Children Are Not the Problem

So after watching the Andrade TED talk and letting everything we've been discussing in class sink in, I've come to the conclusion that the root of all these problems don't particularly lay in the kids and children, but are in the hands of the adults and parents. It took me soon digging on YouTube to find videos that sufficiently demonstrate my feelings, but I believe I found a couple of videos by two of the most interesting minds that live on our planet today: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku. The common stance both these men take are that we are all born naturally curious, an important distinction that forms the basis of their arguments.

The first video with Neil deGrasse Tyson relates to the idea that we're lacking students in the scientific field. We briefly touched on the lack of representation by women in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields and while social norms and pressures undoubtedly have a role to play, I believe parents play an equal or greater role. From the get go, no matter how much you want to disagree with the sentiment, for better or worse, parents play a significant role in the direction our lives go. As children, they control the toys we play with, the friends we have, the schools we go to, and the level of freedom in our lives. It is these things that make impressions on us and shape our interests and personalities. Parents are also the ones that discipline us and tell us the difference between right and wrong, shaping our moral values and beliefs.

All these things carry on into adolescences and eventually our adulthood. Some of us are fortunate enough to have parents that raised us fairly and fueled our inquisitive nature, but as well all know not all of us are afforded this luxury. This is where privilege and equality can also be tied in, but that subject has already been exhaustively discussed! Maybe I'll add it in at a later date. So what am I getting at here? Parenting style heavily dictates the direction the lives children take. In the next few years when some of you start thinking of having children, rather than thinking of them being here because of you, think of you being here because of them.

In the second video, Michio Kaku discusses with an interviewer his thoughts on the problem with the shortcomings of our education system. I briefly discussed this issue in a previous post, but here Dr. Kaku does a great job at summarizing everything. Whenever I'm asked what my major is, people always respond with something along the lines as, "I would do that, but I don't like math." I usually respond asking why and the undoubtedly most popular response is because it's 'too hard.' This general trend is something I personally find very interesting because I always wondered if everyone viewed engineers and scientists as people who genuinely enjoy math. I mean there are definitely those that do, trust me I've met plenty, but for some of us we can do without it.

Unfortunately, math is such an integral part of our world and existence that I've come to terms with it long long ago. It's the connection between math and real life that I find especially interesting. It's the fact that you can use math to describe all sorts of motions and trends and the fact that math is the foundation that designed and built almost everything in existence! This, I believe, is the sort of inspiration and passion schools and universities should be instilling in students. School should be about turning students onto subjects rather than turning them away from it. If we're breaking the will of our children to openly seek knowledge then what does that say about how we're raising them? How heartbreaking is it to crush their curiosity with exams and homework? Of course exams and homework is necessary to gauge whether they're retaining knowledge, but there's got to be a better way. Like Professor McFarland said in class: teachers should be teaching the student, not the subject. Stay curious my friends.

Anyway, to lighten to mood here is some military aircraft making low altitude passes. Put on some headphones and turn up the sound!