Perspective on science fairs

I’ve posted here before about stories lamenting the decline in science fair participation. A retired professor has a different perspective on what’s going on at science fairs and just how useful they are (or not).

My experience has been that many of these competitions, like a lot of competitions among children, are often competitions among the children’s parents.

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I told the high school principal that I was all for kids doing science projects so that they could learn about the scientific method, and experience, in some small way, how what they read about in their books was discovered. But I was against competition, because it discouraged, and even embarrassed, those without resources. I suggested to the principal that the time and effort put into preparing science fair projects for a small number of students would be better used to raise the overall level of the science and mathematics curriculum, which I knew was weak. The principal suggested I look for another job.

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What we do have to worry about is the level of science knowledge of the average citizen with a high school or non-science college degree. People who are making decisions at the highest levels often don’t have a basic understanding of science (think George Bush), which not only makes them incapable of making sound decisions about scientific questions themselves, but also prevents them from being about to discern the difference between good and bad advice.

Speaking of science fairs, my daughter in 8th grade is working on a science project. Unfortunately, she has been putting it off for lack of interest or motivation. For the longest time she had been casting about for a project that was at least moderately interesting. I enjoy science and so was feeling discouraged by the attitude she developed. She eventually just wanted to do something, anything, to get it all over with. Sigh.

I helped look around for something that might appeal to her. Finally, I found something that put a little spark in her eyes. We have two cats that the entire family adores. There is an experiment that can be done to determine whether cats have dominant paws like humans have dominant hands (think: is your cat left-pawed, right-pawed or not at all). It actually got her thinking and curious, which is what the science project is all about, after all! She can do science and play with cats. How cool is that? She’s still putting off doing some of the work … procrastination runs in the family … but at least she has some interest in the project whereas she didn’t before.