Mazal Tov!!!

2010 Middle School Science Fair Winners

So after all the skepticism, adult cynicism, and jaded pessimism of "product marketability" last night three elementary school students and six middle school students (pictured above) were rewarded with their well-deserved recognition and respective prizes.

But wait, there's more... just before the event formally began last night I was part of a meeting where at its conclusion I invited the attendees to come and visit the Invention Convention and Science Fair (most of the group were parents already planning to go on to the event but some were school leaders without participating children - so why not invite them to see these incredible creations).  One particular parent of two students in the Invention Convention openly joked about his children's inventions and how ridiculous they were.  Then another parent chimed in to not only agree but share the impracticality of his child's invention.

Again, I shared with these parents that this process is about our need to encourage creativity and innovation.  Even if the items aren't necessarily marketable and/or have serious logistical flaws the fact is that this process encourages children to identify a problem and consequently find a solution to the problem (i.e. become inventive).  

The beauty of the evening, beyond seeing the room full of hundreds of parents, relatives, guests, and friends asking the student inventors and scientists about their creations and hypotheses, was the fact that the initiating skeptic and loudest critic from the earlier meeting had to not only eat his words upon arriving at the event, but that he will now have to remember his cynicism every time he looks at his youngest child because she actually won one of the innovation prizes for creativity and inventiveness!

Yes, my friends, I could not have made up a better example of how often we potentially stifle our children's idealism and passion for naturally trying to solve the problem's and challenges around us.  Maybe we would be better served to let these young and "unjaded" minds take a serious stab at some of our global issues...who knows, maybe we would actually create a system to reduce global warming, possibly bring about world peace, and even maybe eliminate the threat of a nuclear armageddon all together???