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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."
What does she have as proof that, if she had not done this, then they would not have been interested in science and maths?
"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."
"On Saturday mornings," Gates explained while looking down her nose at the little people, "I wanted to sleep late. So you know what I did? I spent your money on educational toys, after Bill and his company were convicted of abusing Microsoft's monopoly position to grow both the company and our personal fortune. And just guess how much better my kids did than yours! Now imagine how secure their futures will be, no matter how useless they are, since Bill succeeded in dodging taxes by creating a for-profit foundation!"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
How likely are you to die today?
This, for what its worth our strategy which seems to have worked so far was to spend time on a bunch of Parks & Rec classes on diverse things and see what clicked. If it clicked she got more of them. Since P&R courses were (relatively) cheap, we could afford to do the shotgun approach.
We ended up with a kid who loves electronics, piano and skiing.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
I'd have thought that pointing out that computer science made daddy the richest man in the world would be sufficient to get them interested in science quite frankly.
Rediscovering Things of Science: For many years [1940-1989], the Science Service produced a monthly series of science kits called "Things of Science", available by subscription. When I was a kid (in the 60s), I subscribed to Things of Science for several years. I suspect that many of us who chose careers in the sciences found at least part of our inspiration in those blue boxes that arrived in the mail every month (well, almost every month; sometimes we'd get manila envelopes, filled with stuff that wouldn't fit in the boxes). Each kit ("unit") had a booklet of experiments, and usually everything needed to perform them.
Years ago, l switched to Linux because windows XP sucked donkey balls. Linux's repositories, customisation, and freedom (from viruses as well as anti-consumer bullshit to help Microsoft's bottom line) absolutely rocked, and I was a huge Linux head for a while. Also, for all the rumours of Linux being bad with hardware, just about everything worked out of the box on my kubuntu install. Windows was the one that made me scour the net for drivers.
But recently I tried windows again (windows 8), and although the interface takes some getting used to, it's actually easier to use than Linux, and dare I say, more secure. Haven't seen a blue screen so far, whereas Linux has constant crashes (blame KDE if you wish, but the fact is that programmes crash quite often). Yes, I know Microsoft tries to sap all your private data, but other than that and KDE's customisation, there's really nothing Linux has over windows now, and windows feels much more mature and integrated now. It also boots much faster than Kubuntu and has the start screen, like it or not, is quite useful (showing weather, for example).
If you wrote off windows a while ago, I dare you to give it a try. Have an open mind and see if windows works better for you.
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.