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when tons of glorious electronic surplus was being sold incredibly cheaply
(e.g. an ARC-5 for less than $5.00; a BC-610 for $20.00) and my dad even
went into the electronics surplus business on the side. We got lots of
stuff for a penny a pound, including some Alnico magnetron magnets. We got
our bikes and shopping bags out early one Saturday morning each month to
rifle the "can boxes" of the neighborhood for good stuff, like discarded
six-tube AC-DC radios (often only a filament or even the dial light was
bad) and nonworking alarm clocks (really fun to take apart and put back
together). "Can day" was the day people put out their "cans" (unburnable,
unrotable refuse) for disposal.
Today's students have little in common with us in their childhoods. Every
year I discover students who have never even set fire to a piece of paper
with a magnifying glass, let alone fried a line of ants. Few of them have
experienced the wonder of picking up a radio signal on a crystal set made
from bits of wire and a diode, or even a transistor. None has made one by
selecting crystals using a "cat's whisker" probe to make a diode. A local
businessman asked me what toy I would recommend for his scientifically
inclined young son (about seven or eight, I think). Many parents start
their kids collecting plastic dinosaur models, or even the expensive wooden
ones you can buy at the Nature Company. I recommended a crystal set (Radio
Shack has kits) and the kid was deliriously happy with it. There's a whole
lot more science in that than in a plastic pterodactyl. Contrary to the
fondest expectations of yuppie parents, a home computer is not a valuable
stimulus to learning about science, in my opinion.
There is no reason that kids should be deprived of these opportunities
today, especially given the quite appreciably higher level of disposable
income available to their parents when compared to my childhood (I was born
in 1935). Their parents don't see those things as worthwhile. Kids don't do
them because there are so many other competing activities which are now
accessible to their more afluent parents, and their parents see little
value in the simpler, cheaper and more physical activities we indulged in.