Quote

We are really battling, today in the U.S., keeping science education in the forefront at the elementary level, and that's where the research shows that kids get interested.

Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent.

You can't train kids in a world where adults have no concept of what science literacy is. The adults are gonna squash the creativity that would manifest itself, because they're clueless about what it and why it matters. But science can always benefit from the more brains there are that are thinking about it - but that's true for any field.

One of the reasons I'm so passionate about science is that it wasn't correctly taught to me. I got excited at university.

We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.

Science is very cross-generational; you're not just aiming it at twentysomethings, or eightysomethings. Every town's got a really broad selection of people and age groups interested in science.

Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.

I believe we owe our young an education that captures the exhilarating drama of science.

When high school students ask to spend their afternoons and weekends in my laboratory, I am amazed: I didn't develop that kind of enthusiasm for science until I was 28 years old.