect audience.
People *can* be smart. They likely won't be, because they can (almost) always get someone else to do it for them. If they didn't have a microwave oven, they wouldn't be able to cook themselves dinner. If they didn't have IT tech support, they wouldn't be able to work a computer. If they couldn't have their car towed to a mechanic and repaired, they wouldn't get from point A to point B.
We're all guilty of this to some degree. If I couldn't just buy gas for my car at a convenient location, I'd be hard pressed to refine my own fuel. Unfortunately, it's rough to increasingly difficult to find places close to work where I could raise my own food or pump my own water. (and yes, I don't do these right now because of this). Finding someone who could make their own nails or prepare their own timber to build their own house is virtually impossible. These days, if you dropped most people off from the city into vast wilderness, they'd be at a loss to feed themselves, but they'd tell you about what they saw on Survivorman, or some other reality show.
We're in a spoonfed society, which isn't getting any better any time soon. Well, unless you have any belief in the 2012 prophecies. I take them as an interesting talking point for a "what if", but I give the odds of something happening right up there with Y2k. It'll be a well discussed non-event. If you took an arbitrary group of 20+ people and dropped them in the wilderness, how long would they last? I like the show "Lost", but honestly believe they wouldn't survive more than a couple weeks, even without all the other character interactions. You'd see a group of 20 who died from starvation, dehydration, exposure, or disease from poorly planned waste disposal (mental note, don't shit in your fresh water supply).
Welcome to modern society. You'll always be dependent on someone else, and pay dearly for those services. You are right, we're all minor stones in the great wall of civilization, and no one will notice of one (or thousands) don't work quite right.
To quote a wonderfully silly film, The Gods Must Be Crazy:
Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment. Instead he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery. And he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But he didn't know when to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier the more complicated he made it. Now his children are sentenced to 10 to 15 years of school, to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it's Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then, you have to look busy again. Your day is chopped into pieces. In each segment of time you adapt to new circumstances.... No wonder some people go off the rails a bit.
Getting other people to do things for you, and not knowing how everything works is positive, it's called civilisation. Possibly people could live on this planet as complete autonomous islands, being completely self sufficient, but working together and sharing tasks is more efficient for everybody, frees up time, and allows for redundancy.
You may be able to manage to maintain a 21st (or even 19th) century lifestyle all on your own but most people just wouldn't have the time to plant their own crops, grow cotton, weave their clothes, find metal ores, mine them, smelt them to produce metal goods, build petrol driven machines from the raw ores, learn enough medical science to undertake complex medical operations when accidents and illness occurred, raise children, find the time to teach them, still keep this going after you've had an accident and are laid up in bed for six months, etc.
But people that believe that perpetual motion is completely legitimate and is being covered up by big oil companies and governments as some big conspiracy are fucking worthless.
These aren't the people who should bother you. The people who should bother you are the people who don't understand why water boils, the people who think you can take antibiotics for a cold, the people who have no idea why ice floats, the people who don't know why hot air rises, the people who have no idea how an internal combustion engine works.
To scientists, this stuff is like remedial math or basic reading skills. We recognize that this type of knowledge helps you function in the world. To non-scientists, as to the innumerate and illiterate, the value of this knowledge is entirely unappreciated and often viewed with contempt.
Since my daughter was around 6, I've routinely made up answers that sound plausible at first but are clearly wrong if anyone over 5 thinks about them for a few seconds. She does the whole "thanks!... um, wait, that's not right!" reaction, and I give her the right answers.
I work in science, so I want her to know science... but I also want her to think critically and know when someone's BS'ing her.:)
This is the basis for all of my interactions with inquisitive children, for a number of reasons:
It's fun to lie creatively to the credulous, even if it's immoral
Kids who aren't old or bright enough yet to spot the obvious lie wouldn't get much out of the facts anyway. A kid who is told a fact by a trusted adult will hold, use and quote it as gospel for years, without critically evaluating it. This is both annoying and problematic.
When a kid is old/bright enough to spot the lie, they are ready to understand the truth rather than just believe it. This is an effective and useful way to gauge and encourage a child's intellectual development.
Most importantly, when a child catches an adult out by deductive reasoning, and receives the truth as a reward... there is no greater sense of achievement, nor a more powerful incentive for genuine curiosity, in a child.
Curious children come from creative and interesting parents.
There is no way that children in Britain think blue is the colour of the sky.
You missed the point of the question. It's usually asked when the kid gets to about 5 or 6 years old, looks up at the sky one day and finds that it's a different colour to what it usually is. It's normally asked with a hint of fear (similarly, perhaps, to "why is the plane's wing on fire?"), and quite frequently during a foreign holiday.
This type of news item is sort of a cheap shot by journalists. It's an old trick that probably dates back to antiquity--look how stupid these people are, they can't answer simple questions! And the consumer rolls their eyes, feels superior, etc. Look on youtube [below], there are some hilarious videos about Americans, British, Germans being "stupid". The vids were done as an exercise in psychological manipulation. One example [youtube.com].
If this happens to you, the best thing to do is say that you don't know and go find out together with your child. This not only gives you something fun to do, it can help teach them to explore the internet, a bookstore, or a library. Most importantly it teaches them how to learn things.
The cool thing is, most of these basic questions have many levels beneath them. For example, most of you know why grass is green, but why is chlorophyll green? Why is green a really odd color for plants to use? Would "orange-phyll" (if it existed) work too? This leads to an exploration of chemistry and physics as well as biology.
Another good thing to teach is how people know this stuff - the idea that the natural world is knowable through discovery and testing, and that we decide as a community what "the truth" is, based on what we observe and what makes sense. Kids can certainly learn the idea of what science is at a pretty young age, even if complex logic isn't possible until, I don't know, early teens? Hmm, something to look up!
After all, when asked about the color of the sky, a parent could answer like this [eskimo.com].
Let us give thanks that some people have the sense and honesty to say "I don't know," and try not to look down our noses at them. Bad parenting is darned hard to unlearn.
A lot of people above are posting about "Why is the sky blue" being a hard question, Rayleigh scattering, etc. etc. But this is to miss the context, which is telling children. The level of an explanation depends on the ability of the explained-to person to understand.
From this point of view, all that is needed is to be able to explain light from the sun is made up of all colors (no need to explain wavelengths) - which you can demonstrate with a bit of broken glass, no need for an official prism - and are then most of the way to the rainbow explanation - and that the blue light from the sun is spread out more by the atmosphere. You can demonstrate scattering simply by putting a little milk in a glass of water and shining a flashlight through it. This is a level of explanation suitable for a child under, say, 13, and already introduces a number of ideas about optics.
As for where babies come from, even quite small children are quite safe with the idea that babies grow inside their mothers. Rural children can hardly avoid knowing this by the age of 3 or so. They need reassurance that it won't happen to them, yet, and they need a gradual increase of detail until they reach puberty. But they don't need to know about DNA, cell fission, fertilisation and so on in order to understand what causes pregnancy and how to avoid it until it's actually wanted.
Personally, I blame not so much the dumbing down as the increasing formalism of science teaching. The criticism of science teaching in Brazil made by Richard Feynmann is now valid in much of the West today. We actually need to teach ideas with simpler, more familiar equipment rather than the special manufactured experiments in school labs, otherwise how can people see the relevance? The example above, of someone suddenly realising that mayonnaise is an emulsion, is a good one.
A child asking "Where do babies come from" isn't "Daddy, explain to me what biological processes occur when a man ejaculates in a woman's vagina while she's ovulating." It's the physical "where do babies come from?" i.e. Are they brought by a stork? Are they bought at a store? Is there biology involved anywhere in the process regarding baby making? etc.
So no, "where do babies come from" is NOT a science question when asked by a child.
The question that the child would ask if he wanted to know the biology would be something like "how do babies grow in mommy's tummy?"
You do realize that you actually accuse us for being close minded, but you laud the people close minded enough not to be able to talk about sexuality. How wonderful...
I tip my hat to you for the greatest hypocrisy I have seen in years.
Actually, intercourse is considered uncouth by Britons. Hence, they all adopt, but rarely stop to question where the babies come from in the first place. Curious, isn't it?
And if you don't explain the Rayleigh effect properly (as you did) you actually don't explain why the sky is blue. In other words, your answer isn't explanatory/informative much because you "explained" the explanandum by introducing another one.
It's not really refraction. There actually is a refraction effect which is why we can see the sun at sunrise before it would be strictly visible over the horizon, and still see it at sunset after it's gone below the horizon. It's really more of a reflection -- think of light being scattered around by glitter except on a much smaller scale.
Rayleigh scattering preferentially scatters shorter (bluer) wavelengths more strongly. When the sun is directly overhead, as in midday, light nearer to the reddish end of the spectrum will reach you directly while only the bluer wavelengths will have been scattered. The blue that you see is light from the sun that has been scattered towards you by the air molecules in the atmosphere. The opposite happens at sunrise and sunset to make it appear red; the light reaching you has a much longer optical path to go through so nearly all of the the blue wavelengths have been scattered away leaving only the reddish light to reach you.
There's also a minor effect due to Mie's scattering off the dust and other particulates in the atmosphere. Mie's scattering deals with scattering by slightly larger particles than Rayleigh scattering.
She asked me what PH meant.
I said (remembering my chemistry) "percentage hydrogen"
"OK", she said, "why does it go from 0 to 14, and what hydrogen? like hydrogen in water?"
Uhm... lets ring Grandad (my dad was a research chemist).
A bit later...
"He says its the inverse natural logarithm or "cologarithm" of the number of active hydrogen ions"
Me "Uh.... that's great".
Later that week
"Did you get a good mark for your homework?"
"Yes. Only the teacher said that for GCSE If I am asked what PH is just to put 'a measure of acidity and alkalinity', or the marker might not know and mark it incorrect'".
obvious answers (Score:5, Funny)
In the UK?!
Why, I'll bet we Americans could get stumped even easier!! take that, britian!
People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I was always amazed at how some people were so baffled by the simplest things that are very easy to learn about.
The everyday person needs to know more science. Unfortunately, many people who do know a lot of science act religious. They treat people who don't know it as inferior, and I believe that turns a lot of people away from learning about it. Not because they think science is less valid, but in a sense, because they don't want to be like the jackass that just got done making them feel worthless.
Honestly... I think people who know a lot of science are probably the biggest problem with science education.
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Funny)
FTSummary:
Where do babies come from?
From the sixties:
Some parents asked their son, "What do you want for Christmas?"
He said, "I want a watch."
So they let him.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning for the sake of learning doesn't seem to be popular anymore
Schools and universities are increasingly being measures by how well they prepare people for work - i.e. education is becoming more like vocational training.
In Britain, the government has made schools a lot more centralised. Both schools are teachers have a lot less discretion.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Some people have much more pressing issues, like getting by on/below the poverty line. And maybe they don't think it's even the right stuff to be filling their kids' heads with. Yes, that should probably change, but I think there's definitely an overestimation of science's significance (in terms of awareness rather than potential) to the average person going on here.
That said... I think there is one overriding factor that could sort it all out. And it's a factor that I never see discussed in terms of parenting skills or raising kids. That factor is: your kid just asked a serious question about life. If you can't answer it, go the fuck out and find the answer, and give it to him. Basically, have some respect for the child's questions... he's obviously asking because it's important to his development in some way.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
>>Please describe a point in history where it was ever popular...seriously, there will always be a distribution of intelligence, quit bitching that you're on the higher end of it.
During the space race. My mom was a literature person, but even she got interested in science and started reading a lot of Heinlein, etc., and now writes sci-fi of her own.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Science during the Roman empire was very popular. The knowledge, inventions, progress, vast libraries etc were unparallelled.
Science only stopped when the empire fell and religion was allowed to rule.
Parent
Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not that science people are arrogant, the problem is that they come way too late in education (to properly explain the science method) at a point where all people did for the previous year was swallow factoid and regurgitate them (lower school science lesson is usually just that), and combined with the fact science is seen as nerdy/geeky and thus only for contempt. Later those same people which admire jocks and despite nerd become parents and are baffled by science question.Add to that the fact that science is sometimes seen as attacking/going against their own religious belief (in reality science as a method do not care for religion (except social science) what cannot be falsified is ignored)...
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Funny)
How did we learn about things before google?
My folks had an Encyclopedia set. The World Book Encyclopedia. When we learned about sperm and eggs and embryos and fetuses in school, I became curious as to how the man's sperm got into the woman. Not only was I curious, I was concerned. I certainly didn't want something like that happening: fathering a child simply by kissing a girl or holding her hand, so I figured I better find out before I got in trouble. So I pulled out the first "S" volume.
The article on "Sex" (human) starts out quite dry enough, describing relationships between the sexes and how they develop and change as children mature. It discusses dating and marriage and religious and social influences on intersexual relationships. Then finally the mechanics. As I recall, the description read like this: "A man and woman lie close together. The man places his penis inside the woman's vagina." This made a real impression on me: I figured I'd have to do quite a bit of growing before I could lie down next to a woman, take hold of my penis, and pull it over to the her vagina and plug it in like an extension cord! I was a little disappointed by how dull this sounded, but at the same time relieved that I wouldn't be accidentally spreading my genes around by casual contact.
Parent
Re:Results by Ethnic Group (Score:5, Interesting)
Citations please.
I know you're just being a racist troll, but...
From the numbers you provided, the sample groups were inadequate. Over the years, I've met many people, and had the opportunity to learn a lot about them. There are stereotypical and astereotypical people in every group. In a sampling of say 10 people, they may all be complete idiots, or rocket scientists. Looks are frequently deceiving.
The IQ scores are almost always skewed. It's not how "smart" you are, but how educated you are. For example, I've known poor farmers who were not well educated, but through what they have been educated in, it's apparent that they are smart. A good farmer can repair his own equipment, sometimes with minimal tools. He can raise crops even in adverse conditions. He can raise cattle from birth to slaughter, and take care of any problem along the way. One in particular who would score miserably on a standardized IQ test, and never completed high school could look at the symptoms of an animal, and treat it properly. He kept his 40 year old truck on the road without ever taking it to a mechanic, and could revive almost any piece of farm equipment. He could solve real world logical problems in a heart beat. He wouldn't have a prayer solving an algebraic equation, could barely spell, and had no clue what to do with a computer though. He was never taught those skills.
Then again, his neighbor would be hard pressed to repair a fence. Was he stupid? I don't know, I didn't know the neighbor well enough. Maybe he had simply never needed to repair a fence, and had never been taught. Could you?
I personally know someone, approximately 30 years old, who usually scored just over 100 on an IQ test. She had never finished high school. She recently started taking GED classes. Now that she has picked up the required skills, she retested and scored 138. She didn't get any smarter in a matter of weeks. She simply gained the skills required to score better on the IQ test. Because I knew her personally, I knew she was smart. With the new score, she now believes it. What is Pi? What is an acute triangle? What does E=MC^2 mean? If you were never taught such things, those would mean absolutely nothing to you.
Someone else I know was convinced she was stupid. She was told so for too many years. She decided to prove them wrong, and is a better programmer than I am now, fluent in several programming languages. I don't know her IQ score, but I'm confident in seeing her ability in fields that she has the skills in that she's brilliant.
I've known people who score very low. I tried to tutor someone who was mentally retarded in reading. I was teaching him letters, which took a while. We then started on words and sounding them out. He could accomplish simple words, but it was difficult at best for him. He was told that he would never read, because he was too stupid. It was more that the extra time wasn't spent with him on it. He'll never be a rocket scientist or a surgeon, so yes, his IQ was low. And he is white of European descent.
To be on topic, if you were never told why the sky was blue, would you know the answer? What if it simply wasn't important to you at the time you were told? You'd likely forget. Grouping "parents" into one general category is insane. Almost everyone can be a parent. Well, I'd say a decent percentage of Slashdot readers won't, because of social ineptness. :) I'm a parent of 3, and father-like figure to more. Sometimes the children are afraid to ask. "Where do babies come from?" may be too mysterious a question. I was asked recently about sex by a friend's son. He was afraid to ask his mother, and his father avoided the question. I answered age appropriately, and then told him it was fine to tell his mother. His reponse? "I can't talk to mom about stuff like that. She's a girl
Parent
Re:Results by Ethnic Group (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Einstein said it best (and much shorter) with this quote: "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
I realized just how effective this was in my Freshman biology class when the student next to me, who was someone you'd probably refer to as a "typical black teen male" turned to me and said, "Man... you can't avoid learning in this class... yesterday I was makin' myself a sandwich and when I pulled the mayonase out I started thinking about what an immulsion was..."
But teaching at that level is absolutely exhausting... the trick, I've learned, is to show people that things follow a logical path. People, especially young people, just wait until someone tells them what happens next. Often they don't even attempt to figure out on their own what happens next. Really good science teachers challenge you to do that first. Everything else follows.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. Young people are naturally curious. Only after years of exposure to a spoon-feeding "educational system" do they become mindless drones waiting to memorize the next factoid. If we can change the system to work WITH their natural curiosity, it won't be difficult to motivate them - the hard part will be trying to keep them focused on just one topic.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. Young people are naturally curious. Only after years of exposure to a spoon-feeding "educational system" do they become mindless drones waiting to memorize the next factoid. If we can change the system to work WITH their natural curiosity, it won't be difficult to motivate them - the hard part will be trying to keep them focused on just one topic.
Nonsense. Anyone with experience with young children (say 2 to 5 years old) will know that kids are curious, but incredibly lazy. So they ask, "why?" and wait for an answer. And then they ask "why?" about that. And then "why?". And then "why?". And then "why?".
If you don't teach them how to reason for themselves, then they behave exactly as the original poster describes. They just wait until someone tells them what happens next. It is work to show children that they can reason for themselves, or investigate causes on their own.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, your rant isn't all that misplaced, although this may not be the perfect audience.
People *can* be smart. They likely won't be, because they can (almost) always get someone else to do it for them. If they didn't have a microwave oven, they wouldn't be able to cook themselves dinner. If they didn't have IT tech support, they wouldn't be able to work a computer. If they couldn't have their car towed to a mechanic and repaired, they wouldn't get from point A to point B.
We're all guilty of this to some degree. If I couldn't just buy gas for my car at a convenient location, I'd be hard pressed to refine my own fuel. Unfortunately, it's rough to increasingly difficult to find places close to work where I could raise my own food or pump my own water. (and yes, I don't do these right now because of this). Finding someone who could make their own nails or prepare their own timber to build their own house is virtually impossible. These days, if you dropped most people off from the city into vast wilderness, they'd be at a loss to feed themselves, but they'd tell you about what they saw on Survivorman, or some other reality show.
We're in a spoonfed society, which isn't getting any better any time soon. Well, unless you have any belief in the 2012 prophecies. I take them as an interesting talking point for a "what if", but I give the odds of something happening right up there with Y2k. It'll be a well discussed non-event. If you took an arbitrary group of 20+ people and dropped them in the wilderness, how long would they last? I like the show "Lost", but honestly believe they wouldn't survive more than a couple weeks, even without all the other character interactions. You'd see a group of 20 who died from starvation, dehydration, exposure, or disease from poorly planned waste disposal (mental note, don't shit in your fresh water supply).
Welcome to modern society. You'll always be dependent on someone else, and pay dearly for those services. You are right, we're all minor stones in the great wall of civilization, and no one will notice of one (or thousands) don't work quite right.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Interesting)
To quote a wonderfully silly film, The Gods Must Be Crazy:
Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment. Instead he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery. And he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But he didn't know when to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier the more complicated he made it. Now his children are sentenced to 10 to 15 years of school, to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it's Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then, you have to look busy again. Your day is chopped into pieces. In each segment of time you adapt to new circumstances. ... No wonder some people go off the rails a bit.
Parent
spoonfed = civilisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting other people to do things for you, and not knowing how everything works is positive, it's called civilisation. Possibly people could live on this planet as complete autonomous islands, being completely self sufficient, but working together and sharing tasks is more efficient for everybody, frees up time, and allows for redundancy.
You may be able to manage to maintain a 21st (or even 19th) century lifestyle all on your own but most people just wouldn't have the time to plant their own crops, grow cotton, weave their clothes, find metal ores, mine them, smelt them to produce metal goods, build petrol driven machines from the raw ores, learn enough medical science to undertake complex medical operations when accidents and illness occurred, raise children, find the time to teach them, still keep this going after you've had an accident and are laid up in bed for six months, etc.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Insightful)
But people that believe that perpetual motion is completely legitimate and is being covered up by big oil companies and governments as some big conspiracy are fucking worthless.
These aren't the people who should bother you. The people who should bother you are the people who don't understand why water boils, the people who think you can take antibiotics for a cold, the people who have no idea why ice floats, the people who don't know why hot air rises, the people who have no idea how an internal combustion engine works.
To scientists, this stuff is like remedial math or basic reading skills. We recognize that this type of knowledge helps you function in the world. To non-scientists, as to the innumerate and illiterate, the value of this knowledge is entirely unappreciated and often viewed with contempt.
Parent
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:5, Funny)
Soylent Green?
Parent
Calvin's Dad (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously many parents parents need to be more like Calvin's Dad [s-anand.net]. He was never stumped by Calvin's science questions.
(More [google.com])
Re:Calvin's Dad (Score:5, Interesting)
Since my daughter was around 6, I've routinely made up answers that sound plausible at first but are clearly wrong if anyone over 5 thinks about them for a few seconds. She does the whole "thanks! ... um, wait, that's not right!" reaction, and I give her the right answers.
I work in science, so I want her to know science... but I also want her to think critically and know when someone's BS'ing her. :)
Parent
Re:Calvin's Dad (Score:5, Insightful)
Curious children come from creative and interesting parents.
Parent
I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
There is no way that children in Britain think blue is the colour of the sky.
You missed the point of the question. It's usually asked when the kid gets to about 5 or 6 years old, looks up at the sky one day and finds that it's a different colour to what it usually is. It's normally asked with a hint of fear (similarly, perhaps, to "why is the plane's wing on fire?"), and quite frequently during a foreign holiday.
Parent
demonizing groups (Score:5, Interesting)
Just some parental advice... (Score:5, Insightful)
The cool thing is, most of these basic questions have many levels beneath them. For example, most of you know why grass is green, but why is chlorophyll green? Why is green a really odd color for plants to use? Would "orange-phyll" (if it existed) work too? This leads to an exploration of chemistry and physics as well as biology.
Another good thing to teach is how people know this stuff - the idea that the natural world is knowable through discovery and testing, and that we decide as a community what "the truth" is, based on what we observe and what makes sense. Kids can certainly learn the idea of what science is at a pretty young age, even if complex logic isn't possible until, I don't know, early teens? Hmm, something to look up!
Sometimes "I don't know" is a brilliant answer (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, when asked about the color of the sky, a parent could answer like this [eskimo.com].
Let us give thanks that some people have the sense and honesty to say "I don't know," and try not to look down our noses at them. Bad parenting is darned hard to unlearn.
--
Toro
The parents need internet! (Score:5, Funny)
That's it!
Misunderstanding the level required for answers (Score:5, Insightful)
From this point of view, all that is needed is to be able to explain light from the sun is made up of all colors (no need to explain wavelengths) - which you can demonstrate with a bit of broken glass, no need for an official prism - and are then most of the way to the rainbow explanation - and that the blue light from the sun is spread out more by the atmosphere. You can demonstrate scattering simply by putting a little milk in a glass of water and shining a flashlight through it. This is a level of explanation suitable for a child under, say, 13, and already introduces a number of ideas about optics.
As for where babies come from, even quite small children are quite safe with the idea that babies grow inside their mothers. Rural children can hardly avoid knowing this by the age of 3 or so. They need reassurance that it won't happen to them, yet, and they need a gradual increase of detail until they reach puberty. But they don't need to know about DNA, cell fission, fertilisation and so on in order to understand what causes pregnancy and how to avoid it until it's actually wanted.
Personally, I blame not so much the dumbing down as the increasing formalism of science teaching. The criticism of science teaching in Brazil made by Richard Feynmann is now valid in much of the West today. We actually need to teach ideas with simpler, more familiar equipment rather than the special manufactured experiments in school labs, otherwise how can people see the relevance? The example above, of someone suddenly realising that mayonnaise is an emulsion, is a good one.
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Geography to be specific. Croydon to be precise.
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Funny)
Geography to be specific. Croydon to be precise.
Alternatively:
Genealogy. The milkman to be precise.
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Funny)
how girl get pragnent?
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Informative)
How come I don't learn English in school even though it's my country's official language ?
If you are talking about the US, it has no official language.
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Insightful)
So no, "where do babies come from" is NOT a science question when asked by a child.
The question that the child would ask if he wanted to know the biology would be something like "how do babies grow in mommy's tummy?"
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, surely parents should have a certain amount of... familiarity with the answer to, "where do babies come from?"
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Funny)
However, surely parents should have a certain amount of... familiarity with the answer to, "where do babies come from?"
Huh? Why would they? Its not like they get to chat with the stork when the baby is dropped off.
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that you actually accuse us for being close minded, but you laud the people close minded enough not to be able to talk about sexuality. How wonderful...
I tip my hat to you for the greatest hypocrisy I have seen in years.
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, you can give a scientifically correct answer omitting unnecessary details:
The trick is to explain things on a level kids can understand.
I can also warmly recommend the TV-series Once Upon a Time... Life [wikipedia.org], which is biologically very correct yet entertaining to watch.
Parent
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:You're excused (Score:5, Funny)
Her dad is not a turkey baster. Her dad is a wanker.
Parent
Re:Where do babies come from !? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, intercourse is considered uncouth by Britons. Hence, they all adopt, but rarely stop to question where the babies come from in the first place. Curious, isn't it?
Parent
Re:More science questions (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:More science questions (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:More science questions (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you don't explain the Rayleigh effect properly (as you did) you actually don't explain why the sky is blue. In other words, your answer isn't explanatory/informative much because you "explained" the explanandum by introducing another one.
Parent
Re:More science questions (Score:5, Informative)
Rayleigh scattering preferentially scatters shorter (bluer) wavelengths more strongly. When the sun is directly overhead, as in midday, light nearer to the reddish end of the spectrum will reach you directly while only the bluer wavelengths will have been scattered. The blue that you see is light from the sun that has been scattered towards you by the air molecules in the atmosphere. The opposite happens at sunrise and sunset to make it appear red; the light reaching you has a much longer optical path to go through so nearly all of the the blue wavelengths have been scattered away leaving only the reddish light to reach you.
There's also a minor effect due to Mie's scattering off the dust and other particulates in the atmosphere. Mie's scattering deals with scattering by slightly larger particles than Rayleigh scattering.
Parent
I was stumped by a question by my daughter (Score:5, Interesting)
I said (remembering my chemistry) "percentage hydrogen"
"OK", she said, "why does it go from 0 to 14, and what hydrogen? like hydrogen in water?"
Uhm... lets ring Grandad (my dad was a research chemist).
A bit later...
"He says its the inverse natural logarithm or "cologarithm" of the number of active hydrogen ions"
Me "Uh.... that's great".
Later that week
"Did you get a good mark for your homework?"
"Yes. Only the teacher said that for GCSE If I am asked what PH is just to put 'a measure of acidity and alkalinity', or the marker might not know and mark it incorrect'".
Parent