Hook 'em while they're young

In the fall of 2010 The Wife, Child1, Child2 and I met some friends in Boston for the day. After going to a museum or two, eating lunch and checking out the Curious George store, we headed over to a certain large bookseller. There I found scientific gold, a book about the elements called...... The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.  This is the book that I have been reading to Child1 as a bedtime story for the past 5 nights.


I am willing to bet that you are thinking: "What the hell kind of bedtime story is that?!" My answer would be, the best. Why should bedtime stories always be about a porridge stealing, chair breaking, bed sleeping blonde, or a freakishly huge red-haired hound, or some other moral teaching fiction? Can we not also include the awesomeness that it the real world? Science? Engineering? Chemistry? These things can be fascinating! Let's take a really simple example from the above book: on page 34 we encounter Sodium. Bad stuff. Blows up when you toss it in water. Further on, on page 49 we find Chlorine. Really bad stuff, the gas will sear your lungs. As the author describes it, inhaling chlorine gas is "as if someone was pointing a blowtorch at your sinuses". Nice eh?  Here is where we get to the cool bits, when you mix these two really bad elements, you can EAT THE RESULT. When presented in the proper fashion, this will blow a child's mind right out of their ears (and make you the smartest person in the world to them). I ask you, where is the down side?


All joking aside, it's a wonderful thing to teach kids at a young age to respect others, play nice, ignore skin color and other good social values, as well as reading. But why is it that people balk at trying to teach their children the other stuff like how to plant seeds, what photosynthesis is, how to use a hammer and build a birdhouse, where bacon comes from, and, yes, how televisions work and what the elements are? I really don't think a child's mind will differentiate between learning how to spell a word and learning what the chemical formula for salt is. Science and technology in all its forms should be introduced at an early age, we need more engineers, scientists and researchers . Oh sure, some people will say that they don't want their kid to be a "NERD" or a  "GEEK", but those are just petty labels made by insecure people trying to make themselves feel good. In this situation should you ask yourself would the likes of Bill Gates (Microsoft founder), Steve Jobs (iPod anyone?), Brad Bird (I loved The Incredibles) and Ken Olsen (this one you should look up) would really care what others called them in school.


Don't even get me started on lasers.....