Wearing o' the green?

Young children try out plant biology in scientist's lab

March 17, 1998 --- While grown-ups wore green on March 17, budding young scientists in a class of pre-schoolers at the University of Maryland's Center for Young Children (CYC) learned all about plants that are green. As part of a pilot science education project, these four-year-olds visited the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Arias, an assistant professor with the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute's (UMBI) Center for Agricultural Biotechnology (CAB).

In cooperation with the teachers and faculty at the CYC, Arias developed an entertaining and informative program for the children. They got a chance to see how real scientists work, do some hands-on experiments themselves, and watch special computer graphics developed with the Advanced Visualization Lab, the University Non-Print Media Center, and other resources on campus at the University of Maryland College Park.

Arias, whose own son, Daniel, is in the class, spent the past few weeks getting the children started conducting their own experiments. The experiments focus on plant growth, something easy to understand. Specifically, they've been exploring topics like sugar storage and where sugar comes from in plants, water movement, and tropisms, that is, "automatic" movements in response to stimuli.

One activity, for example, involved placing tubes capped with different colored plastic wrap filters over seedlings and taking measurements to see whether the color of light that passes through the tube tops affects the rate or direction of a plant's growth. Other interactive activities during their lab visit entailed feeding large Venus flytraps to observe what behavior or movement a living plant is capable of doing, and conducting a simple staining test that shows how molecules such as starch move throughout a plant.

"This is a pilot project to showcase experimental efforts about issues in educating children about plants, a step beyond what they might learn empirically in their own gardens," Arias said. "I want this program to create a foundation for sustained educational efforts, at least in the Beltway communities, and to include an appreciation for research at CAB and what CAB scientists do."

Children often are more computer-friendly than their parents, Arias noted. He's using a mix of learning methods -- computer graphics and time lapse video, questions and answers about the children's own observations, and hands-on experiments -- to reinforce the program content about plant biology.

Arias is betting his own energy and time that he can get the youngsters enthusiastic about science, and perhaps their parents as well. He's looking toward what the young scientists-in-training will say when they go home.

"Parents are attentive to their kids," he notes. "It's a way to get the new generation to think about these things, and to stimulate their thinking about both the positive aspects of science and also what things shouldn't be done. Science needs people, not papers, to go into communities. It's like a 'your house is my house' approach, literally, since the public is paying the bill for science."

Professional scientific societies do little to reach out to non-scientist publics, Arias said. Their focus is on doing science and applying for grants, which leaves little time for many scientists to pay attention to the community relations side of what they do. Consequently, many scientists don't understand how the public perceives science, he pointed out, often from how science is portrayed in the mass media.

Doing real science will demonstrate that science is fun and enjoyable, Arias said. Such direct involvement will help young people develop a lifelong interest that may help improve public perceptions of science and scientists.

Arias aims to offer this kind of program semi-annually or more often, perhaps even to create a whole "Biotech Day" program. Pending the success of this pilot project, he plans to repeat it later this year with other classes from the CYC.

An independent component of the University System of Maryland, the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute is a hub of intensive study into the science of biotechnology and its application to human health, the marine environment, agriculture, and protein engineering/structural biology. UMBI is dedicated to research, training and education, and economic development. The Center for Young Children is under the direction of the Institute for Child Study in the University of Maryland's Department of Human Development. It serves as a model of developmentally appropriate early childhood education.