Young scientists - Let’s try to end apathy on education

The 50th BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition has opened. Last year 1,200 students submitted 550 projects and over 45,000 people visited the exhibition.

The competition began when UCD physics researchers Rev Dr Tom Burke and Dr Tony Scott noticed the American version of the event — science fairs — while studying in New Mexico. Since 1963 tens of thousands of starry-eyed students have participated in what has been an inspiring event. It has encouraged scholarship and shown students that they can, with the support of good, motivated teachers, compete with and often surpass the very best of their contemporaries from right around the world. The competition has also shown that science and its application can be extraordinarily engaging, relevant and most of all, fun.

But, despite all of those hugely positive results, the competition touches just a small minority of second-level students. This is not the fault of the competition but rather the unfortunate cultural fact that far too high a percentage of Irish children drift through school, only half interested and only vaguely aware of the opportunity they have been presented with — or indeed the consequences of not taking full advantage of that enviable opportunity. For far too many children school is a rite of passage to be endured rather than the enlivening opportunity of a lifetime.

Maybe it has ever been thus but today the stakes are so very high — and they get higher each year — that it may be time to try to spread the enthusiasm for learning, the curiosity around scholarship so evident at the RDS this week right across our school system and society in general. Imagine how powerful a catalyst it would be in so many young lives if just some of the passion so apparent at the Young Scientist exhibition was more common, more normal in our classrooms.

#BTYSTE Next week 1 project of 550 will win new perpetual trophy deisgned by Graphic Design Student Jowita Rogalska pic.twitter.com/FK1kIRcExZ

— Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (@StripeYSTE) January 3, 2014

Our education system, our exam structure, our teachers, and more or less everything that is the responsibility of the State, is usually blamed for less than optimal educational outcomes, but in this instance the hard truth may be less attractive. It is certainly far harder to overcome. Just as most of those students excelling at the RDS this week enjoy enthusiastic support from parents and teachers, most of those who waste their school years do not. This is not an educational problem but rather a social and a cultural one. After all, how can you convince a parent who feels society and the education system has failed them that the best opportunity for their children to escape poverty or lack of opportunity is to buy into that very system?

Education Minister Ruairí Quinn is about to introduce long overdue measures that will at last deal with poor, under-performing teachers so hopefully that issue can be put to bed.

No matter how daunting confronting this cultural disengagement, this talent-sapping apathy, this cycle of failure and poverty, may seem it is a challenge well worth the effort and investment. We have after all invested millions on far more spurious projects, ones with no prospect of changing lives for the better. And as the students in the RDS this week will prove, nothing succeeds like effort.