Wading Through Complex Thoughts

Analyzing your way through complex situations is not easy. On a rainy day in 1972, I was in Lansing, Michigan with four rowdy children and challenged with keeping them from tearing the house apart. So, I started a science museum in my basement. At the time there were only twelve science centers in the United States. Exhibits were push-button displays that mixed chemicals and asked yes and no questions. Fanciful walk-through hearts on Oregon, descent in into the depths of a coal mine in Chicago, fighter jets, and locomotives in Philadelphia covered the floors. What they lacked were interactive activities that called on visitors to experiment and think. A white paper was written pointing fingers at how the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry was a pawn of corporate America.

Public education was also under attack for the way children were held hostage for hours each week. Being pinned to their seats and made to memorize historical facts and formulas was not the way to inspire minds to greatness.John Holt, Howard Gardner, Piaget, and A.S. Neil were among those promoting child-centered ways, age-appropriate ways of teaching.

The table-top exhibits built in the basement of my home with my son recognized that children were not little adults but instead were youngsters with unique ways of learning. Science, engineering, and psychology professors at Michigan State University contributed exhibits and guided me through the learning process. The scientific method became my platform for conceiving interactive displays. 

Scientists approach problems through a seven-step process: make an observation, ask a question, from a hypothesis or testable explanation, make a prediction based on the hypothesis, test the prediction, and use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions. It is the way research progresses.

This way of thinking made sense to me and today is embedded in my psyche as a way to tackle life’s problems and idiosyncrasies. When ASTC, the Association of Science and Technology Centers started, science centers exploded throughout the world. I suddenly had company and reached out to seven small museums, including OMSI and the Pacific Science Center to secure a National Science Foundation grant to study visitor interaction with displays that required them to solve problems. We built exhibits that traveled to each other’s sites. Our staffs met to study hands-on education philosophies and to critique how  we tackled interactive construction techniques. 

We, and the other science centers introduced visitors to computers, technological innovations, and discoveries in genetics, and bio-engineering. What we learned by experimenting with hands-on learning techniques, was incorporated into the teacher education and outreach programs. Our museums became a model for the free school movement. They were places where visitors moved freely through displays, learning in their own way, at their own pace.  

You might ask, why I am saying something about this now. I am still involved with the education of young children and am more concerned than ever. The reliance on the computer for teaching has gone ballistic. Children no longer see that moss prefers to grow on North-facing surfaces. They don’t know how to use a hammer and nails to build a birdhouse. They don’t know how to change the oil in their car or sew a seam that burst on a dress. They don’t have the patience to build a balloon-powered card using cardboard and bottle caps to see how far it will go. They are too hyper to start a grow box and watch the way seeds turn into plants. They would rather play computer games than construct a solar oven to cook marshmallows while exploring thermal energy, reflection, and convection. 

All of our activities were designed to help young experimenters question and think. They require patience, dexterity, and a willingness to try and at times fail.  These are basic needs that adults as well as children need as they conduct their lives. 

When I moved to Oregon to run a science museum with greater resources, I was more determined than ever to show visitors how the scientific method is useful when tackling everyday problems. We built a new waterfront museum where people could satisfy their curiosity by conducting experiments on the floor of our exhibit halls. When designing Busy Town for young children, for example, we included a component for parents that focused them on observing their children so they could question their preconceived ideas about the way they learned.

As the world grapples with environmental change, economic challenges, and pandemics, we need clear minds, and a citizenry willing to dig into issues and think problems through. Analyzing these issues can be great fun if we put our heads to it. It calls for more feet on the ground stomping through communities and parks—putting more hands on binoculars, hammers, saws, needles, and thread as a complement to eyes on the computer screen. It requires reading, discussing, arguing, and coming to conclusions you are willing to test. The scientific method provides a way to proceed. Practice solving little problems so the large ones will fall into place.

For a behind-the-scene look at science centers and how they influenced education read Lives of Museum Junkies.

Art is always for sale. Check out my new cart-enabled website eichingerfineart.com to purchase the painting of OMSI or any other that tickles your fancy. 

Please share your thoughts below. What do you do when you escape the computer and remember that the physical world is filled with beauty?