Rebecca Onion
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469629476
- eISBN:
- 9781469629490
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629476.001.0001
- Subject:
- Education, History of Education
Since World War II, the American discourse around children and science has been held in the form of a postmortem: a series of diagnoses pointing to a commitment gap that never seems to be fixed. The ...
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Since World War II, the American discourse around children and science has been held in the form of a postmortem: a series of diagnoses pointing to a commitment gap that never seems to be fixed. The formation “Children don’t love science like they used to” points to an imagined past, full of the joy of experimentation and discovery. Although some now argue that we no longer actually face a scientific “manpower shortage,” the popular belief that we do is deeply ingrained, coming, as it does, from this vision of a lost time of utopian explorations. This book, a twentieth-century cultural history of the “science kid,” asks what the stakes of this belief might be. It argues that the nostalgic vision of “a time when American kids loved science” tends to represent these “science kids” as male. If we’re stuck associating the qualities of a potential young scientist—curiosity, mischievousness, a certain free way of thinking that sometimes borders on the antisocial—with masculinity, what effect might this persistent set of associations have on the attempt to recruit women into STEM fields?Less
Since World War II, the American discourse around children and science has been held in the form of a postmortem: a series of diagnoses pointing to a commitment gap that never seems to be fixed. The formation “Children don’t love science like they used to” points to an imagined past, full of the joy of experimentation and discovery. Although some now argue that we no longer actually face a scientific “manpower shortage,” the popular belief that we do is deeply ingrained, coming, as it does, from this vision of a lost time of utopian explorations. This book, a twentieth-century cultural history of the “science kid,” asks what the stakes of this belief might be. It argues that the nostalgic vision of “a time when American kids loved science” tends to represent these “science kids” as male. If we’re stuck associating the qualities of a potential young scientist—curiosity, mischievousness, a certain free way of thinking that sometimes borders on the antisocial—with masculinity, what effect might this persistent set of associations have on the attempt to recruit women into STEM fields?
Neil Calver
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719090981
- eISBN:
- 9781526115133
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090981.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The Popperian Knight, Sir Hermann Bondi, sought to incorporate his mentor's ideals of creativity, imagination purity and scepticism into British teaching - whether in the sciences or the humanities. ...
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The Popperian Knight, Sir Hermann Bondi, sought to incorporate his mentor's ideals of creativity, imagination purity and scepticism into British teaching - whether in the sciences or the humanities. The aim, initially at least, was to broker an understanding between the scientific profession and government paymasters. But a golden opportunity would also present itself: owing largely to his Presidency of the Association of Science Education, Bondi was to contribute to the Royal Society's Public Understanding of Science initiative - a significant platform and boost in his quest to establish Popper's ideas as the common language through which science could be understood.Less
The Popperian Knight, Sir Hermann Bondi, sought to incorporate his mentor's ideals of creativity, imagination purity and scepticism into British teaching - whether in the sciences or the humanities. The aim, initially at least, was to broker an understanding between the scientific profession and government paymasters. But a golden opportunity would also present itself: owing largely to his Presidency of the Association of Science Education, Bondi was to contribute to the Royal Society's Public Understanding of Science initiative - a significant platform and boost in his quest to establish Popper's ideas as the common language through which science could be understood.
Brandon Haught
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049434
- eISBN:
- 9780813050409
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049434.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Ethical Issues and Debates
The fight over the new state science standards spilled over from the State Board of Education into the State Legislature in 2008 as bills requiring “academic freedom” were filed. Lengthy debates ...
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The fight over the new state science standards spilled over from the State Board of Education into the State Legislature in 2008 as bills requiring “academic freedom” were filed. Lengthy debates slowed the bills in both legislative chambers, but they progressed nonetheless. The two proposed versions were very different from one another, and the two chambers couldn't reconcile them. Senator Ronda Storms was her bill's leading figure in the Senate, and Rep. D. Alan Hays was her counterpart in the House. Out-of-state science-based organizations such as the Discovery Institute and the National Center for Science Education played roles in the battle as did conservative political writer and actor Ben Stein who visited Florida to promote his movie Expelled, with its anti-evolution theme.Less
The fight over the new state science standards spilled over from the State Board of Education into the State Legislature in 2008 as bills requiring “academic freedom” were filed. Lengthy debates slowed the bills in both legislative chambers, but they progressed nonetheless. The two proposed versions were very different from one another, and the two chambers couldn't reconcile them. Senator Ronda Storms was her bill's leading figure in the Senate, and Rep. D. Alan Hays was her counterpart in the House. Out-of-state science-based organizations such as the Discovery Institute and the National Center for Science Education played roles in the battle as did conservative political writer and actor Ben Stein who visited Florida to promote his movie Expelled, with its anti-evolution theme.
Rebecca Onion
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469629476
- eISBN:
- 9781469629490
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629476.003.0002
- Subject:
- Education, History of Education
The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the first children’s museum in the country, aimed its offerings at middle-class children who they saw as independent strivers. In discussing the types of science ...
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The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the first children’s museum in the country, aimed its offerings at middle-class children who they saw as independent strivers. In discussing the types of science education available at their museum, the educators who ran the Brooklyn Children’s Museum showed how science education for boys in the early twentieth century was pitched at a higher level than the equivalent offerings for girls.Less
The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the first children’s museum in the country, aimed its offerings at middle-class children who they saw as independent strivers. In discussing the types of science education available at their museum, the educators who ran the Brooklyn Children’s Museum showed how science education for boys in the early twentieth century was pitched at a higher level than the equivalent offerings for girls.
Ruchi Ram Sahni
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199474004
- eISBN:
- 9780199089864
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199474004.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Indian History, Social History
This chapter is devoted to the story of the Punjab Science Institute and Scientific Workshop, which Ruchi Ram Sahni set up along with Professor J.C. Oman of the Government College, Lahore. The aim of ...
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This chapter is devoted to the story of the Punjab Science Institute and Scientific Workshop, which Ruchi Ram Sahni set up along with Professor J.C. Oman of the Government College, Lahore. The aim of the Institute was to popularize scientific knowledge through the Punjab, initially through lectures illustrated with experiments and magic lantern slides, given both in English and the vernacular. The Institute’s lectures became so popular that Sahni and his colleagues were invited all over the Province, to small muffasil towns, to the native states of Kapurthala, Patiala, and Bhawalpur, as to the followers of a religious Sikh leader; for many years Sahni also lectured on scientific topics in Punjabi to an audience of shopkeepers in Lahore. In addition to his work of popularizing science, Sahni recounts his adventures in setting up of a Scientific Workshop which grew in time to produce such excellent instruments that colleagues at an Industrial Conference in Poona were convinced that they had not been produced in India, but had been made abroad and were being passed off as Indian. The narrative includes a discussion of Sahni’s acquaintance with M.G. Ranade, whom he came to know in Simla and then stayed with in Poona.Less
This chapter is devoted to the story of the Punjab Science Institute and Scientific Workshop, which Ruchi Ram Sahni set up along with Professor J.C. Oman of the Government College, Lahore. The aim of the Institute was to popularize scientific knowledge through the Punjab, initially through lectures illustrated with experiments and magic lantern slides, given both in English and the vernacular. The Institute’s lectures became so popular that Sahni and his colleagues were invited all over the Province, to small muffasil towns, to the native states of Kapurthala, Patiala, and Bhawalpur, as to the followers of a religious Sikh leader; for many years Sahni also lectured on scientific topics in Punjabi to an audience of shopkeepers in Lahore. In addition to his work of popularizing science, Sahni recounts his adventures in setting up of a Scientific Workshop which grew in time to produce such excellent instruments that colleagues at an Industrial Conference in Poona were convinced that they had not been produced in India, but had been made abroad and were being passed off as Indian. The narrative includes a discussion of Sahni’s acquaintance with M.G. Ranade, whom he came to know in Simla and then stayed with in Poona.
