Kindling curiosity in children

The very tenet of science is not to accept generality, be persistent and look very carefully for exceptions. What made Albert Einstein and Henri Poincare think space and time were interwoven in ways that weren't thought of before, shattering the common people’s perception for thousands of years? What made these great people not accept what was commonly thought to be true and look at things differently? There is something common amongst all these men and women in science. They challenge tradition and received wisdom.

We need to encourage our children to question and embarrass us with such tendencies. Recently, there was a news report that a student who had barely passed college was offered an annual package of Rs 1.5 crore by a multinational company. While this is a fantastic achievement for the young man and something the parents and all of us to be proud of, for all we know the boy could have had a great talent in creative science too. The world might have lost a potential Nobel laureate.

Priorities

There will no doubt be pressure from this news on other young minds to pursue the route of qualifying for the highest salary. Money by itself cannot be ruled out as trivial, in fact, Maslow's hierarchy of needs tells us that social comparison features just above biological needs and quite below self-actualisation, a stage where one strives to excel in the field which one is passionate about for oneself.

Prof C N R Rao got the Bharat Ratna along with Sachin Tendulkar and hence came to be known in the non-scientific community, decades later in life than Sachin. While the latter is a well-known name in every household, the work of the former, one of the greatest scientists our country has produced is hardly given as an example to look up to by the common parent while advising their children.

Children are instead given the example of Indians earning millions in the IT industry. This can not be construed as understating the eminence of these great men who have brought credit to our country in the IT field. I wonder, however, if this is a coincidence that while we have such great Indians in these fields, we don't have similar numbers in science. We have some of the finest minds working in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institute of Technology etc but have we nurtured them enough at a young age? Most Nobel laureates have been awarded for work done earlier in their lives, in their twenties and thirties.

Parents make a difference, and there is no point in blaming anything else for this obvious lacuna. I have a grand nephew in his young teens, who was extraordinarily good in math and not just arithmetic. He figured out, hopefully without googling, the set of prime numbers was infinite. Later I found, he drifted to B Com with a goal to do CA. He will and perhaps do well in the qualifying exams. Even then, I feel sad that we might have lost a potential Ramanujan.

So, if your child shows passion for languages, literature or sports, let them be and encourage them in their choice. However, if they show an inclination toward science, please do not divert them to seemingly more lucrative fields. If it so happens that you liked science young in school or college yourself, introduce your children to the beauty of Physics — why gravity warps time and space, how mutation takes place in species, the law of uncertainty and several other surprises which await an inquisitive scientific mind.

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of minds to think, so said Albert Einstein. It is imperative that children should be encouraged both at home and in school to make this possible.