Oh god! Science Fair!

We are getting into Science Fair season, one of the more misunderstood and most vilified areas of science education. 

I don't pretend to have all the answers...but let me rant a bit in response to this post...

Observed on Facebook today:

"Science Fair Projects = MIGRAINE for Parents of middle school students.
Could we just STOP this exercise of forcing us parents to plead, warn, beat, cajole, prod, yell, at our children - for a project you will spend 5 minutes of your time evaluating."

My answer:

Saw your message re: science fairs and had to comment.

I was a high school chemistry teacher for ten years, chairman of my science department for two, and mother of two non-scientifically oriented children. As a teacher, I was not thrilled by science fairs, as they required far more time than your stated 'five minutes' of evaluation.

[One of my favorite exercises when kids asked (the next day) if I'd graded lab reports was to ask them how much time they wanted me to spend reading their reports. Generally the response exceeded five minutes. I then multiplied the minimal 5 minutes by the 150 students I encountered per day, divided that by the number of minutes in an hour, and ended up with a number in excess of 12 hours. That they expected me to spend grading. Whenever they handed in an assignment. My final question to them was how many hours they had spent on their homework that night. Trust me, it never even approached 12 hours.]

But back to the time involved in having a science fair at all, much less evaluating projects. Reserving space, developing and printing guidelines, recruiting judges, discussing judging standards, setting up, cleaning up, soliciting prizes from donors, meeting with teachers, recruiting the required oversight committees for the inevitable projects that wanted to use human or animal subjects...well, it takes a lot of time.  Far more than five minutes, even before we get to the actual project evaluations.

[Keep in mind that these science teachers (while they are doing all this extra work) are continuing to plan for and teach 5 classes a day, often in a variety of subjects, are grading papers, recording grades, helping kids who are having difficulty with the subject (or with math, which is often the stumbling block in science), and are providing assistance with said science projects for any child who requests it (read: any child who is DOING a project.)]

These projects generally are intended to foster critical thinking--a skill that extends far beyond science classes--and the projects are a measure of how well students have developed that skill.  Sadly, however, many parents tend to leap into the fray and 'help' with projects that should rightly be done by the student on his/her own. Science fairs have become yet another instance where competition and winning overshadow the benefits of simply thinking through a problem and solving it. Science fairs should be no more about winning or attaining the next level of competition than writing an essay, or showing mastery of a particular piece in music class. Likewise, science projects should not require parental assistance any more than these. Do you write your child's English papers? Do you play their soccer games? Do you pick up their instrument and perform for them? Sing their solos? Why then should you be doing their science project?

[Mind you, I know that, as a parent, you want to be involved in your child's education. You want them to succeed. It would be lovely if they were to win a prize, be selected for a scholarship, show talent in a particular field. But all these benefits are dependent upon their interest, their willingness to expend the effort, their curiosity and ability to put one thought after another, eliminate the variables, and actually prove something. You can be the cheerleader; you can be a resource person; you can take them to the library or provide a corner of the basement or kitchen as a 'lab'. But you do not have to be--you should NOT be--the originator of the idea, the lab assistant, the drawer-of-conclusions, the builder of displays. ]

As a science teacher, I know that the cure for cancer is (most likely) not going to appear as a science fair project. If your kid is on that path, he or she will find a way to pursue it. There's not a teacher alive who wouldn't love to have a kid like that in class. BUT, speaking for my teacher-self some years back, I would have rather seen a genuine kid project on the table, with a real-life kid-generated problem to be solved with genuine kid ideas and thought and solution than any parent-produced, super-duper display. In fact, my first question to any student standing by his/her project was usually: "Where did you get this idea?" And the next was "Did anyone help you with this?" The one I remember most vividly was a kid who decided to find out which pizza was the least greasy and the most nutritious--and developed a systematic approach to the problem and followed through. It wasn't a parent project, for sure, though I suspect they might have paid for the pizza. It was a good project, a valid question, and the kid did the work. I gave it a B+.

So. Science-Fair-Hating Parents of the World: STOP IT! Let your child succeed or fail on his/her own efforts. If you are facing a teacher who demands professional-level projects, that's a discussion that you need to have with the teacher. I don't think there are many of them around. They might demand critical thought. They might demand a paper that explains the experiment and the conclusions drawn. They might expect your student to demonstrate methods and patterns of investigation that they have learned in class--but they generally do not demand your participation.  Contrary to popular belief on the part of some students --and the parents they may have managed to convince--teachers in general are not out to 'get' them. We are simply trying to prepare our students for the complex world they are inheriting. It's easier to do with your help--and much, much harder if you undermine our efforts.

P.S.:  Those non-scientific children of mine did their share of required science projects. I never built a display, never wrote or typed a paper, though I may have suggested areas of investigation or resources. Neither ever made it to regionals, and neither ever got less than a B in science. At last contact, they seem to have survived pretty well.