Education

"Science is not a textbook. It is your life"

Christina Scott

South Africa's annual National Science Week, organised by the Department of Science and Technology and implemented by the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement in all nine provinces, has come and gone. Does this mean we can now go back to believing that the earth is flat, and that the laws of physics do not apply to BMWs travelling at twice the speed limit in the rain?

No, says Brian "Bugs" Wilmot, director of the national science festival, the
week-long Sasol SciFest in Grahamstown. SciFest, a public/private
partnership sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology and major South African companies, happens once a year at the end of March - but the SciFestinos promote science all 365 days a year.

"Ignoring the need to promote science would be criminal," says Wilmot.
"Without it, we will damn South Africa to being yet another 'begging-bowl'
state totally depend on the charity of those countries which have science,
engineering and technology underpinning their economies."

To that end, SciFest sent out a team of multilingual volunteers to remote
high schools in the Eastern Cape throughout much of National Science Week. The volunteers included commerce student Hlalelani Ringani, arts student Vicky Ngaka, chemistry graduate Zandile Makina and computer science postgraduate student Kevin Glass, all from Rhodes University, as well as SciFest staffers Wendy Fourie and Tina Moss.

"It was an eye-opener," confided 22-year-old Hlalelani Ringani, who hails
from the tiny village of Riverplaats in the Limpopo province. "In one
school, the grade nines couldn't use a pair of scissors, let alone glue. The
lack of motor skills was a shock."

The team visited schools in Bathurst, Bisho, King William's Town, Cintsa
East and Alicedale. The varsity students were surprised to discover how
bad - and how boring - classroom science can be. Ironically, the theme for
this year's National Science Week was "Tomorrow's Science & Technology is in our Youth's Hands." If so, we may be in trouble.

"In one school, grade 11s were doing photosynthesis, which is usually done
in much earlier grades - and they had no clue what it was!" remarked
Hlalelani, who at the age of 22 wasn't much older than some of the students she was teaching.

Although her mother tongue is Shangaan, Hlalelani speaks enough Xhosa to
communicate with the teenagers. Bridging both age and linguistic dividies,
the young SciFest team inspired hundreds of children in one brief National
Science Week. "They learnt that science is not a textbook. You can apply it to your life. They must not think that because the textbook is boring that
science is boring," she concluded.

South Africa has far to go. Other countries in the developing world have had a sixty-year head start. "The finest example of a country that has  developed a culture of science is India," argues Wilmot. He points out that Indian freedom-fighters, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, turned their attention to creating science museums as early as the 1940s.

"Developing a national culture of science from scratch is a slow process but
the benefits for India are plain to see. It is now at the global forefront
in information technology," Wilmot notes. 

Using India's experience and expertise during National Science Week was the Cape Town-based nuclear research centre and cancer hospital known as iThemba LABS, which falls under the National Research Foundation (NRF).

They imported popular Indian educator Arvind Gupta, who scavenges through odds and ends to create inexpensive science toys, to run workshops (many sold out) for teachers and students.

National Science Week might be a drop in the ocean, according to iThemba's Ginny Stone, who managed science and technology awareness for the world-class nuclear physics outfit, but then that's also how oceans are formed: drop by painstaking drop.

"A National Science Week makes everybody focus on science - a little bit,
anyway - and it gives schools opportunity to do free science stuff," Ginny
says. Can the public outreach impact be measured? "Not really," she admits, but adds "other countries have decent science teachers and don't
probably need to do the outreach so much!"

Cynics would argue that unless the impact can be tracked, something like a
National Science Week is an annual waste of the taxpayers' money. The people working on the ground disagree. "Never say die," says Ginny Stone.
"We can never do enough because we have an enormous need - primarily
economic - to develop a 'culture of science' in South Africa," responds
Brian Wilmot.

So for science promoters, it's a case of "National Science Week has ended.
Once more into the breach, dear friends!"

- Christina Scott also writes for www.scidev.net

More information:

Sasol  SciFest  launches a national tour in October with American astronomer Eric Wilcots. 

iThemba LABS, holds an open day in Cape Town on the last Wednesday of every month. To book, phone 021 8431000. 

South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement for more information on National Science Week and a list of science related activities and competitions planned in South Africa this year.

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