Dinos Teach Kids Science

I'm sending the tuition bills to Stephen Jay Gould. After, all, it was hearing me read aloud a charming essay of Gould's in The New York Times about his early love of dinosaurs that prompted my son, Brendan, to confide, "Daddy, I love dinosaurs, too. I wanna be a planeatologist when I grow up." Of course, some days it's a spaceman or a detective, but just as often his career goal at age 5 has something to do with dinosaurs. It's not entirely Gould's fault. Dinosaurs have been Brendan's obsession since his earliest days—an obsession he shares with a growing number of his peers. While dinosaurs have always held an attraction for kids, today's kids seem to live and breathe dinosaurs. We have more dinosaur paraphernalia than we do dollars by a long shot. The collection includes numerous dinosaur models (including some high-priced ones from the British Museum), a set of four juice mugs (T-Rex is permanently reserved for Brendan), a T-shirt, baseball cap, and backpack, and a "dinosaur world" board game that seeks to educate as well as entertain (sample question: "What was the largest known meat-eater or carnivore of the Permian period?"). The bookshelf groans with tomes describing the beasts, and Brendan has become terribly sophisticated about their paleontology. He scorns the reprints of older guides that insist on Apatosaurus as a dull-witted, swamp-dwelling creature and on Diplodocus as the largest of the dinosaur family. He can intelligently discuss the physiological difference between carnivores and herbivores and will admit to being an omnivore himself (unless there's spinach on his plate). For his upcoming fifth birthday, he has ordered an all-dinosaur party (the decorations, not the guests) and so we've laid in a supply of dinosaur cups, balloons, napkins, and party favors. Music for the event will come from an album called "Dinosaur Rock" ("Dinosaurs are strong and scary/big animals who are not very hairy."). The mail order kids' catalogs, always heavy larded with dinosaur stuff, lately have included little else, and Brendan has already added nightlights, water pistols and sunglasses to his wish list. His preschool, always on the lookout for ways to bring science home to the kids, recently spent two weeks studying the things and so the house is adorned with numerous fingerpainted Apatosaurus, Pterodactyls and so forth. They even made "fossils " out of plaster of paris. He and his buddies regularly take the roles of their favorite dinosaurs to terrorize the girls, who often seem to lack the chromosome for dinosaur worship. One could ponder at length about the attraction of kids (especially little boys) for dinosaurs. The leading theory in our household is that little boys are attracted to these huge, powerful beasts who could rampage at will, devouring all in their paths without guilt or fear of punishment. Preschoolers who are constantly reminded not to assault the table lamps or use the sofa as a trampoline are just naturally drawn to an awesome beast who could have used the sofa for a prehistoric Reebok. Whatever the reason, it is clear that kids love dinos and that the same love that led Gould into science may well lead at least some of today's dinosaur-intensive kids along the same path. And that's good news for dinosaur paleontology in particular and science in general. There's a broad base of future citizens out there who not only may personally participate in science, but who will surely help make decisions on how science is funded. Today's dinosaur-madness also points up the value of popularizing science. As Hammond and Dodson point out, there are perils to popularization. Scientific misinformation is worse than no information at all. And clearly it is up to museums, and to all the scientific community, to make sure that the information dispensed to the public (especially such a young public) is the best. Still, the museums and others who have cashed in on the dinosaur craze with their T-shirts and whatnot are performing a valuable public service. They're helping sensitize a new generation to the wonders of scientific discovery. Byrne, who admits to a fondness for Stegosaurus, is on the staff of The Scientist.

Dinos Teach Kids Science

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