It’s the local Australian Science Festival in Canberra, as well as National Science Week. In today’s Canberra Times there’s a picture of a CSIRO Double Helix Science Club educational demonstration in which a presenter is extracting methane from ‘a life-sized flatulent cow called Belching Buttercup’. I recognize the cow as my dear Daisy. Poor Daisy. She has been given makeshift ill-proportioned spotty hindquarters, and Double Helix stickers, and while it’s nice that she isn’t in storage and is kicking up her heels in a new life, I kind of wish she hadn’t become grist for the endless ‘kids will only get into science if they think its gee-whizz fun’ mill, and the tiresome and inaccurate ‘kids are only interested in fart jokes and icky smelly substances’ attitude:

“Belching Buttercup is a new edition (sic) to the show. The whole idea is to show kids climate change and greenhouse science in a fun way that they are going to remember. When you look at it, it may just be one long fart joke, but it is really a profound way for kids to remember about climate change and some of the ways they can solve it, and that is a really important message.”

So they should stop farting? Of course, there is nothing wrong with a good fart joke. But kids are generally wonderfully curious, interested in making sense of the world around them and how it works (maybe more than adults), and they make connections in novel ways because they are new to the world. I think it does them a disservice to expect that they will not be interested in anything unless it’s presented as a fart joke.