Thoughts About Education
An unexpected thing happened. As with all unexpected things that I can slow down to examine (rather than the kind that flattens you or calls you urgently), I felt it important to observe and learn what I could. Unexpected things have unexpected lessons.
And the unexpected thing was Rod, the staff artist at the ERC, wandering out of his office holding a full balloon pinched shut at the neck. A styrofoam cup was taped to the top and a straw jutted out from the neck of the balloon below. I looked up from my blank sheet of paper, as I was about to draw, and watched him. Rod was his usual self, slightly inscrutable and unassailably casual even as he bewildered me in an offhand way.
He relaxed his fingers from the neck of the balloon. It shot straight into the air, wiggled a bit, and fell to the carpeted floor.
"That's the problem," he said to me, as if we had been having this conversation for twenty minutes. "These straws are too narrow. You can't get the necessary downward force; the energy gets wasted in drag. If the straw is too long, the force gets wasted; but if it's too short, the balloon spirals out of control. Help me out here."
For the next twenty minutes we really did have that conversation. He told me about boy scouts when he was twelve, working on a balloon rocket with a styrofoam cup lander. He told me of design improvements he figured out, slowly but inevitably. He told me how his buddies in those days had a knack for recycling ordinary parts and would make toy cars from cans and skewers. And he told me how all these old-fashioned plans were going into the ERC coloring book about engineering and manufacturing, in the hopes of seeding a new generation of curious engineers with their own curious balloon rockets and paper cars.
This wasn't your typical "old timer" spiel he was giving me. He gave me a pretty persuasive view to the past, and in so doing unveiled the timeless value of nurturing a young mind to be curious all life long. And although I'm older now and haven't been around very young kids to know how they behave these days, I can't help but wonder if their attention is monopolized by entertainment made for them, rather than entertainment they made.
I also don't want to say that a child who plays with easy-to-understand, push-button toys has no creativity or imagination. I was one of those kids at an age. But curiosity and imagination are no doubt exhibited by kids pushed by the force of boredom, who must placate themselves.
If this question is on your mind, think about it the next time you pass a toy store. How many toys in there do you find that demand of a child's faculties? What does the play of the thing involve? Is the toy meant to engage or simply to induce stimulation? I wonder.
And I am reminded of my mother's stories of her youth. Every day in the summer, almost literally every day, she and her three sisters would bike with a basket of sandwiches in tow from home to the public pool. To swim, bake in the sun, and read.
Are children different now? Or am I just getting older, forgetting how children find innocent things by dint of being children?
And the unexpected thing was Rod, the staff artist at the ERC, wandering out of his office holding a full balloon pinched shut at the neck. A styrofoam cup was taped to the top and a straw jutted out from the neck of the balloon below. I looked up from my blank sheet of paper, as I was about to draw, and watched him. Rod was his usual self, slightly inscrutable and unassailably casual even as he bewildered me in an offhand way.
He relaxed his fingers from the neck of the balloon. It shot straight into the air, wiggled a bit, and fell to the carpeted floor.
"That's the problem," he said to me, as if we had been having this conversation for twenty minutes. "These straws are too narrow. You can't get the necessary downward force; the energy gets wasted in drag. If the straw is too long, the force gets wasted; but if it's too short, the balloon spirals out of control. Help me out here."
For the next twenty minutes we really did have that conversation. He told me about boy scouts when he was twelve, working on a balloon rocket with a styrofoam cup lander. He told me of design improvements he figured out, slowly but inevitably. He told me how his buddies in those days had a knack for recycling ordinary parts and would make toy cars from cans and skewers. And he told me how all these old-fashioned plans were going into the ERC coloring book about engineering and manufacturing, in the hopes of seeding a new generation of curious engineers with their own curious balloon rockets and paper cars.
This wasn't your typical "old timer" spiel he was giving me. He gave me a pretty persuasive view to the past, and in so doing unveiled the timeless value of nurturing a young mind to be curious all life long. And although I'm older now and haven't been around very young kids to know how they behave these days, I can't help but wonder if their attention is monopolized by entertainment made for them, rather than entertainment they made.
I also don't want to say that a child who plays with easy-to-understand, push-button toys has no creativity or imagination. I was one of those kids at an age. But curiosity and imagination are no doubt exhibited by kids pushed by the force of boredom, who must placate themselves.
If this question is on your mind, think about it the next time you pass a toy store. How many toys in there do you find that demand of a child's faculties? What does the play of the thing involve? Is the toy meant to engage or simply to induce stimulation? I wonder.
And I am reminded of my mother's stories of her youth. Every day in the summer, almost literally every day, she and her three sisters would bike with a basket of sandwiches in tow from home to the public pool. To swim, bake in the sun, and read.
Are children different now? Or am I just getting older, forgetting how children find innocent things by dint of being children?