Science week drew to a close this weekend with a range of family events in venues around the State. Organised by Forfβs under the Government's Science Technology and Innovation Awareness Programme, its mission is to promote greater public understanding of science. It seeks to demystify the subject by staging more than 150 public events including talks, displays and family "fundays". A particular feature of this year's programme was last Tuesday's Primary Science Day. Pupils in 3,200 schools used special education packs which provided lessons in magnetism. The packs included magnets, workbooks and experiments, all meant to bring science directly into the primary curriculum.
The Programme is there to promote awareness of science but it has a more practical role, one perhaps more important to our future economic well being. It seeks to attract into careers in the sciences some of those same children who played last Tuesday with the colourful magnets. The number taking science in the Leaving and at Third Level has plummeted and this decline shows no sign of halting. If this trend is not reversed then the Republic will lack the intellectual resources necessary to participate as an originator in the knowledge based industries
Physics and chemistry have long struggled with a reputation of being tedious and difficult and yet these sciences are at the root of our modern lifestyles replete with the many things we take for granted. Technology can always be bought in from abroad but this means that we can never reap the economic benefits of its creation or gain nationally from the employment that the translation of research into new products can bring.
Will an opportunity to play with a few magnets on a school desk help to bring this about? Not in itself, although it might spark the imaginations of a few. Rather, what is needed is concerted Government action to make science a real subject in our schools. State investment to improve science labs and facilities in our schools is underway but more is needed and quickly to improve access to experimental work. Science needs to be more deeply embedded in the primary curriculum. Pupils at all levels must have the chance to experience it first hand.