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How Melinda Gates Got Her Daughters Excited About Science (geekwire.com)
theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Melinda Gates concluded a Davos panel discussion about gender parity with a personal story about her own family, explaining how she originally became interested in computer science, and how she later played Lab Manager to Bill's Mr. Wizard to help pass along their passion for science and math to their kids. "On Saturday mornings," Gates explained, "I wanted to sleep late. So you know what I did? I made sure there were science projects available, and that's what he did with our two daughters and our son. And guess what my two daughters are interested in? Science and math."
Children learn by imitation. You have to give an example to children, so they learn from you, even if the example is how to look for something interesting to do. Just sit there and wait until the children pick something up themselves is a recipe for disaster. All your children will learn is how to passively sit there and wait until something happens.
Windows makes you pay through the $$$ just to ADD a c/c++ compiler.
Visual Studio Community edition - free.
Mind closing. Linux FTW!
Yeah, your mind got closed all right.
I mean, sure ... it's good advice to stimulate the minds of your kids. Give them interesting things to do and figure out, and they might discover something they really like.
But the idea that you can "steer" a kid into a career field based on what you gave them to do for fun as a kid? Nah.... doesn't work like that.
When I was a kid, I realized I really liked working with those "50 in 1" electronics project kits like they sold at Radio Shack. (I think I actually discovered it first through a friend at school who had one.) My parents, both being teachers, were happy to spend their money on that kind of thing, so I occasionally got one of those kits for a birthday or Xmas present or what-not, for years after that. (For those unfamiliar, these were kits that came with a board full of springs and a box of components. You hooked up the components by slipping them into the springs, or occasionally inserting pieces of wire between certain springs, and made various things like an AM radio or a basic "alarm system".)
Up through senior year of high school, I held onto that interest in electronics enough that I took a couple of optional electronics courses in school. Despite all of that? I never became an electrician or anything.... I find it useful to have a basic understanding of electronics. But as I became an adult, I learned how much MORE you really needed to know to do anything valuable with it, and that was just more than I wanted to do in the field.
I think science is no different. I have a daughter now who likes science (her favorite class in school). But honestly, I also doubt she'll wind up in a scientific career because of other aspects of her personality and tendencies I see. It's one thing to find it "cool" to dissect something in a classroom, or to read about scientific discoveries and think "That's awesome!". But to actually get to the point where people want to hire you to work on those discoveries? That requires going through a LOT of stuff that's just not as fun or easy.
How many of us enjoyed pretending we were astronauts as kids, and/or had an interest in science fiction? How many of you who did wound up working for NASA? Probably not NEARLY as many, right?
I think all you can do as a parent is give your kids opportunities to think and learn. But don't expect you can direct them into a particular field or career path based on it.