<p>I’m posting this just to share some observations and see what you all think. This isn’t a crisis or anything, just something that caught my eye.</p>
<p>My little guy was in the middle school science fair last night. I want to make clear from the beginning that he did a perfectly good project but we never considered it a winner so this isn’t sour grapes. Heck, I’m not even upset. Just curious.</p>
<p>There were projects from the sixth, seventh and eighth grades displayed. There would be first, second, third and various honorable mention prizes awarded. The school is a heavily minority NYC public school. When they started doing the awards, the judges panel lined up at the front of the auditorium next to the principal who was announcing the awards. Every one of the 9 judges (the science teachers) was a white woman, mostly very young. The criteria for judging was explained as “appearance, attention to detail, creativity and use of the scientific method” in that order. If you walked around the room, you could tell immediately which projects were done by girls and which were by boys. I noticed that many of the boy projects were less “pretty” but more scientific and interesting. So the awards came. Out of the 27 awards given, exactly three were given to white boys (one from each grade), another four to non-white girls and the rest to white girls. Not a single boy of color won anything. There were many boys of color represented as potential winners. Many. As I said, I didnt’ think my kid deserved to win so I was just observing and counting to pass the time. It was very jarring to me to see a whole row of white women on one side of the auditorium acting as judges and then an overwhelming number of white girls winning the awards in a school in which they are heavily in the minority. I really wonder if the lack of diversity in the judges led to a lack of diversity in the awards and, frankly, as the mother of girls I was troubled by the emphasis on the appearance of the projects. There seemed to be a bonus attached to use of glitter and sparkly paint. I never wanted my girls to achieve because of “prettiness” and I really wonder about several of the messages sent. I was not the only one who noticed all of this. Some people were annoyed and suspicious. I’m not sure what conclusions to draw, if any. No, I’m not saying “institute a quota” or anything like that, but a lot of the boy projects and more than a few of the “non-white boy” projects seemed much more scientific and I can’t imagine how there wasn’t even one worhty of an award among so many. Thoughts?</p>
<p>My kids learned so much from their science fair projects that I hate to get into science fair bashing, but it does sound like you have a problem. Early on in my science affair experience I went to our principal for some suggestions for how to make it more fair. I can’t remember all my suggestions, but one was to include the scoring rubric when announcing the project and another was to have after school help and materials for kids whose parents weren’t available and the third was to make sure that science remained the focus - it shouldn’t make a difference if one kids table of results had 4th grade handwriting and another used a spreadsheet. All of my suggestions got taken up the next year, so I must have done something right!</p>
<p>I don’t know what to think about this. To my ignorant eye it just seemed so girly, which I don’t find particularly desirable in an academic pursuit. Maybe they could make the case for their award choices, but to my outside eye, it really looked like a bunch of girly-girls favored their own sensibility.</p>
<p>I started reading this because I thought you were going to comment on the “arms race” where the parents are actually doing all of the work. That said, I don’t have a specific solution, a la mathmom, but I certainly understand your concern. Glitter doesn’t make a scientific project. Was the project mandatory or optional? (Maybe this was why our middle school didn’t have a science fair!)</p>
<p>Don’t you know that neat, pretty work and following directions are the number one skills required to succeed in grade school? I’m surprised that you’re not talking about a Catholic school - then we can throw in good penmanship, too. I’m sure all of those teachers last night made the neatest, most organized projects back when they were in middle school, so they judged the projects based on the same criteria.</p>
<p>I would have been equally suspicious and concerned about this, zmom. It just seems unfair. I doubt that the judges were deliberately practicing favoritism, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were unconsciously affirming their own preferences for appearance and “neatness” over everything else.</p>
<p>On the other subject, I’ve always believed that there are parents who do these things (and school projects in general) for their children anyway. When my son was in second and third grade or so, I saw school projects that no kid in the world that age could possibly have accomplished on their own. And, yet, teachers always seemed oblivious to what appeared to me to be obvious.</p>
<p>I hated school projects in general when I was a kid (I had fine motor issues and never could get anything to look right), and so did my son (who had similar issues, even though he was always 1000 times more artistic and creative than I ever was).</p>
<p>Even if the parents didn’t actually work on the project, some girls are far more likely to engage their parents to help and offer assistance, where boys will often never even mention a project to parents. I realize that I’m hugely generalizing, but I’ve seen this time and time again. At my son’s eighth grade graduation, almost every award went to a girl - the only boy to receive awards was the son of a teacher - his mom knew how to make everything look just so. Education in the lower grades has become incredibly “feminized,” to the point of alienating boys so that many don’t like school.</p>
<p>My boys always resisted making their projects prettier. I’d make suggestions about tidying up the layout (I’m an architect you know!) and they’d look at me like I had three heads!</p>
<p>My son has learned a very valuable lesson and his sisters both have the right to say I told you so. They warned him of the necessity of glitter. He refused to listen.</p>
<p>So he told us he plans to use glitter glue and sparkles on the social studies project.</p>
<p>I have a different take on it: the rules were clear: appearance, attention to detail, creativity and use of the scientific method. A couple of the key criteria tend to favor girls at that age, (which is not much different than most K-8 curriculum design). Perhaps those criteria have been developed that way over time, to ensure girls do well (despite what Larry Summers might opine). </p>
<p>Personally, if I was to make a beef, it would be to strengthen the point total of the last criteria: (“use of the scientific method”) bcos that is what science should be about at that age, IMO.</p>
That’s what I think, too. But to be clear, none of the boys’ projects chosen to participate were messy or lacking in any way. In order to get to that point, they had to be the top X projects in the grade based on point totals. So it’s possible that some of the boys had higher point totals based on the rubric than some of the girls. The judging for awards was separate from the rubric. But the girl projects were fancier and glitterier. Definitely.</p>
<p>Perhaps the best suggestion is to come up with a rubric that reduces the subjectivity in judging. Subjectivity doesn’t really belong in science, anyway. My son participated in Science Olympiad in middle school and he won a top medal in the nationals a few years ago. His was a building event, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty, but it did the job and it came at a fraction of a second under the calibrated time. Jaws dropped at his school, because he never did particularly well gussying up his work, but he’ll have that medal long after the glitter dries up and fades away. No one at his school had ever won a national medal before.</p>
<p>You should check out Science Olympiad. Generally, the events and contests are quantitative in nature, so subjectivity in judging isn’t an issue. It’s a great program and it really helps train kids in science.</p>
<p>If the appearance is being pushed as the top criterion for judging a science project, it is a huge disservice to the winner girls who might get used to the idea that glitter is all it takes to be successful in sicences. Wrong message. I would bring up this as a point in my conversation with the school, if I were in your shoes. I agree with the posters who say that “use of the scientific method” should be given the most weight in the judging of such projects; glitter and the like should contibute to maybe no more than 10-20% of the total score.</p>
<p>Based on your observations it seems to me the judges were biased to choose winners that looked like themselves. Probably subliminal, but a tremendous bias nevertheless. </p>
<p>An episode of Brothers and Sisters had a student science fair theme recently using the typical overly involved adult.</p>
<p>My kid’s middle school had science fairs, and there were no winners. Everyone for the most part did the work in school, in pairs, and got to display at the fair. I think they have a fair every other year. You get a grade for your project, and it has nothing to do with looks; it is all about whether your experiment or project works/worked. This eliminated the possibility of projects made by parents. The total middle school was less than 250 kids so the format of having all projects (125 or less) displayed worked. The kids got the experience of working with a partner which has its pros and cons, but for the most part seemed to add to the interest of the students.</p>
<p>There were many other projects in other subjects done at home, and of course many were done by parents. My D’s grade school teacher found D’s own sewing too sloppy, and I had to redo it. The lesson there was…? We never liked that lady.</p>
<p>In my own grade school, a 5th grader brought in a project cut with a power saw. I wonder who ran the saw on that? I always thought the Dad did the work. Mine was a disaster since my parents wanted us to do our own work.</p>
<p>It was a nice event and the kids did learn a lot from doing the actual projects, but I don’t think the messages sent and received at the award ceremony were very positive. I wish I had videotaped it because the visual image of the judges and the winners in an auditorium filled with children of color was very striking.</p>
<p>What a shame. I agree with you, zmom. I’m not surprised, though. IMO most grade school teachers are not generally able to determine what is scientific, or what uses the scientific method, and what doesn’t. So they rely on looks. So stupid. BTW my sister teaches 6th grade science, but that is what she majored in at college - middle school science. It is the only thing she teaches. They have fairs w/o judging, just displays. She does lots of labs. I wish my kid had had her instead of the insipid ‘science’ she received in middle school.</p>
<p>I read a lot of kid science books to my daughter throughout grade school, and frankly that is the only way for most kids today to get a decent exposure to science. The schools have watered it down a great deal.</p>
<p>I agree w/pursuing Science Olympiad - but the school needs to have a team, and most schools don’t have teams.</p>
<p>The interjection of craft elements into projects is a huge thing in middle school, and even the early part of high school, and definitely works against the interests of most boys.</p>
<p>I agree completely with Gourmetmom’s observations.</p>
<p>We observed when our S was in middle school that making things look pretty and following instructions were the primary criteria used to judge work by some teachers. It definitely favored the compliant females.</p>
<p>To my mind effective communication by visual means is a valid consideration, using glitter is not. :)</p>
<p>My S had a “science” teacher in 7th grade who was known for her efforts to interest girls in science. The first project of the year was supposedly designed to reinforce the use of the scientific method: students were to predict which color lifesaver would dissolve more quickly in the mouth and then devise an experiment to test the hypothesis. (Color doesn’t make any difference was not an acceptable prediction, one gathers!) Apparently this “experiment” was supposed to interest the girly-girls. My son came home and reported this with an air of disbelief. He could not believe that he was expected to waste months on this garbage when he was ready to delve into science, and he had total contempt for the teacher, which I’m afraid he let show. My H and I gave him a hard time for consistently getting a B+ from this teacher until we sat through a conference at which she declared, in front of him, “I know S isn’t interested in science.” We were dumbfounded. As we walked out, we said, “S, don’t worry about your grade from this person any more.” (He was in the G/T science program, which mostly met during lunch, and ultimately took APs in Bio, Chem, and Physics in HS.)</p>
<p>Oh, and our HS asks parents to volunteer as judges at the science fair, in addition to the science teachers–only some of whom are women. :)</p>
<p>I think this is a very insightful comment, because even if the judging was “fair” against whatever rubric was set, I’m sure every little nonwhite child noticed what was going on. If this is typical of their experience – its not hard to see why many young boys get discouraged with the educational system early on, and look for “success” outside of schoolwork and academics. </p>
<p>I do think your school could strive for more diversity, perhaps by recruiting adults from the community to volunteer to be the judges in such circumstances - or perhaps high school seniors enrolled in AP science classes. You live close enough to many colleges and universities, so it wouldn’t be all that difficult to <em>find</em> individuals who represent more diversity, including many with strong math and science credentials. I have a feeling that the results would be different with a more diverse panel – I agree with the sense that there is an subtle, implicit bias that the young white women doing the grading probably have – but even if not, there would be a greater appearance of fairness if the panel were more diverse. And if there were real-life scientists and professionals among the judges, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds – that would at least send the message to the kids that they can succeed in the sciences. </p>
<p>But a solution might also be found by changing the criteria or categories for judging. That is, rather than judging all the entries by the same uniform criteria, they could set up a set of different categories: “most original”, “best application of scientific method” – as well as “best presentation”. Or they could do some division of awards by field, for example, a different category for life sciences, chemistry, physics, engineering, etc. That might or might not cause a shift in results – but it would be interesting to see what happens. </p>
<p>I hope you can follow up with your concerns to the PTA or to whatever body organizes the science fair. The point really is not that the current system is unfair, but that it simply functions in a way that tends to be discouraging to young kids at a critical stage in their development. You don’t want boys getting the message in middle school that academics achievement is something mostly for white girls – so it makes sense to try to structure school activities in a way that will tend to encourage the kids most in need of extra encouragement. Of course, girls need to be encouraged in math & sciences as well – so your observation that girls won a lot of awards is not entirely bad; it’s just that the system needs more tweaking.</p>