Don't Blame the Children, and Why Your GP Won't Look You in the Eye

Hot off the press - and mediated, it must be said, by the none-too-reliable New Scientist (it always reads well until you try an article about your own specialism) - is the claim by Dutch researchers that shy children are keener on science and the tenuous corollary that shy children should be harded towards science. Their exuberant classmates, meanwhile, would be concentrating on history, languages and resilient materials ...

There are so many flaws in this argument that it's hard to know where to start. The children in the survey were 15, so whatever innate enthusiasm and aptitude they had for science (and at five I'll bet that was "lots" on both counts) was tempered by a decade of science teaching. Since much secondary science teaching in the UK - and I'll guess in Holland as well - consists of boring rote learning of facts, it's hardly a surprise, is it, that only the quiet, meticulous kids would make it through to fifteen with their enthusiasm intact.

One example of why this matters - doctors. That's the knee-tapping sort, not the laboratory coat wearing version. Medical schools by and large select on two grounds: (1) excellence, as measured by performance in school science exams and (2) people-like-us-ness, measured by being in a medical family, rugby position, middle class extracurricular activities, unpaid volunteering and all the other ways of keeping out the common oiks.

But I digress. If medical schools select students who are successful in school science, and success in school science is restricted to the introverts, what would you end up with? Why, a medical profession stuffed full of excellent scientists (well, people good at learning scientific facts, which is not quite the same thing) but who are useless at communication with humans.

Sound familiar? Well, the mother of a friend of mine is in hospital recovering from a fairly major operation. The consultant was by all accounts excellent and full of compassion (he hugged her as they took her into theatre, why I think is utterly charming) ... but what about the three doctors who came to her bedside, read her notes and talked about her for twenty minutes without having the courtesy even to say "Good morning", let alone explain who they were or what they were concerned about. Did they have the slightest idea what effect that might have on an elderly lady in a high dependency ward? Did they care?

Science and scientific understanding are far, far, far too important to reserve for the quiet kids. Don't give up on the extroverts, schools - teach them better.