Conclusion Looking Closer at “Kids Are Little Scientists”

Scholars working in childhood studies are quite often confronted by what I think of as the “cuteness problem.” American beliefs about childhood—“boys like trucks”; “kids are so innocent”; “children love candy”—seem ingrained enough to feel biological, exempt from cultural analysis; they are deeply appealing. The idea that “kids are little scientists” is one of these indelible tropes, a bit of twenty-first-century folk knowledge that pleases many people. Much of my own initial interest in this topic came from the inherent cuteness of the historical archive—the covers of chemistry sets, the space cadets in their helmets, the earnest “research reports” from science clubs. So I cannot much blame people who come up to me after I give a talk about chemistry sets and want to tell me anecdotes about their uncles blowing up their basements; it can be hard, indeed, to regard this history with an analytic eye....

Embryo Scientists

The Science Talent Search, started by the Westinghouse Corporation in 1942, aimed to identify and support the most scientifically talented young people in their senior classes. This chapter uses the archive of the Science Talent Search to argue that in the postwar years, the adults who ran the contest were invested in depicting scientifically interested young people as both “normal” and exceptional.

Science in the Basement

Companies selling chemistry sets expanded their offerings greatly in the years between World War I and World War II. In their marketing materials, the box design of the sets themselves, and the manuals included in the sets, companies articulated a vision of home science as a project pursued by boys in small groups, away from their mothers and sisters.

Wonder House

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the first children’s museum in the country, aimed its offerings at middle-class children who they saw as independent strivers. In discussing the types of science education available at their museum, the educators who ran the Brooklyn Children’s Museum showed how science education for boys in the early twentieth century was pitched at a higher level than the equivalent offerings for girls.

The Exploratorium and the Persistence of Innocent Science

San Francisco’s Exploratorium, founded in 1968, embodied a utopian vision of scientific thought. Its founder, Frank Oppenheimer, was a Peter Pan figure who helped publicize the museum’s image as a place where children and adults could escape the worries of modern life and return to the joys of pure perception. This chapter argues that the Exploratorium self-consciously stood as an alternative to a career-minded, nationalistic model of science education.

Space Cadets and Rocket Boys

After World War II, science-fiction authors found lucrative side gigs in writing fiction for young people. Before “young adult” books were a fixed category, authors like Robert Heinlein wrote stories about space for middle-grade readers, most of whom were male. This chapter looks at Heinlein’s juvenile fiction published by Scribner’s, and shows how his work reinforced a vision of scientific masculinity.

Introduction A Curious Century

In February 2012, President Barack Obama hosted a science fair in the White House, where he was photographed with a fourteen-year-old contributor to the fair, Joey Hudy of Phoenix, Arizona. One image of the event captured the commander in chief’s wide-eyed expression as he gleefully operated Hudy’s invention, the “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.” This image had an afterlife, circulating on Facebook and Twitter (@karinjr, with a link to a ...