Can We Try to Bridge the Gap by Widening It? by Doug Tibbett

On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to visit the Loudoun-county-based Curiosity Zone, a supplemental math and science service for children, and interview its founder. From what I gathered from their presentation and from group discussion, CZ proves to be another on a long list of promising but double-edged math and science reforms.

The motto of Curiosity Zone is “ever wonder?”–a dialogue that the business hopes to encourage in its students. At Curiosity Zone, instructors involve their students in a hands-on, scientific learning experience every week for 45 minutes. These classes are part of a thought-out “curriculum” and stack on top each other week after week for up to 8 years of instruction, starting at age 2. The purpose of the classes are to inspire a love in children for math and science inquiry at a very young age.

And you know what? It works.

Although almost all evidence is anecdotal (you can check it out on their site: http://www.curiosityzone.com/index.htm), our visit to the facility and our talk with the founder and an instructor validated its benefits in my mind. Aside from all of the What’s important is that they’re fulfilling their goals of interesting children in the sciences. And sure, the improved performance is a plus.

But, in education reform, everything seems to come in shades of grey with a shoddy transmission and no cup-holders. Our class discussion later brought to the surface some of our concerns regarding CZ. Notable topics included the “for profit-ness” of the organization and its clashings with public school curricula. Probably the most pressing of the issues discussed, however, was its relevance to EDUC 400’s objectives. By providing a service to children whose families can afford the lessons weekly in one of the wealthiest and highest performing counties in Virginia, Curiosity Zone regrettably does its share in widening the achievement gap.

Oddly, though, some of us (myself included) found ourselves saying that it might not be all bad. First of all, the founder did express her wish to create a non-profit, mobile arm of CZ to travel to low achieving schools in other areas. That might let the lower end play catch-up with Loudoun. And as for what CZ is already doing: inspiring younger students to look into the realms of math and science gives us more math and science graduates. Some of these grads (but not ‘all’ or even ‘most’) find themselves teaching at the end of their academic pursuits. This boosts quantity and quality of math and science teachers down the road… in theory. So can we try to bridge the gap by widening it?

Great. More inner moral and intellectual conflict. Just what I needed on Spring Break.