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Does science fiction help kids learn to like science?

I'd be curious to know how the kids feel about other subjects.
Don't they also hate history? English? Social studies? School, in general?
 
Just my personal experience.

I grew up loving science fiction and science articles. My favorite magazine was Scientific American which introduced me to skepticism via Shermer's column. I did quite well in science classes in middle school and high school. But I absolutely could not get calculus. I could do it but it was hard and boring and never seemed to get easier. Politics and economics only attracted my attention in high school, but, in college, those classes were the ones where I learned easily and felt effortless. I'm now at law school.

The practical application of science is hard. The career options are rarely glamorous. The results are interesting, but I can't see myself ever doing it.
 
I remember reading Asimoves childrens story "The Spaceship Under The Apple Tree" when I was 11 and I learned as I grew older to enjoy Asimoves books and short storys. If you read science fiction by authors who are also scientists you will pick up a lot of science yourself.
 
Quarky:

Yes, there seems to be a general dislike for school and classes, but the enmity toward math and science seems much more widespread and deeper, more passionate, than this general negativity. When something comes up that touches on science, or the word science is mentioned, a student will quite often pop out with, "I hate science!" They practically vibrate as they say it, like there's a lot of emotion bottled up in their declaration of hatred.

BTW, most of these kids do pretty well to very well at school. They are the "winners" in the school game -- yet they claim to hate science.

It makes me nervous.

But, again, small sample size. I'm certainly not drawing grandiose conclusions from a tiny pool of data.

I liked Adam Savage's (of TV's Mythbusters) article about science education in Popular Mechanics. Read it on richarddawkins.net.
 
Cathy said:
Quarky:

Yes, there seems to be a general dislike for school and classes, but the enmity toward math and science seems much more widespread and deeper, more passionate, than this general negativity. When something comes up that touches on science, or the word science is mentioned, a student will quite often pop out with, "I hate science!" They practically vibrate as they say it, like there's a lot of emotion bottled up in their declaration of hatred.

BTW, most of these kids do pretty well to very well at school. They are the "winners" in the school game -- yet they claim to hate science.

It makes me nervous.
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It's because of how it's taught. I was homeschooled (long story) and took my science classes with a Chemistry Professor who did tutoring classes on the side for homeschoolers.

This was his explanation of the mol:

"It's a conversion factor between atomic mass units and grams."

He had me memorize it (6.022*10^23, and I can spit that out stone cold drunk) and that was that. We spent, oh, 15 minutes on it, I did some problems with it, and then it was accepted. I used it when it was necessary. We occasionally swerved back to it (mols are great, great, great units to use for masses you see in the lab, rather than grams/kilograms (which are terrible) but in general, they're accepted.

My sister, taking chemistry in high school spent a month doing mols. I was beyond horrified. Amazingly, everyone in her class, her included, hate chemistry.

There are a few problems with how science is taught in the schools.
 
Cathy;

I see what you're saying.
I can only guess that its because math and science are hard to b.s. your way through, and the rest of it isn't.
 
Hmmm.... Science fiction..... Hmmmm.... That sort of logic gets thrown out the window for me. Hell even fiction gets thrown out of the window for me. The ratio of fiction to nonfiction books is probably 1:5 for me.
Transformers??

Inspector Gadget??

As my mother boldly said to the Dean of Engineering,"Im an psychology major and my husband is an account. I have no idea how my son became an engineer."
To be honest, I'm not sure science fiction can really help this. No matter how realistic it is, science fiction is necessarily stories. It therefore has the same problem as above - people find the stories interesting, but still find the actual practice of science boring. If anything, they will like science less because they have certain expectations from the stories, and therefore are more disappointed with reality that they would have been without the stories.
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You know what inspired me. Reality. There is just so much cool stuff going on right now not to be inspired by reality. Also, I find the premise utterly dumb based on GreyICEs explanation. I've seen the exact opposite out of kids that amazed the hell out of me with weird things like a mercury switch and that was me overhearing the conversation.
stevea said:
My overall impression is that there was a sense in that era that science was a real solution to mankinds problems and that studying science, math, engineering was a productive and useful way of life. In the mid-1990s I worked for a large company that employed a lot of electrical engineers. I could sense that they had a lot of the same interest and science and technology as I, but some of the more vocal ones stated clearly that they would not encourage they children to become engineers or scientists. I think in that time the MBA was the preferred direction. Engineers and many scientists felt that, even at an enlightened company where a technical career path was available, this this seriously capped ones career prospects.
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Why though? Electrical engineering is one of the most diverse fields that I have ever experienced. I didn't realize that one did not have to work with electricity to do electrical engineering. Hell it does not even preclude me from jumping back to my original field of choice doing CSI.
 
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technoextreme said:
You know what inspired me. Reality. There is just so much cool stuff going on right now not to be inspired by reality. Also, I find the premise utterly dumb based on GreyICEs explanation. I've seen the exact opposite out of kids that amazed the hell out of me with weird things like a mercury switch.
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Eh, we can toss anecdotes back and forth all day (seriously, mercury switches? Simple principle. Dangerous material. Solve the jolting problem without using mercury and you have me interested).

I don't think schools are particularly inspirational, below the college level.
 
GreyICE said:
(seriously, mercury switches? Simple principle. Dangerous material. Solve the jolting problem without using mercury and you have me interested).
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Yeah.... I was more amazed at the fact that the knew what a mercury switch was. It's not amazing though when you have to think of the kind of kid that is at a store that actually stocks mercury switches.
GreyICE said:
I don't think schools are particularly inspirational, below the college level.
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Says who. I grew up in a mediocre school and the number things I did there were fairly inspirational. I've seen things in high school and that wouldn't surprise me if I'm the only person registered in this forum that have seen in person. The strangest thing is that it sure as hell didn't peak in high school.
 
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It is an intriuging question. From my personal experience I found science fiction gave me the wow or the what if factor. I discovered science fiction before I discovered science. Sadly, I could grasp any science concept presented to me. But the nuts and bolts maths etc was totally beyond my grasp

Science fiction as a genre has changed as well. During the golden age, there was a whole sub class of science fiction known as paper clip stories. The author would set up a situation where the hero of the day wins by using some practical application of a scientific principle. Asimov and Clarke were absolute geniuses at this type of story. Since the 70's, much greater importance have been placed on setting and character, sadly this type of story doesn't lend itself to either requirement.

With kids and science, I think engaging them at the practical level gives greater results. Rather than teach them, this that or the other - try and show them.

A local museum almost created a mini dinosaur boom years ago with a very simply demonstration. The kids were asked to run a certain distance - 30 feet I think, as fast as they could. On a wall beside them was projected a predatory dinosaur chasing them. Kids queued up over and over squealing and screaming OMGs as the dinosaur caught and ate them again.

Suddenly a dusty pile of fossils in the corner of an exhibition came to life, so much interest was generated, the museum ended up starting a fossil club to cater for all the kids that had been enchanted by this simple demonstration
 
Just found this:

'According to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, "science fiction is useful both for stimulating the imagination and for diffusing fear of the future."'

How's that? I'm stepping out of tiny sample size and into argument from authority:o
 
When we were kids, my dad had lots of gee-wiz toys around....powerfull magnets; fresnel lenses; gyroscopes; a radiometer, etc. That seemed to get us interested; not sci-fi.

Also, dinosaurs were very cool, which for me, led to insects. The best 'toy' we had around the house was a stereo zoom gem scope. I spent a lot of time looking at the little beasties on dead flies, and was hooked.
 
I can't remember any science fiction book I read as a young child. Not one. I read a fair bit of fantasy, and a lot of mystery. Science fiction as a genre was something I got into much later. I did, however, read quite a few science books, which my parents and babysitter picked up for me. I was one of those kids who would read anything you put in her hands, something my parents took full advantage of. So I devoured David Suzuki's Did You Know? books, and The Sea Around Us, and an assortment of books on astronomy, paleontology, archeology, and genetics and evolution. I had subscriptions to Chickadee and Owl and National Geographic World. I loved science books and magazines, and still do.

I didn't like very many of my school science classes, though. Some because they were too dumbed down (my seventh-grade science teacher made my dumb down my research project on genetics to a ridiculous degree, while my grade nine science teacher spent way, way, way too much time teaching us to draw light refraction diagrams). Others because they were pretty much nothing but calculations (booooooooring!).

It wasn't until university that science classes got interesting. More abstract theories, more practical applications, more of the story, less of the repetitive calculations, and there was very little dumbing down. By that time I'd chosen my planned career path, though I didn't actually realize at the time I made the choice just how much science would be involved -- or how much I would like it.

I turned away from science in my teenage years, to an extent. Now I've come back to it, almost by accident. It's good to be home. :)
 
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Thanks to all for your anecdotes about science and science fiction. It seems that nobody remembers ever reading a study about a possible connection. Like I said in my first post, my look-see online has turned up no studies. I've discovered a few books on the topic, but they seem to be the type of musings-on-personal-experience that we are doing here, and are very expensive to boot. From the "peek inside" I am able to do on Amazon, these volumes don't look very useful.

I hope that JREF, with Phil Plait at the helm, can make a difference in science education. Obviously, improvement of science ed. is a much more direct route to improving kids' reactions to science ed!
 
I grew up reading science fiction, but then again, my dad is a science teacher and had Cosmos on all the time, as well as the Twilight Zone, so I can't really say what came first, the chicken or the egg.

As far as all those little kids who have fun with science and why they lose interest, I suspect it's when people start taking the fun out of it. At some point, teachers will show them how to write a proper lab report, how to check controls, how to read long textbooks, how to manipulate numbers....and for a lot of people, that's a lot less like "fun" and a lot more like "work".

When I taught, I tried to get the kids out of their seats as often as possible. We did experiements around the room, in the hallway, and out in the parking lot. If we weren't doing an experiment, we were either discussing the results of the last one or planning the next one. Rather than teach science, I let them do science. That's how you grab and keep attention.
 
I'm wondering if it's science fiction that sparks an interest in science, or if an interest in science leads you to enjoy science fiction. Or is there just a general mind-set that creates an interest in both.

In my personal experience, I loved science fiction as a kid. My father read a lot of sf, but it was usually bad sf. I learned at a pretty young age to distinguish between good and bad sf.

I also loved science class in school. It was always my favorite.

So I'm not sure if one led to the other or if they're related at all.

(By the way, regarding mercury switches, I remember one of my very earliest science classes involved those. Back in my day (yeah, I know), we used to actually play with the mercury...hold it in the palm of our hands and push it around and stuff. Yikes!)
 
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wolfgirl said:
I'm wondering if it's science fiction that sparks an interest in science, or if an interest in science leads you to enjoy science fiction. Or is there just a general mind-set that creates an interest in both.

In my personal experience, I loved science fiction as a kid. My father read a lot of sf, but it was usually bad sf. I learned at a pretty young age to distinguish between good and bad sf.

I also loved science class in school. It was always my favorite.

So I'm not sure if one led to the other or if they're related at all.

(By the way, regarding mercury switches, I remember one of my very earliest science classes involved those. Back in my day (yeah, I know), we used to actually play with the mercury...hold it in the palm of our hands and push it around and stuff. Yikes!
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Mercury is pretty safe used that way actually. If you swallow it, there's no real risk of poisoning. The risk comes from the vapors, which are mostly a long-term exposure thing.

The problem comes when it gets lodged somewhere and evaporates. That's... bad.
 
I wrote my thesis on science fiction and fantasy 15 years ago in an attempt to answer some of the questions that occurred to me as a reader of both the genre and the attempts to define it:

No unambiguous explanation, but a lot of very mutually conflicting ones. (Or nonsensical ones: ‘the stuff published in SF magazines’!)

Why do the, ideologically speaking, very different subgenres appeal to approximately the same audience?
For instance, why do glorification and condemnation of science appeal to the same group of readers?
And why are so many people in this audience nevertheless so sectarian?
We are talking about imaginative literature, i.e. fiction, so why this degree of pedantry when it comes to the question of the elements of science it contains?
Why does the genre produce the phenomenon fandom, which does not have its equal in other literary genres?

Definitions of Science Fiction

1. Science fiction "is the stuff published in science fiction magazines." (Theodore Sturgeon)

2. "But by the end of last century it had become difficult to squeeze even a momentary belief out of magic any longer. It occurred to me that instead of the usual interview with the devil or a magician, an ingenious use of scientific patter might with advantage be substituted ... I simply brought the fetish stuff up to date, and made it as near actual theory as possible." (H. G. Wells)

3. "Science fiction is that branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the 'willing suspension of disbelief' on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and philosophy." (Sam Moskowitz)

4. "It is intrinsically or by definition impossible for SF to acknowledge any metaphysical agency, in the literal sense of an agency going beyond physis (nature). Whenever it does so" (!!) "it is not SF, but a metaphysical or (to translate the Greek into Latin) a supernatural fantasy-tale." (...) "Thus science is the encompassing horizon of SF, its 'initiating and dynamizing motivation'" (Darko Suvin)

5. "Time travel is accepted as a perfectly valid basis for a story, as is the idea of travelling faster than the speed of light through some mysterious "hyperspace". Those ideas are not possible according to what is known - in fact, they seem clearly impossible. But they were justified very carefully in early stories in the field. Now they are merely conventional devices, accepted as means to facilitate the development of a story." (Lester del Rey)

6. "You can do anything you want in science fiction. You can talk about any subject that ... if you tried to put it in a contemporary book, it would be censored, you couldn't do it, people wouldn't read it. They wouldn't take it seriously. In science fiction they will!" (Anne McCaffrey)

7. "Science fiction ... presents its worlds as possible even when plainly they are not. Yielding to the temptation to be epigrammatic, one might describe science fiction as a form of the fantastic that denies that it is fantastic." (Mark Rose)

1. Cay Dollerup's thesis "Science Fiction" (1967), p.166, 2. Brian Aldiss "Trillion Year Spree" (1973, 1986), p.31, 3. From "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", 4. "Metamorphosis of Science Fiction" (1979), p.66, 5. "The World of Science Fiction 1926-1976" (1979), p.7, 6. "Women Writers" (DR skole-TV), 7. "Genre" in "Alien Encounters: Anatomy of Science Fiction" (1981)

"What characterizes science fiction and fantasy compared with other works of fiction is primarily that truth is by no means allowed to be an obstacle to art. In spite of their incompatibility with the world of reality the ideas demand to take on the shape of literature. Unlike ordinary 'mainstream' literature, they deliberately give up assuming a form that is recognizable from and harmonizes with the knowledge of the real universe. The acceptance of this procedure is what constitutes the circle of science fiction/fantasy readers or writers. The interests that lead to the unrealistic ideas and their breakaway from the prosaic form may very well be different and even contradictory since their only common denominator is the negative relationship to the prosaic convention. Due to this spiritual community and due to their interest in influencing their respective favourite fantasies, the consumers and producers of the genre meet in fan circles with their own conventions and fanzines. Unlike fantasy, science fiction is not satisfied with being fantastic. In order to justify its own existence it tries to make itself quasi prosaic by the back door, so to speak: The unreal settings are made plausible to a prosaic world/consciousness through pseudo-science, and the fans of this intricate branch of the fantastic develop into the most uncompromising critics of fantasy which they accuse of escapism, whereas their own escapism is justified with hypocritical references to the (imaginary) usefulness of science fiction: its contributions to the encouragement of adaptability, flexibility, or sometimes even subversiveness - when that's in vogue..." (Dann Simonsen) abstract of thesis Science fiction - en fantastisk genre (The University of Copenhagen, 1993)
 
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