education

by Mina

The wonderful thing about writing is that the smallest thing can act as a spark. And the spark that led to this article was a WhatsApp conversation with a friend:

Me: Just reading one of my favourite “cheerful brain death” authors (who writes really well actually). One of the characters gets fired from a Conservative church public school in the US for letting his class read Harry Potter. When the character gets asked why he would want his class to read fantasy, he replies: “Because alternative universe literature promotes critical thinking, imagination, empathy, and creative problem solving. Children who are fluent in fiction are more able to interpret nonfiction and are better at understanding things like basic cause and effect, sociology, politics, and the impact of historical events on current events. Many of our technological advances were imagined by science fiction writers before the tech became available to create them, and many of today’s inventors were inspired by science fiction and fantasy to make a world more like the world in the story. Many of today’s political conundrums were anticipated by science fiction writers like Orwell, Huxley, and Heinlein, and sci-fi and fantasy tackle ethical problems in a way that allows people to analyse the problem with some emotional remove, which is important because the high emotions are often what lead to violence. Works like Harry Potter tackle the idea of abuse of power…” (Shiny! by Amy Lane). Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Friend X: I like “analyse problems with emotional remove” (i.e. distance or estrangement).

Me: I like “who are fluent in (science) fiction”. I wonder if it would be possible to write an article on reading SF and childhood development?

X: As a child raised on SF, I believe it’s an acceptable educational tool.

So what are the benefits of children who are fluent in SF? The article “Science Fiction builds children’s imagination” by Nikhil Jayadevan begins with a great quote attributed to Ray Bradbury: “Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science; the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction”. The article is short and not particularly ordered or deep, with the most interesting line being: “If children are encouraged to read sci-fi, they will be open to inventive problem-solving and exploring out-of-the-box solutions.” For example, we can think of authors who imagined technology that later became a reality: Jules Verne and submarines; ear pieces in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451; holography in Asimov’s The Naked Sun; advanced computers and AI in Star Trek, to name but a few. William F. Otto tells us: “It was Arthur C. Clarke who, in a 1945 letter to the editor of Wireless, suggested that geostationary satellites would be ideal for global communications. That attracted the military, but it ultimately revolutionized everything from logistics to weather forecasting, to delivery of entertainment on transoceanic flights.”

Personally, I would argue that SF (and sci-phi) teach children and teenagers a lot about ethics, sociology and politics through fictional “thought experiments”. In Fahrenheit 451, we see a world where censorship is taken to an extreme with the destruction of all books. In this world where television is a drug for the masses, reducing them to a mindless existence, books are subversive and “a loaded gun”. The author muses: “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.” The ignorant or uneducated are easily controlled. The protagonist comes to believe that, by destroying books, humanity has made it impossible to learn from the past. And a detail that is even more apposite today than when the book was written in 1954, before the in-universe burning of books began, they had already been abridged due to the shortening attention span of the population. My husband has found a website where he can read the synopsis of various books and need never read the books themselves. Wikipedia provides detailed plot summaries for many books and films. Study notes abound on the internet – why say what you think about Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale when you can quote someone else?

But let’s rewind a bit. I asked X what first astounded them, again by WhatsApp, as we both lead geographically challenged lives and they replied: “My father’s bookshelf of vintage (already at that time) Galaktika magazines and anthologies. They contained some of the best international SF… from USSR, China, France, Italy, USA. It’s that sense of wonder I’ve been yearning for ever since.” I, too, remember that sense of wonder that’s much harder to recapture as an adult.

I replied: “For me it was Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids lent to me by a wealthier classmate. I say wealthier because it was a hardback book – a luxury in my childhood universe. I made a book sleeve for it out of an old calendar to protect it while I read it. It boggles my mind just remembering with what reverence I treated that borrowed book. It blew my tiny island mind. The beginning is still one of the most gripping things I have ever read.” The thought that a mix of carelessness, greed and chance could destroy the world as we know it was totally new to me. It was the first book where I remember thinking outside the box I lived in and it was glorious. My further reading was limited to what was stocked by a small island library, but they did manage to have books by Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke and Wyndham. I became obsessed with Asimov’s robot stories and Bradbury’s Martian musings. They introduced me to the idea of artificial intelligence and thoughts, such as each civilisation contains the seeds of its own destruction. I have never studied philosophy or sociology but I feel that sci-phi gave me a bit of both.

Through SF and sci-phi (and arguably fantasy), children and teenagers get introduced to the complexities of adult universes and I am a firm believer that books, ezines and comics (think Moore and Lloyd’s V for Vendetta) encourage the development of abstract thought in a way films don’t. Readers can reflect on what society would look like if certain factors ruled a universe (without having to live it), the attraction of much utopian and dystopian SF. In her article on using SF in the classroom, Emily Midkiff states: “Not every child who hears a science fiction story will become a scientist, but science fiction is an opportunity for children to find that sense of wondrous possibility and to think critically about science, and these are benefits that you can incorporate into elementary and middle school science classrooms.” However, not just any old SF book will do, Midkiff advises teachers to “look for books that don’t just go on a fun adventure but also feature speculation or extrapolation.” It’s a good way to introduce students to science that isn’t yet possible but may become so one day in the not too distant future. Students are encouraged to be critical about ideas they meet in SF, to ask questions like: how far-fetched are they, do they build on current scientific knowledge, what are the sociological and ethical ramifications?

SF books can also be used to teach subjects other than pure science. One enterprising university professor describes how they used Ender’s Game to teach child development in their psychology classes. There’s a lot of violence and trauma in Ender’s childhood which is, unfortunately, not alien to a lot of children, and a wealth of topics that can be set as assignments for young university students. Professor Kirsch states: “the findings of this study… suggest that application assignments involving science-fiction novels like Ender’s Game are useful techniques for increasing students’ understanding of course material in psychology. Given that science-fiction novels raise a variety of interesting technical, biological, cultural, and social issues, teachers outside psychology may want to consider using this type of application assignment.” Whole articles have been written about how the portrayal of the android Data in Star Trek: Next Generation is helpful to those trying to understand autism, i.e. what a world would feel like without possessing empathy and always having to interpret reality and human relationships through intellect alone.

I asked another friend on WhatsApp about SF being used as a teaching tool and they reported on a computer game they played with their son that fit the bill:

I’ve been playing a brilliant game on the computer with my son called “Detroit: Become Human” – it’s set in 2038 and androids (which look the same as humans) are sold to help humans. Some of them start becoming self-aware or “deviant”. In the game you follow (or rather you are) three androids and you have to choose between different courses of action/things to say/ways to act, that are presented to you on screen, and the story unfolds depending on what you choose, with different outcomes. It’s brilliant! I said to my son that I thought it would be a really good way of teaching philosophy or ethics, but actually you could use the format to teach pretty much anything. The format would appeal (to say teens) more than necessarily the sci-fi element though.

As my friend quite rightly states, not everyone will engage with the SF element, a comment also made by Lindy A. Orthia in her survey on How does science fiction television shape fans’ relationship to science?: “the same television programme will not impact every viewer in the same way – and, importantly, many viewers will not be influenced at all.” However, the viewers who felt they had been influenced by the TV programme selected by Orthia for her survey, Dr Who, gave positive answers about the small and big ways in which the programme played a role in their lives. Orthia tells us: “most commonly, Dr Who prompted viewers to think more deeply or extensively about a science topic, by introducing them to new ideas and illustrating the consequences of particular scenarios.” Some participants felt the show had influenced their formal education choices either specifically, by encouraging them to study scientific fields (e.g. physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, computer science, environmental science and chemistry), or more generally, by encouraging them to study other disciplines (e.g. history, sociology and psychology). It led them to value education, knowledge, intelligence and curiosity, and to use more “evidence-based, logical, observational or empirical approaches to solving problems.” Overall, Dr Who was perceived as promoting “the positive value of science”, whilst also looking at the ethics of science. Most importantly, although the survey does not stress this, Dr Who is often watched by parents and children together, creating a fertile ground for discussion.

I agree with Midkiff that the best SF for teaching and learning purposes should involve speculation and/or extrapolation. Another friend mentioned the novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin as an excellent way to learn about game theory. I recently reviewed an anthology Tales of the United States Space Force which, although the title does not really reflect this, is a great introduction to the importance of satellites in our everyday lives: “access to space is critical not just to our national defence, but also to scientific research, communications, financial and economic information networks, public safety, and weather monitoring” (“The High Ground” by Henry Herz). The stories are varied and full of suspense but most share the basic premise of taking existing science in this domain and speculating and extrapolating, looking at disaster scenarios but also at new possibilities. I learned about things like the Kessler Syndrome (too much space debris leading to a cascade of collisions) and I can now throw LEO (low-Earth orbit) around with aplomb. It was a good anthology because it was fun but also thought-provoking, which is where SF becomes sci-phi.

If you are reading this, chances are you grew up reading, watching and listening to SF and sci-phi. Make a cup of tea or coffee, whatever your choice of poison is, and sit back and enjoy a few minutes reminiscing about the tales and worlds that made you stop and think, and remain part of your mental furniture today. Do you feel that they contributed in some way, however small, to the person you are today? Personally, I think sci-phi helped me to become a more flexible thinker and a more adventurous, even daring, person.

~

Bio:

Mina is a translator by day, an insomniac by night, and a magazine reviewer at Tangent Online in-between. Reading Asimov’s robot stories and Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids at age eleven may have permanently warped her view of the universe. She publishes essays in Sci Phi Journal as well as speculative “flash” fiction on sci-fi websites and hopes to work her way up to a novella or even a novel some day.