Reflections on Middle School Science Fair

aj725
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:09:41 +0000

I’m glad you’re going to bring up the issue with someone. The key point should be that the use of the scientific method should dominate over a ‘pretty’ presentation. They should judge everything on the merits and maybe have a special award or two for the best presentations.

If that doesn’t happen, those who are making good use of the scientific method now (presumably some of the boys who weren’t recognized at all) will stop doing so. They won’t work on a better/more challenging project next year because in their minds – an easy pretty project has a better shot at winning. Or more likely, they’ll just give up on the science fair because it’s not an activity that they can relate to in any way. This is the way that lots of boys, often from diverse households, give up or diminish the value of education – if a minority male was to comply and put together a pretty project in hopes of winning and did win something, you’d better believe that he’d face some peer pressure/harassment from his peers for “acting white” or acting like a girl. He’d face much less pressure if he won for putting together the best robot or volcano or whatever.

Hate to say it but this is how a lot of the lower grades are. I don’t know why but teachers – young and old – are blown away by presentation sometimes. It’s as if they don’t get or want to get the substance so they’re impressed by the fact that something is typed or graphs are computerized rather than done by color pencil. This is a problem esp. in an NYC public school. Even if we’re getting to the point where every household has a computer, I’m betting that not every kid is going to tell their parents that they need to go through a few cartridges of color ink to be able to print out pretty reports/projects because they know that lots of parents may soon say – just do it in pencil, it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty. In a wealthier household, this kind of minor expense is no issue and parents who aren’t working 2+ jobs may even be home to supervise homework and may be encouraging their kids to make things prettier for the teacher.