but for brother Eras and I instructing ourselves in chemistry using a shed in the garden as a lab. Following William Brande’s Manual of Chemistry we explosively deprived ourselves of eyebrows on a number of occasions. I was twitted for it by schoolmates and upbraided by the Revd. Butler who said that the classics, not chemistry maketh a man. Had I known then what I know now I would have replied, ‘No, sir. Biochemistry maketh man!’ And no doubt been thrashed within an inch of my life.
How sad to read that our education system appears to be allowing our embryonic scientists to miss the excitement of practical experimentation. Only yesterday I was talking to a man whose scientific epiphany came when a student teacher blew his hairpiece off in a thermite fume cupboard explosion. He said that the sight of the poor teacher reeling from the cupboard sooty of face and removing his goggles to reveal two shocked white eyes will stay with him to his grave. The class naturally maintained a dignified silence. He went on to become a highly successful chemist, en passent blowing up a sink in his school chemistry lab.
If young people do not get that heady whiff of chemicals on entering a lab, anticipate with morbid fascination their first dissection and have that thrill of pride when they wear that first lab coat, how are we to fire their imaginations to love the sciences? I have not been long in this new world, but I am sure a cross-cutting multidisciplinary scoping project with independently verifiable deliverables and a rigorous outcomes auditing process is being planned to tackle this matter.
Meanwhile I am thrilled to see in these pages a Skeptical Chymist expressing the proper admiration for John Dalton a Victorian scientist..
Indeed, many a modern schoolchild, not least my own daugheters, would agree with you. It has been a source of great frustration to them, not to be able to instigate their own explosions, volcanoes, and other dangerous yet educational pursuits in the school laboratory, but instead have to watch a teacher light a piece of magnesium.
Although this is rather far from your scientific interests, and a far meaner pursuit more suited to womankind, the same applies to the cookery lessons, which since your time have even been re-named “domestic science [sic]”. In the space of four years, even the small culiniary attempts that one daughter was allowed to undertake under close adult supervision, have been curtailed significantly for the second child, such that most of her education in the cooking regard has been in making “health and safety in the kitchen” leaflets of various kinds. Of poor comfort to her impoverished parents who were hoping she would arrive home from her school day bearing steaming puddings or “pizza on a biscuit base”.
Further to my previous comment, I have just been taking an evening constitutional stroll round the blogosphere, as is my wont, and I came across this account, which may interest you in the specific context of your post here.
Maxine, and I beginning to think your world is run mad. I confidently expect to see a kitchen knife with ‘hold other end’ engraved on the blade. Only yesterday I was upbraided by a man from the Royal Yachting Association for not wearing a lifejacket on HMS Beagle and when I pointed out gently, but perhaps with a touch of asperity that they had not yet been invented in 1831 he said that wasn’t the point. I was meant to be a geek, he said.
I have seen people with a scientific bent described as ‘geeks’ on two television adverts with a clear implication that this is not a desirable label, in the eyes of the general public. I am getting a distinct feeling, and indeed have had one long conversation with a lady of no mean scientific achievement that science is a difficult and sometimes insecure, frustrating profession not held in the public esteem it should be. I feel a Darwin investigation coming on.
If you would like me to introduce you to a lady of the self-applied geek persuasion, if that is not too forward, I might venture to suggest that you make a friend of this personage. I think you may find her blog posts of suitable reading material, even for one so gentlemanly as yourself.
Maxine Clarke: Matchmaker to the geek and famous.
Through the blogging equivalent of my old Sandwalks am already aware of Mind the Gap, and a friend has mentioned LabLit in glowing terms elsewhere.
Ah, Mr Darwin, I underestimate your new-found social 2.0 discourse skills. My humble apologies, Sir.
Jennifer is very aimiable lady. She has already sent me something called a ‘restraining order’.
The true mark of a gentleman in today’s society is to get yourself awarded an ‘ASBO’. Apply at your local constabulary.