Re: what's different

["Richard W. Tarara" <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>]

I can add the building of matchhead rockets--with which we had almost as
many spectacular failures as NASA (including one that went off in the
basement).  

The question though, is that with this kind of hands-on interaction with
the physical world lacking in the students we get, to what extent do we
have the obligation to provide the opportunity for some of the same--albeit
in an academic rather than home/leisure setting?  Where, when, and how do
we do that?

Rick
----------
> From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>
<snip>
> 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.
> Leigh