海角大神

Last February, actor George Takei launched into the issue of how stale science fair fare has become by posting a聽photo of a mom's poster mocking elementary school science fair projects.聽

Like a comet, that , streaking through news feeds this week as the 2015 science fair season takes off, and again, the topic becomes one of national relevance for families and educators.

The poster reads, in part, "How Much Turmoil Does the Science Project Cause Families?" The finding? Of course, "Everyone HATES the science fair!鈥�

It was created by professional fundraiser, childbirth educator, and mom聽聽four聽years ago, when her daughter was doing her fifth grade science fair project, but didn't gain broader media attention until聽February 17, 2014.

Over the past year, the Takei Facebook post of the image has garnered more than 363,000 likes, 430,000 shares, and 12,000 comments, with thousands of comments appearing just within the last couple of days.

My hypothesis is that聽Takei stumbled onto a sensitive subject that, year after year, rankles parents. Messina鈥檚 poster illustrates the frustration of parents and kids preparing for the annual science fair, and her ultimate finding is that everyone ends up miserable.聽

Because my youngest of four sons, Quin, age 11, just finished his annual, required, tightly controlled, cookie-cutter science fair presentation poster last week, and got his grade (a 93 percent) yesterday, this post is one I personally shared on my Facebook wall today.

鈥淥h! Oh! So true,鈥� Quin said as he watched me make the post this morning. 鈥淎ll we get to do is a poster. Nothing creative. They all look the same and the topics they give you to choose from are so lame. If you pick something really interesting like I did last year it鈥檚 like you鈥檙e a rule-breaking freak or something.鈥�

Last year, Quin was stoked to enter the science fair.

Under the close guidance of his father he built a model of an infinite mirror to go with his tri-fold poster, and in so doing was dumped from the science fair roster because it turned out to be a posters鈥搊nly event.

So, this year, he slapped the science fair rubric on the dining room table, announcing he had decided to give up and just pick the first topic that wasn鈥檛 already taken from the prescribed list 鈥� 鈥淒oes the temperature of the water affect the rate at which salt dissolves.鈥�

When we (I was the overseer this year) finished, I posted a rather tongue-in-cheek image to Twitter because it seemed so pat as to be practically an advertisement for the salt company more than a science breakthrough moment.

Seeing Mr. Takei鈥檚 post today, I realized I鈥檓 far from being alone in my frustration.聽

One commentor, Andrea Shuman Freedman,聽posted on Takei鈥檚 wall making a very good point.

鈥淎s a former chemistry teacher and Science Fair judge, I can say with confidence that nothing makes kids hate science more than being REQUIRED to enter science fairs,鈥� Ms. Freedman wrote.聽

She adds, 鈥淒o we make every student who takes music lessons join the band? The kids who are interested in science should be encouraged to enter science fairs, just like kids who enjoy playing instruments should be able to join an orchestra or band.鈥�

On Twitter this week, one science fair judge lamented the lack of creativity as his followers quickly chimed in guessing that he would encounter nothing but jars of soil and batteries made from potatoes.

As for Ms. Messina鈥檚 2014 , she points to a myriad of reasons that science fairs today are lacking. 聽

鈥淔irst,聽any聽elementary school project that requires a lot of parental time, energy, resources, support, cajoling and financial investment is just BAD,鈥� Messina wrote in her blog post. 鈥淪uch projects privilege students from higher-income families for all the obvious reasons. They also take away from family time that families at聽all聽income levels have less of these days. And they definitely are a challenge for any students living with parents who cope with physical illness, mental illness and/or substance abuse.鈥�

I decided to call my friend, Dr. Arthur Bowman, biology professor at Norfolk State University, education consultant for NASA (among others), and one of Virginia鈥檚 go-to science fair judges on local and state levels.聽

Bowman agreed with Messina saying, 鈥淚 always tell my fellow judges that what they are really seeing and judging at these fairs is not the student or their project. We are really in the position of judging the family, community, and school of the child, and not the child鈥檚 real ability at all.鈥�

鈥淲hen the reward for teachers having kids do well in science fairs gave way to rewards for high marks in standardized testing, science fairs went right down the tube,鈥� Bowman added. 鈥淭here is a long answer to how to fix that. My recommendation is to have schools step up to supply materials needed by students to give a level playing field. Then we need to have classroom and team science projects without the fair for elementary schools.鈥�

He recommends that individual science fair projects be the realm of middle and high school students who have had the classroom and team experiences.

Messina also wrote about a fallback idea to 鈥渞e-cast it [science fairs] as an elective, noncompetitive family project.鈥�

Bowman agrees that kids should be the ones to decide to enter science fairs rather than making them mandatory.

鈥淔rom the time some kids are an embryo they are trying to please their driven parents who want the science fair victory more than the student wants it,鈥� Bowman reflected.聽

鈥淭hen the kids who win the fairs, driven by the parents and their resources and goals, get into a great university and find they absolutely hate what they are doing. You have angry students rather than inspired, creative students. Then you see more problems than problem solving.鈥�

While Messina鈥檚 poster is not new, Takei鈥檚 star power may have given it, and this issue, the additional boost it needed in order to break through the atmosphere of uninspired science fair fare.

Perhaps, as Messina鈥檚 poster makes its annual trek around the Internet, enough parents will feel empowered to bring this issue to their local school boards to make a big bang and create a new kind of science fair that families can get behind.