The skill set that best empowers future scientists must surely begin development at an early age. Are there ways to ensure these skills take root?
There are times during every child’s life when he or she has an amazing opportunity to learn skills and process information in an almost magical way. However, when that window of opportunity closes, the same information, the same skills, must be learned the hard way, if at all, through repetition and memorization. One such well known window is for learning language. Before the age of 6 or 7, a child can learn several languages effortlessly with enough exposure, while a teenager struggles to learn any second language.
When I developed Discover Magic – a curriculum for children 8 to 12 years old that is being taught in over 100 cities across the US, Canada, England, Australia and China – the goal was to help kids develop critical skill sets when it’s still easy for them to learn and integrate into their adult character. The Discover Magic program focuses on basic life skills including creativity, curiosity, listening, communicating, giving feedback, etc.
Magic requires children to interact and communicate effectively with others, it requires kids to imagine what others might be thinking, and it challenges them with how to think conceptually about magic trick methods and effects. At a time when society is reconstructing itself around devices that connect our children digitally with others, we have a greater need than ever to help them connect on a personal, human level that requires more eye contact, empathy, and personal interaction than swipes right or left.
Parents today instinctively understand the need to break their kids away from their near-obsessive focus on phones, tablets and gaming consoles and expose them to more human-to-human interactions and activities that teach skills for success as an adult, and perhaps as a scientist.
As a result, for what may be the first time ever, today’s younger generation seems to desperately need many of the very skill sets that are developed through the study and performance of magic, including curiosity, creativity, inquisitiveness, an openness to possibilities, a love for learning new things and “secrets,” interacting and communicating effectively in small group environments, etc.
Children, when exposed to these concepts at the right age, embrace them as acts of unthreatening discovery. But what about children who are not exposed to these things? We all know adults who are terrified to speak in public, because they never had a reason to speak in front of a group as children.
It’s easy to see the interpersonal and creative skills developed from a kid learning and practicing magic – and then performing in front of audiences – and how these skills can also help many scientists be more successful. While we like to in the end judge today’s scientists by their scientific breakthroughs, at the start of their careers many scientists are at a teaching university or college, and they need to be comfortable and effective in front of an audience. Many very brilliant young scientists are challenged connecting with today’s students, being comfortable and effective in presenting information, getting messages across, and teaching hard science skills and fact. Studying and practicing magic teaches many of the core communication and presentation skills that any exceptional teacher needs.
We know many people who loved magic as they were growing up, and because of their childhood performances, as adults they are comfortable, confident and poised in front of any group. The skills developed during those childhood windows of opportunity became resources they could count on throughout their lives.
There are even more subtle skills developed by magic that probably do more for a potential young scientist than you would imagine.
Three components in the study and performance of magic must surely serve the budding scientist well. The first is the realization that there are many different methods for creating the same effect; next is realizing the same methods can create many different effects; and finally, learning that one can work backwards from any desired effect to create a potentially new and unique method for creating that effect.
Magic turns this dynamic interplay between methods and outcomes into a fun and fascinating exercise that can be transferred to almost any other curiosity – or scientific pursuit – an active mind might be exposed to.
In my opinion – and considering the topic, I wish I could back this up with double blind studies – the same sort of correlation could be made between adult scientists and children who pursued magic as a hobby: That the roots of their key scientific skills were sewn during their joy-filled early days of discovering and performing magic.
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