Last friday, I was invited to speak to the third graders at an Alexandria, VA elementary school. It was career day and they wanted me to talk about my work. There was a bus driver, a few policemen, a scientist (a fellow I work with, actually), and me. I was to talk about the advantages of a career in the sciences and engineering.

I forgot how hyper they can get, but I also forgot how much fun it can be to talk to kids that young. My youngest is 2 years older than these kids - teetering at the precipice between proto-humanity and humanity.

In retrospect this might have been a perfect opportunity for me to talk about a word a day - not necessarily the site, so much as the concept. If the opportunity arises again, I'll be sure to find some way to work it in. If the students are a little older, I'll even mention the URL.

k

Dear FF: there is a problem with "A word a day". At that rate, a twenty year old would have a vocabulary less than
7300 words. To be able to function today I believe ten
words a day would be minimum.

Just an aside: I'm surprised that schools hold Career Days for third-graders! I think they should bring in super-heroes and pilots and ballerinas. Let children be children for a few more years.

There has been a deplorable delay in using salesmanship
to help kids understand what's in it for them to study hard.
The advertisers can get them to buy all kinds of junk.
Why not use similar expertise to sell kids on education?

That is a good point Dr Bill, but what age are we talking about here? I could never work out the Grade system. Is Third Grade 7 to 8 year olds?

Rule of thumb. Add five to the grade number to get age.

Thanks. Does that carry right on up through the schools so that 12th Grade would be 17 year olds?

Yup.

Bill,

People acquire words in different ways - through contact with friends, television, family. Also through reading, school, and general study. I think the value of a word a day is to learn a word with which one might not otherwise come into contact. No sense in learning simple words as those are words with which the children should already have come into contact.

This was an urban school, btw. I think they were trying to get kids thinking about their opportunities - not selling them on one thing or another. This school is in Alexandria, very close to D.C. I can well suppose they might share some of the same problems that D.C. has. I just checked their SOL scores - their school is failing. This despite the fact that they have 65 teachers and only 347 students (from their web page).

I think they're desperate to do something to inspire the kids.

I think they're desperate to do something to inspire the kids.

Imbedded in AnnaS' point with "Let children be children for a few more years. is allowing for more inspiration by discovery which then develops within the child a desire to learn and explore which leads to more inspration by discovery which...

My initial thought was to tell these guys "No," but they seemed to be pretty eager and on further consideration, I told them, at nearly the last minute, that I'd be happy to.

There are lots of kids who don't even consider going to college for one reason or another. They don't consider a career in the sciences, because they think it's too hard for them or because they think it's just "something somebody else does." Maybe they don't know anybody who does these things. "My parents don't do it, their parents didn't do it, my parents' friends don't do it, I've never even met anyone who knows anybody who does it. Why should I even consider it?"
I don't think it's as conscious as this. I suspect it's far more subtle.

In some environments, a child might have lots of opportunities for self-discovery. In others, there might be significantly fewer opportunities. If everyone's homelife were at least remotely comparable, there might be at least a weak case for letting kids figure everything out on their own. But they aren't. Not all children have parents with advanced degrees at home who can mentor them along. Not all kids have very high expectations placed on them.

The school takes a part of one day in an attempt to get the kids to think about things that they normally wouldn't think about. This is hardly an attempt to make them grow up too quickly. I don't know whether it's "the right thing to do," but I don't fault them for trying.

We could take a similar view of family life education, or home ec, or even of physics, "They'll figure it out during self-descovery. We shouldn't make them grow up so soon."

What is the great harm of getting them early and saying, "Look, you really can do whatever you set your mind to doing?" I see lots of upsides here and not one single downside.

k

I agreee with you Ken. Give 'em the info and let them run with it as they will. It's only harmful if you then use it as a stick to beat them with: "Study hard and you can be a scientist, but if you don't ..."

I have no idea how I got interested in the sciences. I can't think of a single role model, per se. I got very lucky with a particularly brilliant 5th grade teacher, but I think I was somewhat fascinated with it in a serious way long before then. The only thing, other than a shuttle astronaut, that I ever wanted to be was a scientist. (And I only considered astronaut because I'd heard they needed to have multiple degrees in science.)

My three brothers all live lives very much like my parents'. Out of HS, one brother went into the army, one was a filling station attendant through HS and graduated into being a butcher, and the other a temp blue collar worker. Now, respectively, they put batteries into boxes, lay carpets, and the other loads pallets from a dock onto a truck. These are great jobs - if you like doing them - and that's what you really want to do. Secretary, gardner, garbageman, sewage worker - they're all great things if you like doing them. But just knowing that you do have choices is a great thing.

The thing I tried to get across to the kids was this: work in the sciences is really interesting (I've got to write game programs, help people solve math problems, read a lot, and so forth); you get to do things before most people ever hear about it (internet, voip, networked gaming), you get a pretty good pay for it; anybody can do it if they're willing to work for it; just because you fail at something a few times doesn't mean you can't ever do it well; college is worth the effort.

I don't think I gave any indication that their lives would not be happy and worthwhile were they to prefer something other than science - only that science was an option.

k