Why Parents Drink

[polly_mer]

Yesterday was a Friends of the Library Book Sale with $5 for a standard brown grocery bag.  They provide the bags and you are allowed to pack it yourself.

My child had to be told to go get a bag and pick out some books.  I had to reassure him that any book that caught his interest is fair game.  It doesn't have to be in a language he currently reads; it doesn't have to pertain to life circumstances we currently have (there was a dummies book related to dog training and we have no dog).  I will pay for any book he'd like to have from this sale.  Once he got into it, he ended up with a whole stack of cooking books that he is currently exploring in the kitchen with his papa.

Back to yesterday's tale, when my child had "finished" his first bag, I helped him repack it so he could get a few more in.  Then, the child had the nerve to say, well, it's full; I guess I'm done.  I made him get me another bag and insisted he continue to look for books since we'd only gotten through a quarter of the non-fiction section at that point.

How can I possibly have a child who needs to be encouraged to acquire books instead of being restrained from taking more than his weight at any single occasion?

[mamselle]

Maybe he doesn't like thinking about all those Post-its he'll have to write and put on the wall??

(Interthreaduality)

;--》

M.

[the_geneticist]

Yesterday was a Friends of the Library Book Sale with $5 for a standard brown grocery bag.  They provide the bags and you are allowed to pack it yourself.

My child had to be told to go get a bag and pick out some books.  I had to reassure him that any book that caught his interest is fair game.  It doesn't have to be in a language he currently reads; it doesn't have to pertain to life circumstances we currently have (there was a dummies book related to dog training and we have no dog).  I will pay for any book he'd like to have from this sale.  Once he got into it, he ended up with a whole stack of cooking books that he is currently exploring in the kitchen with his papa.

Back to yesterday's tale, when my child had "finished" his first bag, I helped him repack it so he could get a few more in.  Then, the child had the nerve to say, well, it's full; I guess I'm done.  I made him get me another bag and insisted he continue to look for books since we'd only gotten through a quarter of the non-fiction section at that point.

How can I possibly have a child who needs to be encouraged to acquire books instead of being restrained from taking more than his weight at any single occasion?

I would have been the kid who stuffed the bag to the bursting point and then quibbled about whether the top of the bag really had to close.  Yes, I have way, way too many books. 

[waterboy]

I would (ahem) suggest that there's no such thing as too many books.  Too little shelf space, yes. Too few books?  Nah.

[polly_mer]

Has anyone successfully gotten out of mandatory science fair that is basically the parents doing all the support for the child?

Apparently, the teacher has never before been told that the child cannot do most of the work in the evenings and weekends at home because there's no qualified adult to provide guidance during that time.  True story because I'm just swamped for the next couple of months and I'm not having an 80 h workweek because the school decided science fair is mandatory.

[bioteacher]

Our science fairs are not mandatory, so I have not been subjected to this particular corner of hell. I have no good ideas, beyond chocolate, good music, and your adult beverage of choice.

[kaysixteen]

Shouldn't the science project the kid needs to do for the fair be able to, ahem, be done by the kid himself?  Believe me, k12 teachers can well recognize and strongly despise projects or papers that have clearly substantively been done by parents.  No schools or teachers want parents to do this.

[mamselle]

I recall a science fair project done on a sheet of plywood, painted white, with a drilled-out center hole covered from behind by yellow cellophane, with a porch light shining behind it, and a title bar saying "What makes Day and Night?"

All the planets (Pluto's license to planethood hadn't yet been revoked) were there in teensey circles, painted as we thought they looked then. A globe of the Earth sat in front so you could make it look like day...or night.

It was pretty cool.

I wouldn't have denied my dad the fun of orchestrating that (or the vinegar-and baking powder volcano he did with my sister two years later--Science Fair was for 3rd graders only) for anything....

M.

[kaysixteen]

 But it wasn't your work, and allowing this sort of thing penalizes kids whose parents can't or won't do their projects for or with them, many of whom are low income, single parents, etc.  When, further, does parental participation cease to be quality time and start to become cheating.

[polly_mer]

But it wasn't your work, and allowing this sort of thing penalizes kids whose parents can't or won't do their projects for or with them, many of whom are low income, single parents, etc. 

This is one of my concerns because it relates to the research on how people get interested in STEM and what turns them off early in their paths, like late elementary/middle school.

Having a very interested student do the research to answer a burning question is a fabulous learning experience, regardless of any future job outcome.  Insisting that everyone do a project with random levels of support and interest tends to be very discouraging, especially for the students who were kinda, sorta interested until they hit the unpleasant parts of doing science (i.e., a true project instead of a demo) and didn't have both the interest and the necessary adult support to successfully continue.  We hit that point during last year's mandatory science fair when my child shouted, "I hate science!" and started crying, even with the barest minimum work (literally two hours on one afternoon) on a question to which he dearly wanted to know the answer.

I was a science fair judge for years.  One state-level fair in particular sticks in my memory with a student who did a true student project with minimal adult help right next to the student who had written up his internship project from the national lab that was publishable in Phys. Rev. Lett.  When I questioned the Phys. Rev. Lett. student, who happened to have done a project very closely related to my dissertation work, that student knew his stuff.  I would have been proud to have a graduate student do and present that work.  We sent that student on to the international science fair where he did quite well.

In contrast, the student next to this graduate-level poster had a project that was clearly a couple afternoons/evenings and had neglected to use a thermometer when temperature was an important concern.  How do you suppose that Navajo student from the remote rural school felt about her good enough, appropriate level work when she spent all day watching droves of judges visit and revisit the grad-level poster to spend a total of several hours talking with that student when she had a total of perhaps 30 minutes first thing in the morning with the minimum three judges for 10 minutes each?  Is she signing up for more science or has she learned that science is for other people who have resources and look more like a scientist in pictures?  I took my preggie belly over to talk to her when I saw this happening, but I don't know that one judge spending a little extra time is going to make a big enough difference in a whole day of clearly being inadequate, especially when she can see that same judge spent far more time interacting at the other poster and treating that student as a professional-level scientist.

I also have many memories of asking students at various levels what their favorite part of the project was.  I can remember many students at the school and regional levels explaining with great enthusiasm being allowed to use glitter on their boards or spray paint or something else indicating the science wasn't even on the top 10 list of memorable parts of their project.  Even at the state level from some pretty rural regions, students were often more excited about the trip out of the county to the big city (10k people) than anything related to the science in their project.

Even as a parent who has the expertise to mentor a science project, I am quite angry that the school who has the children for 32 hours per week with about 8 weeks to do the science fair deems science fair important enough to be mandatory, but not important enough to devote time and resources to ensuring that every child has adequate mentoring and time to do a good enough project and have a positive experience, even if that's the joy of the arts and crafts aspect of the poster.  My rural, public school managed to do that when I was a child; what's the deal with this school district that has mandatory music, art, and theatre during school hours, but makes science be done outside of school with random support at home because "there's not enough time in the curriculum for science fair"?

[mamselle]

But it wasn't your work, and allowing this sort of thing penalizes kids whose parents can't or won't do their projects for or with them, many of whom are low income, single parents, etc.  When, further, does parental participation cease to be quality time and start to become cheating.

It was, though.

We did the painting and we were quizzed about all the parts of it to be sure we understood and could answer questions a out it.

Third graders need some help from conception to execution, and it was conversational, not coercive, all the way through.

A more feminized concept of ownership, we might say now...we just didn't have that language then.

M.

[mythbuster]

   This kind of discussion of science fairs always makes me sad. Science fairs are how I got my start in science. I went to a small K-8 private school where Science Day was a big deal. Everyone in grades 1-8 participated, there was a full panel of outside judges and award at every grade level. I still have my demo book from several of these projects (we did booklets rather than the now ubiquitous tri-fold poster). I also will point to the multiple other women alumnae of my elementary school that are now engineers, computer scientists, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and geologists as evidence that early science fairs can be the spark. We were lucky to have an amazing head of the science program at that school who did what for the day was really advanced science with young kids.
    However, I fully and readily admit that my Mother was heavily involved in each experiment (although I did do a lot of the work and could explain it all), and that these events require an amazing amount of effort by all involved. I do think that was an era where more parental participation (especially at a private school) was the norm. My mother did work but somehow had time to help me bake agar plates in our oven to replicate Flemming's results. I fully realize that not everyone has the resources, time, or even the inclination to go that deep on a project like this.
   I've also judged at many science fairs and seen the difference between the home grown garage projects (like mine were), and the intern at the local uni who sequences his own genome or some such. I will say that my experience is that usually the garage experiment kid knows their topic better. The really sad part for me is when I always asked what the next experiment might be from the project. Often kids didn't understand the question because science fair time was over- no sense of exploration at all.

[bioteacher]

I rather like what my local high school does. I've been a judge for 6 years now, which is the lifespan of the STEM fair. There are no ribbons or prizes. There is no contest. It is not mandatory. But for students who have a question, or an interest, are given a chance to explore it. Our job is to talk to them about their project. Some work in groups, some as individuals. I have been amazed (in good and bad ways) every year. I've seen some displays that were thrown together in a weekend, others that culminated from hours of work over a term. I spent time with all of them, asking what they learned, what they'd do differently, what made them wonder about this subject. They light up. Sometimes, they are mortified they didn't think of an obvious (to us) control. I welcome them to science, where making mistakes is where we learn. What would they do differently next time? What is a good follow-up project? How could they dig deeper?

I totally skip the guided handouts I'm given to help me give feedback. Instead, I just talk to them about what they did and why. I an always draw on my background to help them understand something a bit more. I love getting to praise them for the controls they did use, even clumsily, if it shows they are TRYING to be methodical. We talk about bias, about the importance of doing some background research before diving into a project (and not knowing what you are doing or why, but just doing it b/c it is cool). I see little to no evidence of parental involvement (grades 9-12). I go every year because it's the sort of thing I want to support. Every presenter is assigned at least 3 judges to come talk to them. It's open to the public, too.

For some of these kids, it's a dumb one off. For others? The show both true dedication and frustration at the limits in their budget and supplies. I wish Blocky's school got away from forced parent /child project and moved to something more practical.

[kaysixteen]

Polly'sand points are different, and well taken.  These things shouldn't be mandatory, shouldn't be at night, snd should have age appropriate expectations, the one on 10k exceptions like the kid who produced the publication quality effort notwithstanding.  But yes, it rather is cheating when parents substantially aid in the doing of such projects, which is another reason why the expectations for such efforts must needs be age appropriate.  I like the no prizes thing too, as it helps put the kibosh on using such fairs for college admissions cred, again something denied to those kids without the financial and cultural family capital to score such awards.

[polly_mer]

   This kind of discussion of science fairs always makes me sad. Science fairs are how I got my start in science.

I have come to really prefer science festivals where everyone does the science together on site. 

My childhood science fair experience was meh.  I spent a couple weeks of science class in 7th grade working on a couple sheets of paper to illustrate the process of photosynthesis in a leaf (the first thing on the list of suggestions that I could face doing).  I didn't get to attend the one day show because we had a family vacation planned months in advance, so I was on travel during the week of the show.

I continue to laugh (to avoid crying) every time I encounter the idea that we MUST make everyone be a real scientist at an early age through formal required experiences.  I never meant to become a scientist.  When I was a child, I was a bookworm with all the indications of becoming a librarian or English teacher.

However, I had very good science and math classes throughout K-12 and was able to go to engineering school on scholarship with the plan to meet a husband who would then support me in some humanities endeavor like perhaps becoming a philosophy professor.  I've come to accept that I am a scientist with my engineering education because that pays pretty well and is interesting enough to want to go to work every day, but I'm still more bookworm than scientist.