Hey Readers! As you know, one of the things I talk about a lot is not only that kids are SAFER than we think, but they’re also more COMPETENT than pop culture leads us to believe. Here to remind us just how clever kids can be is this story, of 8-year-olds who studied whether bees can learn patterns and colors. Then they got their research published in a peer-reviewed journal. That’s the buzz for this morning. Enjoy! — L.
16 Comments
very cool!
Peer reviewed? Would that be by other 8 year olds?
Seriously, great job by the kids.
But, but, that isn’t in the curriculum! How will this help the kids on their state tests in the spring??? And this involves living animals!
Really, a great job by the kids, and the teacher for sticking to it and finding resources and getting their work published. If more teachers allowed for kid created work, my kids would be in school. These kids learned so much more because they were interested in what they were doing than they would be by picking up a text book and reading about it. Good for them!
As long as the work is child driven, not parent ego driven. Kids are wonderfully smart and amazing in how they will push themselves far beyond what an adult would push them to do. However, neither should we push them to be like adults in the kind of responsibilities they take on.
Let’s not forget Emily Rosa, who at the age of 9 had a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (it demonstrated that there was no conceivable basis for a popular but silly practice involving nurses waving their hands over patients). This was in 1998.
I often wonder if some parents really do know this. They are just upset with themselves that their children are smarter and have more common sense then they do. So they make a point of bringing them down lower than their level.
Incredibly awesome. I especially liked the distinction that Lotto made (in a lecture at the school) between teaching science facts and teaching how to answer scientific questions.
A lot of university students could learn from these kids’ example. You’d be surprised at how many college kids think that scientific research consists of finding something that mildly interests them and rattling off facts about it, calling the output a “research paper” (no wonder a lot of students think that science is boring).
So awesome!! They must go to a school that actually allows science at the science fair 😉
This is awesome on so many levels!
Saw this article a few days ago and immediately thought of you! LOL!
There were also two teens on Science Friday last week who won a huge prize for developing mood-recognition software. It sounded really amazing.
Read about this, LOVE it! Go kids!
@ Randy
I totally know what you mean! ugh
Wow. Just wow. I bookmarked the article to show my nine year old.
ebohlman, I was about to mention Emily Rosa. The TT practitioners all assumed that a little kid couldn’t outsmart them, but she made them look like idiots.
Years ago, wasn’t there a kid who tested whether Therapeutic Touch(gliding hands over body without actually touching) was real or not?
I think I saw her on Penn and Tellers BS.
Either way, thumbs up for the kids!
Michelle: You’re thinking of Emily Rosa. Her science fair project (which turned into an article in JAMA) demonstrated that “therapeutic touch” practitioners, far from being able to perceive human “energy fields”, couldn’t even tell whether or not someone else’s hand was near them without looking.
Her mother, Linda Rosa, has done a great deal of work debunking truly dangerous “attachment/rebirthing therapies” that have actually killed several kids.