Adventures in Science: Interview with Elizabeth Drews

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Watson Davis: Our Adventures in Science guest today is Dr. Elizabeth Drews,

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Associate Professor of Education at Michigan State University.

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Dr. Drews, one of the problems in our civilization is to pick the people

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that can give the largest amount of contribution to our communities.

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That is, let them do the things they're best fitted to do.

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Now we have among our children a large number of people

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that are really well suited to do very interesting and important work.

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I think, perhaps, what do you call them, gifted children?

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Elizabeth Drews: Well that's what we call them sometimes

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or very superior, talented, all these words are acceptable I guess.

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Watson Davis: Well now, Dr. Drews, is the IQ still in good repute?

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Can you put it in terms of IQ,

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are you particularly interested in youngsters with IQ of more, what, 125?

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Elizabeth Drews: Well, going back to your other question about the IQ being in good repute,

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I think you'd have to say what IQ, because some are better than others,

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it depends on if you have an individual test, or a group test,

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whether it's carefully administered or carelessly,

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So, but if in general I suppose you could say if we want to pick out our superior group

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we'd be picking out people, oh, the top 5 percent,

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or perhaps if we're talking about the most gifted,

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although I was at Connotes Conference, the National Education Association in Washington,

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and there we were talking about a group called the Academically Talented,

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and we'd call them the top 15-20%, and I imagine they go down to about 120 IQ,

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whereas your top 5% would be your 130 IQ and above. Is that the sort of thing that--

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Watson Davis: Yes, precisely, now, we've been very in science service, with which I am connected Dr. Drews

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we've been very much interested in this talented group,

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'cause we operate the science talent search

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and for 17 years we've picked 300 of the top youngsters

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from the senior classes of the high schools as those who are most likely to go ahead

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and become the creative scientists of the future,

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we've had a good deal of success, but here in Michigan here,

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you've been doing a somewhat similar thing,

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you, I'd think you've been looking into the school records

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and you found some very gifted youngsters

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and you've been following them along, won't you tell us about it?

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Elizabeth Drews: What we've done is somewhat the same, not on as large a scale or perhaps been able to draw our lines quite so finely as you have,

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but about four years ago we went through 3,000 records

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and picked out the top one hundred and fifty children that we could find at that time and we've been following them for four years.

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One interesting thing, especially in relation to the boys, has been their movement towards choice of careers in science.

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At the present time, about half of this group are boys, the girls are just as smart as the boys by the way [[laughter]],

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but about the half of the group, the boys [[uhm]] are very much interested in science.

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In fact, last spring when we surveyed them, three-fours of these boys

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were saying that they wanted to become either scientists or engineers and the choices were sort of [[uhm]],

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sometimes both were being chosen and they weren't absolutely sure, but this was quite a number more than had chosen this as a career eight years ago.

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But the survey was before Sputnik.

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Watson Davis: How many of the--What are the ages of these--?

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Elizabeth Drews: Well at present, they're moving into the senior year in high school or are graduating right now,

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so that-- they are people ready to go to college. And another thing that interested us--

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so many people have been saying, "Well, lots of our bright children don't go to college or don't want to go to college.

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They aren't interested." But we didn't have a single boy in this group who didn't plan to go to college.

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And I think maybe only one or two girls out of the 150,

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and two-thirds of the boys were planning for graduate work.

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Now, this doesn't mean that they will all get there, because many of them come from very ordinary homes [[uhm]].

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Three-fours of their fathers are laborers, either skilled or unskilled, or lower level white collar jobs,

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so I don't know whether they'll get to college. They just want to go, that's all.

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Watson Davis: Well Dr. Drews, today I think that our civilization is set up actually so that these very bright children,

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these people that have very high motivation, will have a chance get to college.

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Our experience has been that--

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Watson Davis: Among the ones we've picked in the Science Talent Search, all of those practically that have a--

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that want to go to college and are fit for it do get scholarships and I think that'll be true with your group as well.

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Elizabeth Drews: Well we hope so [[laughs]], because they certainly are people who could make very good use of them. Very few of them ever have below a B minus grade,

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occasionally we get that low-- our low achievers, but that isn't a very low achievement.

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Watson Davis: Well I wanted to ask you and [[uhm]]-- and I have ideas on this too, Dr. Drews,

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but I'd like to know what your opinion is. Are these eggheads-- will you call-- are they called eggheads by their associates in school?

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Elizabeth Drews: Well, you know, I-I think there's a lot more acceptance of the intellectual

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and the egghead in our society, than perhaps some of the popular magazines have led us to believe.

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I have a feeling that some of the boys in our group are the outstanding football players,

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they're our class presidents. These children hold on an average two offices per child

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and we were looking at them and then comparing them with an average group with average ability,

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and these children who were only average held perhaps a half an office per child if that is possible [[laughs]].

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But this is the kind of thing that-- they do more of everything,

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they're better students, but they're also good athletes, they hold more offices, they read more books.

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They evidently have longer days than the rest of us [[laughs]]. Maybe they've found the secret of not sleeping or something.

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Watson Davis: Well that's true, these youngsters don't sleep. They work all hours, they get so enthusiastic then[[?]] they have fun you know?

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Science is synonymous with them for fun.

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Elizabeth Drews: Yes, I think there are probably some rather subtle differences between the ones that want to be scientists

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and the ones maybe who are [[uhm]] moving into the social science or public relation areas.

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This is one thing that we're hoping to study more thoroughly, but you may remember this article that Turman wrote a couple of years ago on "Are Scientists Different?"

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And perhaps they do have more fun in this quiet way, in the experimental way,

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than some of the others who are more active people that are out in social gatherings all the time. And I know it's dangerous to generalize

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that all of our children are holding offices, because I suppose some of our top scientists are not holding offices, maybe they're quiet.

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Watson Davis: Well your-your findings certainly parallel as I remembered the experience that we've had in charting up what these Science Talent Search winners do.

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What the top-- the finalists and the

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Watson Davis: Science Fairs, Come to the national science fairs, they're all very well-rounded people.

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They do engage in athletics, they're popular, and they really are carrying on a very well-rounded existence, and I think that's a very hopeful thing. Don't you, Doctor Drews?

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Elizabeth Drews: I do, and I've been interested in knowing what some of the things were that would produce these children, and whether we could do more to help more children to reach these levels.

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Although I said our gifted children are coming now more from the common people, and maybe terminus group, where they largely came from high-level professional-managerial groups, now universal education is reaching down as Hilgard said once "forgetting more cream out of the skim milk"

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but how could we get still more; are there things, for example, are these children coming from homes where there is a lot of intellectual stimulation? This is something we-some of our studies would seem to show that there are more books in the home

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parents are more interested in learning than they are perhaps in owning a white Cadillac, or belonging to a country club, as the case might be that the values held are just a little different and that this may be one of the things that...

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Watson Davis: Well either that's got to be provided by the home, or in some cases, it's got to be provided by an extraordinary teacher, or a friendship with a practicing scientist.

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For instance, in some cases, I remember the person who motivated a youngster to get into science was the local physician, in a relatively small town, where the physician is practically the only real scientist in the community.

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You see, with it being a very small place. So it seems to me that that kind of substitute- it does happen, in many of the homes, the father and the mother have these intellectual interests, or can acquire them, or encourage the youngster to have them, but it seems to me that...

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Watson Davis: We are now getting to the point where the whole community in many cases

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provides this incentive which will provide a great deal of impetus

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to have scientists for the future.

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Elizabeth Drews: And I think not only are we getting where a community could do this

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but we're getting where a community should do this.

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Reading an article like Russia's on the next 10,000 years

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and realizing that all of a sudden, man is so much in control of his environment

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and he is really the one who is taking over evolution,

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and i think providing the model or the image that the child can pattern after,

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if it isn't being done in the home, will have to be taken up by the community or the teachers

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so that we'll have an appropriate climate,

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we're trying something along that line and we hope we can continue.

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We, uh, one of our clubs, Civitan, which is a mens group

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similar to Rotary or something like this,

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has taken this group of bright children

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and have tried to find adults who are achieving

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in areas in which these students are interested.

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Practicing engineers, scientists, other people,

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and have given them opportunities to visit these men at their work,

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to go to their state meetings and also to visit some of the people on the campus

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so that perhaps we can artificially provide a model or two for some of them.

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Watson Davis: Well that kind of a pattern is being taking place throughout the country

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because we have over 150 science fair groups

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who have community organizations with a very large amount of participation,

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industrials, industrialists, these service club groups,

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the schools, and the colleges, the museums,

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the newspapers are all joining together to do this

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and they're doing exactly that throughout the country

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and I think that's one of the most hopeful things that's happening in this country of ours today

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is that these fairs, science fairs, which culminate in the spring

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are actually giving these youngsters a chance to have their questions answered

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and have the sudden motivation to allow them to go on

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and develop these very high talents that they do have.

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Elizabeth Drews: and it's interesting, too, although there has seemingly, it's been felt that there was a lot of ignorance about

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what scientists do, that scientists were queer and not quite human

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and yet when we have asked our bright children

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do they want to be scientists, yes, and do they know what scientists do, certainly

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they know. They can tell you exactly how many years of college

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it takes to be a nuclear physicist and just what kind of courses you're going to have to take.

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There's, this unclearness is not in the minds of this group of children.

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Perhaps we could take our children who are below average and

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ability and ask them about a scientist and come up with some very strange ideas

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not true of our top five, or then, or maybe even fifteen percent.

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They know and they identify with the so-called egghead

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if we want to call a scientist that.

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Watson Davis: Well, thank goodness for eggheads Dr. Drews.

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and I think this is a most encouraging report.

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that you give us from this experiment that you've undertaken over a period

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of years here in the Lansing region of Michigan.

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Thank yuo very much. Our Adventures in Science guest today

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has been Dr. Elizabeth Drews, Associate Professor of Education of Michigan State University.

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[silence]