Getting kids interested in bioinformatics, part II

Back in December I posted links to some online games which were designed to get kids interested in bioinformatics (in a roundabout way). Unfortunately, preliminary analysis of new research by the University of London's Institute of Education - via BBC News - shows that a little bit of Flash probably isn't going to cut it.

The research was prompted by the fall in numbers of British pupils taking science courses at school. Apparently the number of pupils taking maths has dropped by 22% between 1991 and 2004, while the number of pupils taking chemistry has dropped by 16%.

11,000 school children were asked for their views on science and scientists. Some of the statistics mentioned in the BBC report:

70% of 11-15 year olds said they did not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women"
80% think that scientists do "very important work"
70% think that scientists work "creatively and imaginatively"
40% think that scientists do "boring and repetitive work"

Reasons for not wanting to become a scientists included "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family" and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".

At first glance this all seems very depressing. Take a short break from, ahem, working creatively and imaginatively on your very important research to think about what the kids are saying, though, and you realise that: let's face it, it's all fair comment. The only place where the kids went wrong is that 70-80% of them think that the work we do as individual scientists (as opposed to science in general) is very important.

While you (probably) and I are contact-lens wearing *, attractive, normal human beings who maintain a strict separation between work and home and who never get depressed or tired about the many frustrations of a life in science, many other researchers aren't so lucky, as I'm sure you know. My wife works in genetics too, and on the odd occasions that I accompany her to her lab on the weekend while she does whatever wetlab people do with cells and flasks and things there are always, always other people there, toiling away. Even late at night. I'm pretty sure that this is normal for the field. Lab nights out confirm that the kids are right about scientists not always being normal, young and attractive, too (but then appearances are skin deep).

Anyway, I've no doubt that if you repeated this study and replaced "scientist" with "computer programmer" you'd get even more depressing results, but there's no shortage of comp sci graduates. I'd imagine that when applying for university kids go more on aptitude than public perception (though that's not to say that it doesn't count for anything).

Isn't the drop in kids taking hard science just down to pupils having more choice over what to learn? Certainly the list of vocational qualifications in British schools has expanded since my day. I only took biology because it meant I didn't have to do geography...

* This is not actually true, I do wear big glasses.