One of my all time favourite TV shows is Top Gear, the British motoring show on BBC. Richard Hammond is one of the presenters, and he wrote a little something this week about the importance of science for children. (Hence I thought it was important) Here it is:I DIDN'T have a chemistry set when I was a kid. Instead, my Dad and I raided the shed for glass jars and filled them with varying amounts of water to make our own musical instrument. For me it was the start of a lifelong passion for science - yet I didn't go on to become a scientist. I was a massive fan of painting and writing at school, so I saw myself as an artist. I excluded myself from science because I didn't think you could do both.
We need scientists more than ever, not least to work out how to tackle the effects of climate change. Yet like me, many children who initially show an interest in science are rejecting the subject at school. Why is this, and what can we do about it?
I believe that children are natural-born scientists. They have enquiring minds, and they aren't afraid to admit that they don't know something. If you think about the spirit of science - deciding what you want to find out, setting out how you're going to discover it, then carrying out the experiment and coming to a conclusion - that's how kids work. Unfortunately, most of us lose this as we get older. We become self-conscious and don't want to appear stupid. Instead of finding things out for ourselves we make assumptions that often turn out to be wrong.
So it's not a case of getting kids interested in science. You just have to find a way to avoid killing the passion for learning that they were born with. I think it's no coincidence that kids start deserting science the moment it becomes formalised. Children naturally have a blurred approach to acquiring knowledge. They see learning about science or biology or cooking or how not to close a door on your feet as all part of the same act - it's all learning. It's only because of the practicalities of education that you have to start breaking down the curriculum into specialist subjects. You need to have a timetable, and you need to have specialist teachers who impart what they know. Thus once they enter the formalised medium of school, children begin to delineate subjects and erect boundaries that needn't otherwise exist.
Kids see learning about science or cooking or how not to close a door on your feet in the same way
Dividing subjects into science, maths, English, poetry, art and so on is something that we do for convenience. In the end it's all learning, it's all information, but just as I once excluded myself from a scientific education, I see children making the same choice today. They look at science lessons and think: "This is for scientists, not for me."
Of course we need to specialise eventually. Each of us has only so much time on Earth, so we can't study everything. At 5 years old, your field of knowledge and exploration is broad, covering anything from learning to walk to learning to count. Gradually it funnels down so that by the time you are 45, it might be one tiny little corner within science.
Of course we need specialised scientists to build experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider, and solve problems such as working out how best to store hydrogen for fuel cells to make hydrogen-powered cars. But how many young minds are lost from science because they don't see themselves as scientists? Those losses are a shame for society, and a shame for the kids concerned too. They exclude themselves from a fascinating subject when in truth the difference between a 13-year-old scientist and a 13-year-old poet is really not that big.
We need a way to keep children bouncing along and excited about learning and discovery in general, despite the barriers and boundaries they come across at school. Here I think there is a role for makers of popular TV, radio and books. After all, we don't have to worry about timetables and teachers.
In my new TV series,Blast Lab, I get together with teams of children in my underground lab and we carry out experiments, from making an apple pie without any apples to keeping a ping-pong ball floating in the air to making a jelly volcano. It gets messy, and I have as much fun as the kids do because I'm learning along with them. There's a shared sense of "Ha, we found out!" Rather than trying to distil a massive catalogue of knowledge and passing it down, as happens in schools, or trying to say "this is science", I wanted to make a programme that passes on to the children who watch it the confidence to go and find things out for themselves.
Making Blast Lab has turned out to be the most fun I've had in 20 years of television. It's inspiring to watch these open minds, not yet clouded by the pride that we have as adults. It has made me realise that for kids there's no boundary between experiments, learning and fun. If we want to inspire more of them to become scientists, we should try to keep it that way. We have to nurture that joy of discovery that characterises all learning, from a child just starting to walk to the cutting edge of scientific research.
This article is based on an interview with Eleanor Harris
Richard Hammond has presented TV programmes including Brainiac and Top Gear. His new series, Blast Lab, starts in the UK on 3 January on BBC2, and the accompanying book is published by Dorling Kindersley on 9 January
