With science teaching-learning in schools stuck in a time warp, science educators and evangelists advise parents to take the lead in providing children opportunities to discover the wonders of science outside of school. ParentsWorld suggests ways and means to enable parents to provide children access to enjoyable, experiential science education – K.P. Malini, Mini P. & Cynthia John “Everybody starts out as a scientist. Every child has the scientist’s sense of wonder and awe.” — Carl Sagan, American astronomer and science populariser (1934-1996) Every child has an innate curiosity to explore, investigate, ask questions and seek answers. Unfortunately, since 1835 when Thomas Babbington Macaulay, the First Baron Macaulay, wrote his famous minute on the future of Indian education replacing Persian with English as medium of instruction to provide “useful education” to the people of India and to “form a class Indian in blood colour but English in tastes, in opinions, morals and intellect,” the natural inquisitiveness of children has been discouraged across the education spectrum — from early childhood education and subsequently in primary-secondary and even higher education. With the great majority of India’s 1.5 million schools steeped in rote learning and chalk-n-talk pedagogies and regurgitation of facts for examinations, science teaching-learning has become the biggest casualty. To this day, in India’s classrooms science subjects continue to be taught from textbooks with teachers reciting scientific facts and insisting on their absorption. Hands-on experiential learning, if any, is restricted to ritual once-a-week science lab sessions. Little wonder that the overwhelming majority of school-going children in India have developed aversion, if not fear and loathing, to science. “There is something seriously wrong with the way science is being taught in India’s schools. Science is best learnt through experimentation and discovery in experiential laboratories where children learn cause-effect thinking. There’s urgent need to overhaul science teaching in our schools to enable children to develop scientific temper and mindset. Enthusiastic learning of science subjects helps children develop critical thinking, observation, logical thinking, reasoning, deduction, and problem solving skills. These are critical for success in all professions not merely science careers,” says Neeraj Ladia, an alumnus of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi and astronomer and Chennai-based business head of SPACE, a company which offers astronomy/space sciences education to school students. With science teaching-learning in schools stuck in a time warp, science educators and evangelists advocate and advise parents to take the lead in providing children opportunities to discover the wonders of science outside of school. “Parents need to supplement science teaching in schools which tends to be focused on theory and memorisation. This can be done in simple ways such as enrolling children in after-school science workshops, buying them science kits and demos, and using the Internet and online resources to conduct science experiments at home,” says Swaminathan Balasundaram, an alumnus of Madras Christian College and founder-director of Young Scientist (estb.2015), a Chennai-based company which offers hands-on science workshops for children. A collegium of science educators interviewed by ParentsWorld recommends the following simple ways by…
