Friday, October 08, 2004
Children too protected, says scientist
Many children are now so protected from the real world and any risks that a leading New Zealand physicist is worried for the future of science. Paul Callaghan was speaking at Massey University today on the scientific future and how New Zealand might educate its students to meet it.
Callaghan says that while this is the century of science with more and greater breakthroughs just over the research threshold, science enrolments at universities all over the Western world are in decline.
"I have a personal view about the reasons we are failing to interest children in science at school," he says. Scientific discovery hinges on curiosity, but Professor Callaghan says that New Zealand adults have become so obsessed with protecting children from risk that many kids may never develop the itch to know why. "Many children are (now) enveloped in electronic media while being excessively protected from physical and emotional experience," he said. "Fireworks are a wonderful example... we don't let children near them because a handful have been hurt."
Today's throwaway society does not give children the chance to fix things. Nobody tinkers, taking things apart to see how they work. "How many children nowadays know how to play outdoors on their own, to make up their own games, to make mischief and have fun through their own imagination," he said.
"Ask grandparents... you hear over and over that unless they happen to be readers, children need to be entertained, and often that entertainment centres around the computer or the DVD player."
Prof Callaghan's own childhood was typical 1950s New Zealand. Kids disappeared after school, rode bikes, messed about in home-made boats, fired shanghais and generally "created havoc". Families talked in the evening and let their imaginations roam while listening to radio.
Children need the pleasure of the natural world put back into their childhoods, now denied to them by well-meaning parents who fear for their safety and give them too tidy a suburban environment. "We need to put back what has been removed from their play as children. They need conversation, they need direct experience of nature and the world, and they need effective teaching from inspired individuals with all the subtlety and nuance that only real human beings can provide," Prof Callaghan said.
Many children are now so protected from the real world and any risks that a leading New Zealand physicist is worried for the future of science. Paul Callaghan was speaking at Massey University today on the scientific future and how New Zealand might educate its students to meet it.
Callaghan says that while this is the century of science with more and greater breakthroughs just over the research threshold, science enrolments at universities all over the Western world are in decline.
"I have a personal view about the reasons we are failing to interest children in science at school," he says. Scientific discovery hinges on curiosity, but Professor Callaghan says that New Zealand adults have become so obsessed with protecting children from risk that many kids may never develop the itch to know why. "Many children are (now) enveloped in electronic media while being excessively protected from physical and emotional experience," he said. "Fireworks are a wonderful example... we don't let children near them because a handful have been hurt."
Today's throwaway society does not give children the chance to fix things. Nobody tinkers, taking things apart to see how they work. "How many children nowadays know how to play outdoors on their own, to make up their own games, to make mischief and have fun through their own imagination," he said.
"Ask grandparents... you hear over and over that unless they happen to be readers, children need to be entertained, and often that entertainment centres around the computer or the DVD player."
Prof Callaghan's own childhood was typical 1950s New Zealand. Kids disappeared after school, rode bikes, messed about in home-made boats, fired shanghais and generally "created havoc". Families talked in the evening and let their imaginations roam while listening to radio.
Children need the pleasure of the natural world put back into their childhoods, now denied to them by well-meaning parents who fear for their safety and give them too tidy a suburban environment. "We need to put back what has been removed from their play as children. They need conversation, they need direct experience of nature and the world, and they need effective teaching from inspired individuals with all the subtlety and nuance that only real human beings can provide," Prof Callaghan said.
