how many of you had a chance to hang out
with a four-year-old
lately a lot of you
curious observant Risk
Takers
experimentalists I wonder what would
happen if I stick my finger in this
little hole how about if I Put A Raisin
in my
ear what will happen when my little
brother eats that
slug they observe they come up with
theories they test those theories ouch
yuck
awesome they learn from the
experience and they use that knowledge
to build and shape their understanding
of the world they are
scientists and then we send them to
school and every year that our children
are in school they become less
interested in
science today on average our elementary
school students are spending less than
70 minutes a week on science 70 minutes
a week on
science when they get to Junior High and
high school the results are predictably
dreary what counts as a experiment in a
typical high school lab is a canned
recipe with carefully dictated steps and
a very predictable result that includes
none of the ch challenges or excitement
of real
science these kids we've got to give
them that
opportunity letting kids be scientists
it's a messy business it takes time
takes
materials and it definitely takes
cleanup but if you have the chance to
talk to an engineer or a scientist ask
them when did they decide to become a
scientist and
why now some of them will tell you that
they grew up in a scientific family and
it was just a matter of sticking to the
family trade but if you talk to a
scientist of a certain age you're likely
to hear about a chemistry
set and probably
explosions now for younger scientists
say the ages of my own
children uh with parents more attuned to
safety they're more likely to talk about
the time that they got to hang out in
the lab at their local Science Museum or
the time they entered their first
science fair and got
hooked the element in common in all of
those
experiences is the opportunity to
experiment to ask their own questions
and to seek their own
answers now for 20 years plus I've
gotten to manage Intel's philanthropic
programs in Science Education and I will
confess that over the course of a
typical year I can feel my natural
optimism grinding down in the face of
test scores and budget cuts and and
school closures but every year in March
I get to hang out with 40 of the most
talented young scientists in the country
at the Intel science Talent search and
from there I transition to total
immersion in controlled Scientific chaos
with 1500 amazing young people from all
around the world at the Intel
international science and engineering
fair and I have to tell you after I get
back from that my optimism level is
restored thousands of kids do serious
research and compete to be one of those
40 at STS and over 10 million students
around the world compete hoping to be
one of those 1500 kids at ISF in the
spring we want to celebrate that
celebrate them and through them we want
to reach the younger students nipping at
their heels and we want to open the eyes
of the adults who fund those schools who
set the curricula and decide how those
students will learn we want them to
understand just what teenagers with a
chance to be scientists are capable
of Taylor Wilson built a working nuclear
reactor in his
garage when he was 14 years old did I
say anything about explosions
yeah I remember taking our then CEO to
meet Taylor and his reactor in Reno
Nevada a few years ago and Craig leaned
over to me and whispered I am so glad
he's on our side
now Taylor's dad was equally as bemused
by his son's Obsession fascination with
nuclear energy but he was a trooper he
even took him prospecting for uranium in
New
Mexico now Sarah just won
$100,000 as the top award winner at STS
a couple of weeks ago Sarah built a
laboratory under her loft bed in her
bedroom and for three years she
developed new strains of algae that more
efficiently convert waste matter to
lowcost energy she didn't even let the
fact that she had to sleep on the light
cycle of algae for three years slower
down Eric was raised in a borderline
workingclass neighborhood in New Jersey
went to a high school that never made
anybody's best of anything list but his
teacher carved out space for him
converted the utility closet in
classroom to a lab where he could work
and with that support he made it to DC
and with a scholarship he got there that
kid from Bon made it all the way to
Yale lenir was raised by a single mom in
a small town in North Carolina lenir and
his mother both suffer from diabetes and
his grandmother died of it which
inspired his research which got him to
DC which got him to
Harvard for first member of his family
ever to go to college not a bad place to
start now you may have seen stories
about Samantha last year here she was
able to do work of science Talent search
caliber while her family was evicted
from their home lost the family dog and
lived in and out of homeless shelters
through her senior year in high school
but she had a wonderful young teacher
who believed in her and the scholarship
that she want one now has her pursuing
her dream of an education at Bowden
College a parent a teacher a school a
scientist an engineer a
legislator any one of us can make that
crucial difference for a kid to give
them the opportunity to go beyond
learning about science in an uninspired
classroom to being a
scientist now not all children children
will or should grow up to become
professional
scientists but don't they all deserve
that opportunity to try their wings and
if they can fly shouldn't we celebrate
them with all the balloons and confetti
and scholarship money that we shower on
our athletes and
entertainers shouldn't we let that
four-year-old scientist grow up to be
the 17-year-old scientist
and go on to change the
world and then reach back to help the
next generation of young
scientists just imagine what could
happen thank you