This week's idea

I am a bit Pinky and the Brain-ish in that I am usually hatching some plan or another, thinking up some grand idea. It is not usually to take over the world though. Sometimes it is a business idea, or something I think should be changed, or some problem I am trying to think of a solution to (like how to make home affairs work).

It is just what occupies my mind when I am doing things that don't require thought.

A classic example is a question a digsmate and I posed to each other a few years ago: If you were given oodles of money, maybe a hundred billion rand, and told to use it to fix the AIDS problem in South Africa... how would you spend it? What would you do? I thought about it a lot and we discussed it. And she eventually gave the best answer I have ever heard to a question like that. Her answer actually still informs my thinking on those sorts of issues today.

There is always something to keep ones mind busy. A few weeks ago it was the problem of young people leading purposefully reckless liefstyles because of the possibility of an AIDS grant. And people with AIDS not taking care of themselves so their CD4 counts drop low enough to get the grant. That is a scary thing, isn't it?!

Anyway, my idea for this week is on running a science enrichment class. I was helping a young man who is repeating matric. We were going over some science and maths. He didn't have a science teacher for matric - can you beat it! His teacher moved to work at the Department of Education, and the school never replaced him! Sheesh, useless.

We were chatting about Faraday's law and electromagnetism and what not. He is a smart kid, he catches things quickly, and he is an interested student... asks questions, is keen. A pleasure to help really.

Anyway, it got me thinking of this week's grand idea. Something I would really like to do is to start a science enrichment class. Maybe on Saturday mornings. For kids in Grade 11 or 12, who are pretty good at science and hoping to study science at university. But go to schools that aren't great.

It wouldn't be primarily school syllabus based, though we could do some things in line with the syllabus. We would just do all sorts of fun science things...
we could make electromagnets, muck around with electric circuits, we could have an astronomy evening, we could read some Richard Feynmann, we could do fun intro's to univsity work, go on outings to interesting sciency places, use excel to make pretty graphs, learn sume rudimentary computer programming, make mobius strips, that sort of thing.

Maybe for a group of five or so kids. When I am finished with this whole university thing myself, I think I will try and do it! :)