Ward, education outreach lead for the aeronautics research directorate at NASA Langley, speaks about NASA’s first Day of Education. Scientists and engineers began visiting grades K-12 in 16 school districts in Virginia on Oct. 8 and will continue through Thursday.
Why is it important for students to learn about science?
The United States in K-12 is one of the lowest-performing developed countries in the world for science, technology and math — science and math in particular. We’re not even in the top 10. We’re at the bottom of a list of like 20 or 25 nations. So it’s really important for people that know how important science and math are to communicate that to the kids, to the teachers so that they can understand that maybe they can contribute to this one day.
What are the goals behind the program?
Our basic motivation was to not only communicate about science and math but just what NASA does, because here we are in their backyard and they don’t know that we’re here or what we do. … But the other thing was to try and spark an interest in some of these kids to want to study science and math. A lot of our scientists and engineers have actually come from this local area, so they wanted to go back out to the schools that they had attended as a youth.
Why should kids be excited about careers in science?
When I’ve gone out to schools and I ask them what they want to be when they grow up, over half the kids want to be an entertainer or sports figure. The likelihood of them becoming a professional entertainer or professional sports figure is really slim, and so you really can’t tell them that, but you can give them other alternatives and say this is what else you might consider. – Anna Waugh
