I listened to two beautiful interviews on BBC Life Scientific with Jane Goodall and Emma Bunce.

The first changed our view on chimpanzees and showed us that they have feelings, personality and can even make tools akin to humans. The second is the current president of the Royal Astronomical Society and is following a distinguished career in Planetary Science, studying the auroras of Jupiter among other things.

The first said that it was her mother who helped her get on this path by not scolding her as a young child when she took earthworms and earth in bed with her. Her mother, instead of criticising her, gently told her to take the earthworms back to their natural habitat where they can continue living. And when as a four-year-old she spent four hours in a hen-house to see from where the egg comes out and the whole household panicked so much that they called the police, her mother sat down to listen to this excited young girl explaining the wonder of that moment when the egg fell to the ground.

And in 1989 Emma Bunce, as a 14-year-old, saw on TV the flyby of Neptune by Voyager 2 and became mesmerised by the gas giants and realised she can have a job studying the planets.

So it was not the coaching for exams or a tailor-made syllabus to prepare one for work which motivated them to become leaders in science.

Let us not forget this when trying to let some science rub off onto our young.

 

Joe Portelli

Nadur