Day 3: Borrow an Organ and Make Your Own Aux

I forgot to write my part of the blog yesterday, so I shall write it now. Yesterday, we went to UCSF (University of California San Francisco), which is known for its Medical School program. From Katherine Nielson, we learned about the various social justice programs that UCSF offers, including a huge science fair hosted at AT&T park, its open lab kits and equipment (including human brains, hearts, skeletons, and science kits) for all to borrow, and programs that help professors learn to teach science material. In our post-visit discussion, we debated about the accessibility of programs offered by UCSF. One group mate mentioned, “I wished I had known about this lab!” Our group mate grew up in San Francisco, but had never heard of the open laboratory.

We also visited the Mission Science Workshop. Dan Sudran spoke to us about how his makerspace gave opportunity to local students to explore their scientific curiosity and have hands-on experiences that would improve their quality of life. For example, we constructed a box for a magnet demo, created aux cords (to keep), and helped clean bones. I believe that the Mission Science Workshop is an especially valuable workshop, as it is accessible to low-income neighborhoods as Mission, which contrasted with museums such as the Exploratorium, which had high costs and were located in wealthy areas. Dan specifically chose low-income neighborhoods to have a direct impact. However, I am skeptical about the uses of such a workshop. Would these workshops really inspire students to pursue STEM, and reach higher education, and more importantly attain high-income jobs. That does not seem to be the goal for the Mission Science Workshop, which raises the question of whether the goal of science outreach programs should be to give opportunity to low-income students, or to bring low-income students out of the low-income trap-of-an-environment. Furthermore, I believe that the vocational direction a child chooses is heavily influenced by the child’s environment and parents. So, if a child is so influenced by other pressures such as doing chores and earning money, then how does the child have the time and energy to pursue passions in science? I believe this is beyond the scope of the Mission Science Workshop, but are issues that are important to solving this issue. Social issues are hard.