Science Education Faltering in United States But Roosevelt Island Parents And Kids Making Extra Efforts To Learn Robotics & Computer Coding With Some Pizza Too - Will Spaceflight Be Next?

You Tube Video of Neil de Grasse Tyson On Science Education

A grim report from this October 26, 2010 New York Times editorial:

... the United States ranks 27th out of 29 wealthy countries in the proportion of college students with degrees in science or engineering, while the World Economic Forum ranked this country 48th out of 133 developed and developing nations in quality of math and science instruction....

On Roosevelt Island several concerned parents are trying to interest Roosevelt Island kids in the amazing world of science and technology every Thursday and Friday evening at the Roosevelt Island Youth Program.

 

 Image Of Frank Farance Teaching At Roosevelt Island Youth Program Robotics Class

A Roosevelt Island parent tells us about this great learning experience for kids:

Imagine a 6 year old child at the blackboard explaining how a robot sees colors, explaining it in terms of binary numbers and the logic structure to navigate. That’s the case, no joke.

The Roosevelt Island Kids Robotics Group has been meeting for several months with kids 6-12 years old. The children are of various backgrounds and maturities, and yet they treat each other as equals and teammates, each with a valuable contribution. With a 10 minute pizza break for the tummies, the two hour odyssey understanding the robot mind is then capped with each child’s one minute summary of the night. Often the insights are a short attempt to pass the ball to the next person, but periodically there’s a revelation, a true gem. By night’s end, the heads are weary and the imaginations have rebuilt computer code, and robot arms and legs, reviewed and discussed logic and all the minds have collected empirical data from running the robot. The bedroom ceilings will be covered in robots now..

“Did the robot change its stance?” “ Is it going to repeat the performance exactly the same?” “Does the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena really use Lego Robots like us?” are coursing the agile minds as they head to bed. Inspiring these thoughts is Yale-trained engineering expert Frank Farance, heretofore known as the RIRA President and weekly columnist for that much-awaited Main Street Wire column. Somehow after years of teaching robotics, Frank, aided by agile photographer and hobbyist Brian Dorfmann, has joined fledgling fun with fascinating fact, roboteers with reason, aspirants with algorithms.

Image Of Roosevelt Island Kids Learning About Science

Mssrs. Farance and Dorfmann’s ’s often hilarious antics and old yarns are a most effective way to the child imagination. They keep them laughing with a dash of humor here, a reminder of the Star Wars movie there, and Sponge Bob trivia only the most die-hard inside-baseball cartoon lover would remember. Frank is making the most arcane aspects of computer science into a pumpkin patch of science. By comparison, the classes our kids endure by day seem restrictive and elegiac march of facts and quizzes. “Can learning really be fun?”must cross their minds. But, alas the adults seem to have captured the little minds’ attention and kept them trained on learning robots for two hours. Two hours of eating candy might seem proportionally correct, but deux heures on robots?!? Yale must have had some psychology classes as well….

Maybe some time in the not so distant future the Roosevelt Island Science kids can try their hands and brains on building a spacecraft like this Brooklyn boy did with his dad.

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Wouldn't that be something?