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LABRats: The Mad Scientist's Club Meets Scouting
Some random reader sent in this note: "The Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS), an organization that exists to help those with a love of science make new discoveries, has launched a youth program called LABRats to help young people do real science. There's a white paper available describing the program, which is something of a cross between the Mad Scientist's Club and the Boy/Girl Scouts. The idea is to train a small army of young scientists and engineers, 12-18 years old, to do experiments and solve problems in their communities by teaming them up with adult scientist/engineer mentors. Those who advance through the ranks of the program would have to complete a series of experiments, projects, and other tasks that demonstrate proficiency in the basics of science and engineering. The creators -- including Shawn Carlson, a MacArthur Fellow -- aim to make the highest rank comparable in difficulty to Eagle Scout. One of the SAS local chapters in Connecticut built an astronomical observatory, which was used by high school student Lisa Glukhovsky to measure the distance to near-earth asteroids. She was one of three Grand Prize winners in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for 2003. It sounds like a great idea to me. Sure, I'm a little worried that a few misguided youth might take the program's motto -- "Do the experiment!" -- a bit too literally when working on their Nuclear Engineering merit badge. But then again, maybe someday a LABRat will spot an asteroid with our name on it -- and tell NASA."
Several years ago I did some science enrichment work with a Boys and Girls' club in South Central LA. It was a mixed-gender group of 11-13 year-olds from the surrounding neighborhood (a scary 'hood, too: bars in every window, pit bulls in every yard, and burned-out vehicles and graffiti everywhere). The counselors held the children to very high standards of conduct, so we never encountered gender issues in the lab.
BTW, in several hundred presentations to groups ranging from pre-school through grad school, I have never seen students dive into a technology project with as much drive and intelligence. After 2 weeks with Lego Mindstorms and books about remote exploration, we held a final showcase. After my brief lecture about remote environments, every last student was just bursting with questions. Some questions were better than I had heard anywhere else. We then broke for technical demos. Because hardware was scarce, they had devised a team approach to tear-down and rebuild that let them accomplish it in 2 minutes flat (vs. typically 20-45 minutes for an adult). Thus they were able to showcase many original designs in less than an hour.
The highest-performing assembly was designed by a girl, a fact that none of the students thought unusual or remarkable. They just said, "We saved Nancy's for last because it's the fastest!"
To me, this experience is a strong argument for mixed-gender sci/tech enrichment, especially in neighborhoods with otherwise poor infrastructure.