Neil deGrasse Tyson: Want Scientifically Literate Children? Get Out of Their Way. | Big Think
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 чер 2024
- Neil deGrasse Tyson: Want Scientifically Literate Children? Get Out of Their Way.
New videos DAILY: bigth.ink
Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers: bigth.ink/Edge
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We spend the first year teaching children to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON:
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools clear through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. He is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium. His professional research interests are broad, but include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson obtains his data from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and in the Andes Mountains of Chile.Tyson is the recipient of nine honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. His contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have been recognized by the International Astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid "13123 Tyson".
Tyson's new book is Letters From an Astrophysicist (2019).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I'm often asked by parents what advice can I give them to help get kids interested in science? And I have only one bit of advice. Get out of their way. Kids are born curious. Period. I don’t care about your economic background. I don’t care what town you’re born in, what city, what country. If you’re a child, you are curious about your environment. You’re overturning rocks. You’re plucking leaves off of trees and petals off of flowers, looking inside, and you’re doing things that create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.
And so then so what do adults do? They say, “Don’t pluck the petals off the flowers. I just spent money on that. Don’t play with the egg. It might break. Don’t....” Everything is a don’t. We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.
So you get out of their way. And you know what you do? You put things in their midst that help them explore. Help ‘em explore. Why don’t you get a pair of binoculars, just leave it there one day? Watch ‘em pick it up. And watch ‘em look around. They’ll do all kinds of things with it.
For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn’t just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive. Not the full moon because there are no shadows cast when the moon is full; got to wait for it to be half moon or crescent moon, and look at the edge between light and dark with a simple pair of binoculars.
I was transformed by picking up a pair of binoculars and looking up, and that’s hard to do for a city kid because when you look up you just see buildings -- and really your first thought is to look in people’s windows. So to look out of the space -- out of living space -- and look up to the sky, binoculars go far, literally and figuratively. That’s what got me started on the universe. It might get some kids you know started the same way.
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
Want to get Smarter, Faster?
Subscribe for DAILY videos: bigth.ink/GetSmarter
"We spend the first year teaching our children to walk and talk. We spend the rest of the time telling them to sit down and shut up" a quote worthy of the histories
That's a good quote
For the first year of their lives, we teach them to stand and walk, and for the rest of their lives, we tell them to sit down and shut up.. well said
that was great insight!
Spare me please. 😒
Don't send them to government indoctrination schools
As a father with a 2 year old, that hit home.
Thank you!! My mom raised me this way, and it worked. Whenever I was sick of a toy or it broke, I would take it apart and look at the electronics inside. I was given access to simple tools like a calculator. Most importantly, I was given unlimited access to a computer to do my own research. I am a hobbyist, amateur mathematician, and a computer programmer. I'm only 14 years old.
You're 22 now, i really wonder how your life went on...
@@radiostar7123 I have a tech support job helping people with their computers. I still take apart random things to learn about them or make new things out of them.
@@DaffyDaffyDaffy33322 awesome man, i really wish you the best in your life💪..and it was nice knowing you
@@radiostar7123 thank you! i wish the best for you as well!
this hits so close to home. I was a total sponge as a child. Explored everything, turned over every rock, waded in every stream. All I ever got from my parents was 'stop doing that' 'don't play', 'don't get dirty', 'don't mess with that'. It was endless and it was clear they had no idea what they were actually doing.
Thing is (having come out of the school system within the last decade), schools these days care more about the grades and state exams than they do actually inspiring children to learn.
I very much had gone through what you described, what with being turned off by the repetitive memorization of mind-numbing obscurities. Little do kids realize that there is actually some fun to be had in the maths and sciences. Like you, I took a different road, and now I'm a writer. No regrets.
I recently read "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan, and he mentions a phenomenon I also think is very likely to contribute to children's scientific literacy: Whether the kids learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Many superstitious people are superstitious because they never learned to do that properly, and that is not something we naturally learn by curiosity. Don't give parents the entire fault of scientific literacy or of diminishing curiosity. Often it's their own lack of education and understanding that seamlessly spreads to the kids. Plus, I think it's very relevant that we now live in a world today that is increasingly filled with flashy distractions, such as digital games, super short videos and all kinds of other entertainment that inherently teaches you knowledge is something you get by tapping your device to play a youtube video or reading a far too short article that is more entertainment or opinion than knowledge. I think it requires a lot of help today to become a scientist. More than ever, perhaps.
This explains why I'm so interested in science...
Same here
Your parents must be really good.
The whole "We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down." thing is so key. If the education system and the fundamentals of nurturing a young child could be changed the amount of youth with scientific interest would explode within the blink of an eye.
not just science interest but allkindz of career dreams they want
I've always loved learning, but I've also detested school or anything similar to it as far back as I can possibly remember. I honestly wish I could just learn about the world and be left in peace by everyone, not to be pestered to do this or that for a grade.
I'm 19 and I honestly don't see this mentality changing any time soon.
every idea out of Tyson's brain is intellectual gold
Everyone gets all kinds of good and shitty ideas. Some people are wise enough to discard the crap ideas and keep the good ones, and improve on them.
I like what he says in this video but not every idea he has is gold. He strongly leans toward Scientism as opposed to actual science often. The two are antithetical to one another.
Exactly, that way they can think and choose wisely for themselves when they're older instead of having a permanent bias stick with them for the rest of their lives.
NEIL DEGrasse!!!! i am so thankful for you in modern day life.....
Good advice. He's absolutely right.
Make sure your children know not to look at the sun with binoculars. SMH
They'll figure out after the first time.
ha ha ha
Let kid wander toward the cliff, get out of their way. Kid acquired knowledge about gravity.
An absolutely BRILLIANT idea to just leave a pair of binoculars out and let the child pick them up and DISCOVER!!! Excellent advice, Neal deGrasse Tyson!
He said "get out of their way", not "get out of their lives"!
I remember getting a microscope and I used it to look at my own blood. Was pretty cool to see the little blood cells still flowing.
My mom used to take me to different types of museums growing up... Be it art, science, natural history, aquariums...whatever. She also gave me science kits, and books about how things work, and how to better the planet. Today, I am in university studying to be an environmental chemist, all because my mom introduced me to science at a young age. This is how I plan on raising my children.
These advice will be passed down to my future generations. Very simple but profound words!
Great message.
This man oozes with profound wisdom. Thank you for existing Neil!
His voice is amazingly soothing.
Words to live by! This is why when a neighborhood kid asks about my pitcher plants and why the leaves are shaped the way they are I pull out a pair of pruners and slice open a leaf. They're immediately hooked!
0:48 to 0:52 Omg that statement is SO TRUE that when he said it, my mind was blown by it and I just laughed out lout really hard!
My daughter would pick up my camera and explore, her facial expression would tell you that she has picked up a gem.
Wow, great work, Neil. Love this. We should pursue our ideas and dreams and questions, till we find some truths and can stand on those teachings and teachers who shared them for all of us to grow with.
I'm going to be a father in September and I really will live by this. Thank you Neil!
Science is a mind-boggling subject that is actually very interesting and beautiful but the way they teach it in school is too strict and mind numbing.
I don't like Neil deGrasse Tyson in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.
Every one is like, what did he just say???
I like his interviews much better, because he doesn't get to be the writer in Cosmos, he is just a presenter. The show I think is good a introducing people to science who otherwise were not so much before.
Neil is great when improvising, but who else would you put in Cosmos? My kid loves it (as long as we do not go beyond 5 min at a time :)
It would be interesting if math and physics/economics were not taught separately but in a combined way. The economic multiplier effect is a direct example of geometric sequence infinite summation. The relationship between velocity and acceleration and calculus is already obvious. That could solve the problem of learning necessary formulas but making them inspiring.
'We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.' -Bloody brilliant!!!
This is why enlightened people love you, Neil! Thank you so much! Well said.
All it takes is some words from Neil deGrasse Tyson to restore my faith in humanity and cheer me up.
Big Think Awesome video, just share
I'm a city kid, and I had a big cheap pair of blue binoculars when I was around 10, because my parents realized I loved watching the birds (.... pigeons and sparrows...). I looked at the moon and I was AMAZED at what I saw. Now I'm a wildlife biologist and a science educator. But I never realized how much I missed out on by growing up in a city and not near any natural areas. But I don't feel bad. I think it gave me a greater appreciation for nature when I saw a forest for the first time!
can I like this twice?
Truly I wish I could learn every bit of detail of life from this great man
this says it all!
"We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives tell them to shut up and sit down" What a quote :)
My highschool years turned me away from scientific studies. Math was so excruciatingly boring. Learn a formula by heart and proceed to do mind-numbing exercises. I ended up studying History thanks to a great teacher. Not a thing I regret, but I've always remained interested in philosophy and now at a later age I discovered how interesting and close to philosophy theoretical physics actually is. Never too late to learn?
Long story short, most schools will not inspire kids. Try to do it at home.
I agree wholly with you. I still remember a few years ago, when the Bond movie, Quantum of Solace was released. Aimlessly bored, yet with a stint of curious, I typed 'quantum' in the Google search bar, wanting to know what it meant. Instead hitting enter for the dictionary result, the line 'Quantum Mechanics' caught my eye in the suggestions drop-bar.
Everything changed ever since.
This is what I keep saying!!! You don’t have to teach curiosity… All you have to do is NOT squash it 🙏🏾💯
As a child I remember seeing the Milky Way in the night sky. Not long ago, I returned to my home town to visit my sister. That night a storm blew through town and knocked out all the power. The town was bathed in starlight. The Milky Way could easily be seen as well as all other stars visible. Amazing. Wonder is possible for all, at any age.
Sad? I think this is a great thing. Debate brings along curiosity and answers! It's fantastic that these issues are debated, no matter the forum. Everyone coming together and the sharing of ideas.
Another insightful video!
Dr Tyson hit the nail on the head. Parents always restrict and dictate their kids actions. Every kid wants to explore, and appease their curiosity.
Great analogy. I remembering hearing that somewhere before, but I forget where.
Anyway it's very accurate.
Man, I wish I had someone like him as a dad growing up. I remember those days. When I was a kid I wasnt afraid of a single thing, I turned over rocks, caught worms and rolly polies, and picked up spiders and one time tried to jump out of thte boat into the water in San antonio. Then I was told to sit down and not to mess around in the mud, "children are to be seen not heard" kind of crap.
This opened my eyes, Neil if I ever have kids I'll let them explore everything that is around them.
This video actually reminded me of how I have been raised.
The do and don'ts that my parents always taught me.
great words to emulate good sir
I absolutely love what he said about what we teach our children to do. While I don't wish to have any children, if at one point I do, I wish to be a father with this kind of attitude.
Really good video bigthink! :D
"We spent the first years teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their life telling them to shut up and sit down."
Such a cool quote.
I think Tyson's take on child development is as refreshing as it is profound. By advocating parents to let children -just be children- goes beyond the norm and with great prospects! More often than not parents are either too scared for, or even embarrassed, of what their child is doing. I agree it's human nature for parents to look out for their cub, but I also agree it's human nature for parents to let them free roam without worrying about danger- something modern societies offer abundantly
Been there done that.
God bless you.
Thanks for the tips, all take your suggestions when im a parent all though I don't have to worry about that yet considering im 14 years old
Agreed. 90% of Atheism vs. Religion debates aren't even about the existence of god, they're about the definitions of words like "Atheist", "Agnostic" and "Religion."
Please read a dictionary before trying to argue on the internet. It would save us so much time to actually debate the important things, such as the evidence for and against the existence of god, rather than arbitrary definitions.
we always underestimate kids ... always and we were too, frustrating.
luckly i grew up between city and country, i would spend a all day very often until i was 12 in a farm with animals, digging tools, gardening tools, axes, sharp items, other tools and trees and food growing and my great grandmother with knowledge, i had fun on my own, i would run after birds ducks chicken etc, i dug 2 deep holes and connected with a tunnel covered one and that was my cave hehe.
now im 32 and i miss that.
as a child who did all those things, I totally agree.
Get dirty get germs, you're only better off in the long run.
I went to the NY Nat History museum this weekend. Saw Neil, but just on the monitor leading into the Hayden Planetarium.
This made me smile and feel good deep inside. Planting a few magnifying glasses around school gardens is also a fun endevour for kids to discover
"We spend the first year teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their lives to shut up and sit down" true on so many levels
I did that with my son with a magnifying glass. He plays with to this day and sees how things get bigger. Another thing he likes to do is look at the different colored tupperware lids and sees how things change colors when he looks through them. Binoculars are a good idea.
Thank you for the video, thumbs up.
From looking at this discussion so far, it seems to be that the argument is not really over the state of one's belief or knowledge of a deity, but is more so a grammar issue. From Lychanking's standing, he is pointing out that the word agnostic is an adverb in the sense that - per instruction of a dictionary- it is used in conjunction with another term to describe the state of someone/something. Under these terms, Lychanking is correct. However, DevilBringerDeath is coming from the...
point that the term agnostic is employed to describe "someone who neither believes nor disbelieves", a process that is quite common for words within the English language. This is predominantly an effect of social slang and under this principal, DevilBringerDeath is correct as well.
The best teacher I have ever had, is the internet.
It is still incredible to me that in such a short time, the internet has grown to be the greatest source of knowledge ever known to mankind. It is truly astonishing.
Thanks everyone.
Neil, you started my interest in science, for that i want to thank you!
More Neil deGrasse Tyson please! This man is a true legend of not only science but everything else in between! :)
I loved what he was discussing in this clip. Kids really do have great curiosity for all things! I was fortunate enough to get given a telescope from my parents as a child. And i took full advantage of it too, not so much now.
Well, that gave me some thoughts on what to get my nephew for his next birthday.
Because what happens in your mind can determine how you act upon receiving new evidence. So while it's true that the only thing that matters in the end are your actions, I think it's important to recognise that we are not yet ~at~ the end, and so what's happening in the minds of those still have can still have an impact in the physical world.
The statement is not ridiculous. As Neil put it in this video: Kids are born curious.
The internet currently offers an answer to any question you have, and many sources are objective (and you learn to weigh out opinions against eachother too)
I grew up with the internet. The very fact that I speak English as well as I do, is very much thanks to the internet. The internet also helped me find what interests me and choose to specialize in that what interests me...
don't underestimate the internet.
You sir appear to be one of few who are of at least some integrity on this cesspool of ignominious foolishness of a site (generally speaking).
I applaud you.
It is always useful to admit your vices and to give praise for where it's due.
How old is he?, I'm a game designer myself and only really started learning the skills once i finished high school, now i have a full time job and earn more than my parents do.
Its the inspiration that needs fostering when we are young. games can still do that.
rejecting a claim is the same as claiming it is false. "reject: to refuse to accept, consider, submit to" if you are refusing to accept it as true you only have two other options. Accept it as false or abstain from deciding either way which would make you neither.
What would it mean to answer true to both?
abstaining is not the same as rejecting a belief. it is to hold no position. rejecting a belief is a position.
I am hopeful that role-models like Neil deGrasse Tyson will foster a generation of scientific thinkers, and that these thinkers will advance the debates this generation is hung up on.
I'm also a city kid. Same city, actually, and we both have family roots in St. Kitts/Nevis. Rather than look up, I looked around. In the grass. In the water. In the trees. I encourage my grandchildren now to embrace and learn about nature. I put a bird feeder in my daughter's yard and track the species that show up. I pick up lizards and toads and encourage my grandson to come see them up close and touch them. Hopefully, at least one of my three grandchildren will grow up to be the nature and science geek that I am, at a minimum.
the truth is that Oxford's definition and Webster's defintion mean the same thing. Oxfords's is just more thorough and abstract(leading to misunderstandings) where-as webster's gets to the point.
Maybe this is the downside to the norm’s institutionalization; it may get society on the same page and moving in the same pace, but we’re sacrificing curiosity and individuality. It seems that in order for parents to foster great minds then they must know how to harness this sense of curiosity throughout a child’s development without impeding on their individuality, but still disciplining them enough that they can function in society. Great job, Tyson! I feel like I'm thinking big.
My parents taught me how to read when I was 2 (basically they let me play around with a magnetic alphabet and I loved it). Since there was nobody telling me what was cool to read and what wasn't, I devoured the encyclopedias in the house.
Yeah, kids learn a lot, and love to learn, if nobody around them tells them that they're supposed to do something else instead.
As the father of a VERY curious 6 year old girl, this man is speaking pure unmitigated truth!
My kids and I often got in trouble for some of the things that we did in the name of satisfying their curiosity and we did some pretty off the wall stuff when it came to science fairs and classes. They are 25 and 30 now and still have that exploratory mindset and if they can’t do their own experiments, they will research the heck out of the idea.
Kids need to learn how to learn but they have that instinct already hardwired into them if we can let society and preconceptions and rules just stay out of the way to let them learn on their own terms.
No one said they had to do it alone, guide them and show them how to learn safely. Teach them which situations are dangerous rather than simply banning the practice, which only furthers their curiosity and likeliness to attempt said dangerous act.
Good one
High school was the WORST thing to ever happen to me.
Very well said!
honest question. What makes you an agnostic and not an atheist and not a "believer". I'm always interested why people are on the fence so to say. is it as simple as you just don't claim to know what way or the other? or is it more than that?
"It's not possible to take neither side to a question wich gives you 2 options" yes you can it's called abstaining.
"Now i can be uncertain/don't know if x is true or false."
"Because of this i will believe x not to be true. Now look at my phrasing. I don't assert x to be false, i simply claim because x hasn't met it's burden of proof i can't assert x to be true."
To many people who discuss their "beliefs", belief is a matter of conviction. They believe in statements such as, "Brand X is cool."
Beliefs without solid convictions are expressed openly as thoughts, suspicions, hypotheses, etc..
Exactly. Not believing in any gods is NOT the same has believing in no gods. That's a VERY common misunderstanding.
One is rejecting a claim, the other is a claim on it's own.
Young kids will enjoy whatever you give them if you show them a reason to be interested in it. We gave my six year old cousin my old telescope and had her look at the moon, Venus, and Jupiter. She got much more entertainment out of that than she ever did from playing angry birds on my phone.
Well said
I don't think that he meant that just that leave some objects around that isnt horrendously dangerous and that will make them curious and that leads to being interestid in science
Neil is such an amazing speaker. I will never tire of his brilliance.
i never said they were mutually exclusive. You can be an agnostic without being theist or atheist. you can be atheist without being gnostic or agnostic. one deals with knowledge one deals with belief.
Abstaining: restraining oneself from doing something.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
I didn't mean it like that. A matter of fact, I specifically said earlier that gnosticism/agnosticism is a description word. I then followed saying that when people DO use these terms on their own, they USUALLY are referring to atheism. This was one of those moments.
There is also theist agnosticism. "The view of those who do not claim to know of the existence of any deity, but still believe in such an existence."