Criticism
Some people point to the process of elimination as a factor which may discourage students from taking further interest in the sciences. They claim that traditional science fairs, as well as programs like the Westinghouse Science Honors Institute, place too much focus on competition, a charge which science fair supporters answer by pointing to the real life competitive nature of awarding scientific grants and even the Nobel Prize.
A related source of criticism is the tendency for an inordinate amount of parental contribution to the projects, especially of winning projects. In the desire to see their children win the competition, many parents direct the children to choose projects far above a secondary student's capacity for understanding. Therefore, the parent or a connection of the parent with scientific or technical expertise will direct the development and execution of the project. Not only does this minimize the educational value of the project for the student, but also provides an unfair advantage to students whose parents have the technical connections and financial resources to invest in these projects.
Often, prizes in science fairs do not go to the best science, but to technology that is currently fashionable (green technology or health-related projects, for example). Judges often overcompensate for the possibility of parental involvement and downgrade advanced students who do work beyond what most of their peers are capable of.
Read more about this topic: Science Fair
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)