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I am curious about what first got Dawkins started, and what he thinks it takes to give young people the interest, energy, enthusiasm, and agency that encourages them to be interested in science.   Oliver Sacks talks intimately about this in Uncle Tungsten.  I think he was raised in a similar social/intellectual milieu to Dawkins (though Sacks went off the rails pretty thoroughly in his young adulthood). 

As I recall, in Sacks case a visit to the London Natural History Museum figured prominently in fostering an interest in chemistry.  I suspect that it is easier for people to understand how exposure to dinosaur bones and gems can start a lifelong interest than it is for them to understand how the kind of caricature of science center exhibits does the same.  

Speaking of which, I am sharing a deeply inappropriate but scathingly funny and accurate link from the Onion.  WARNING...VERY INAPPROPRIATE IMAGES!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/robert-mapplethorpe-childrens-museum-celebrates-gr,31825/

Eric

On Mar 31, 2013, at 12:04 PM, Charles Carlson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> 
> 


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