Its a lazy afternoon and I was just thinking of how to encourage and motivate more and more middle school children to pursue science. I started surfing the internet to find out what are the STEM (Science, technology, Engineering and Maths) challenges that are available to our students in India in the middle school level and came across this video. Its about a 11-year old girl, Geetanjali Rao, who won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge in the US (2017) by designing a low-cost sensor to detect the level of lead poisioning in the city water. 11-year old – yes, you read that correct! That is an increbile feat for such a young child

I appreciate that not every child likes science nor should every child become a scientist. But, is it not necessary that we, as adults, give the children an avenue to figure out what they like. Hands-on approach to explore the behaviour of the world around us not only allows the children to retain and connect concepts better, it also allows them to apply their learning to make a better world. Time and again, it has been proven that the best innovations arise from countries (such as Sweden, Germany, Belgium and some states in the US) that focus on allowing the children to go beyond cirriculum and explore through unstructured teaching environments. At a time when we are trying to promote “Make in India”, isn’t it high time that we include STEM focused hands-on learning for children, where the focus shifts from scoring marks in exams to learning, retaining and applying fundamental concepts? Is it not high time that we realize that technology and innovation is much beyond coding, robotics and electronics alone? Isn’t it high time that we start encouraging and motivating the children before expecting results from them? Isn’t it high time that we have more avenues where the children can showcase their talent and contribute to our better future?  I should mention that I did come across some excellent initiatives by the Government to encourage STEM learning (such as the Atal Innovation mission)  a lot more is necessary. I feel that the first change has to come from us – The Parents. There needs to be a pardigm shift in what we expect from our children and what we want them to grow up as… We need to trust that our children can achieve much more if we just let them be…curious and inquisitive and full of dreams..