kids these days....

I was at the gym last week (that's not the news...) and while I was running on the elliptical trainer I was also watching the news. It happened to be a PBS news broadcast, I could not clearly see the other TV that was carrying CBS Evening News. This broadcast covered a wide variety of topics, including the Boston Bomb Scare, but the story that disturbed me most was one about the planet Pluto.

Let me interrupt by saying that I am a "scientist" in that I've spent the past 12 or so years focusing on subjects that are heavily in the science field. My young, girly exterior makes it difficult for people to see me as intelligent sometimes, but I tend to be - here is a description my friend Anne has left on my friendster page "She may be blond, short, and have a high-pitched voice but under that exterior lies a tough, wildly-brainy woman." I'm not sure I would say wildly-brainy, but it's not unlike me to think critically.

The story about the planet Pluto involved a discussion about whether there were 8 or 9 planets. Whether we should count Pluto as a planet, or listen to the astronomers who say that it is not a planet. The part that was the most disturbing was that they showed a bunch of 5th graders, and 5th grade teachers, who were actively mourning the loss of Pluto as a planet. The teachers were saying that they would teach that there were 9 planets because "that's the way they were taught it". There were children who reacted with tears at the thought of Pluto not being a planet because they had "always known it as a planet". What are we teaching kids with this sort of reaction - that science is static, unchanging, concrete? This is exactly the wrong message. Science is a very fluid and living entity. Things change, all the time. They progress, and regress, and move sideways - but they always change. I hate to think of what it would be like if they didn't, would we all still be living on a flat, dark world simply because that's the way it had always been.

I don't expect everyone to grow up with a passion for science, but if we're no longer teaching children that change is a possibility, how can they possibly grow up to change the world. And if they aren't going to change it...who is?