Creativity Drains of Science Fairs

I will have to admit that I was immediately pulled to science research competitions upon learning about them. The thought of furthering my interest in science through experimentation was like adventuring ever-further into that cave I previously only somewhat knew.

While in elementary school the fair was mostly for fun, high school was a complete different story. While not all fairs necessarily follow the standard competitive format, the International Science and Engineering Fair and its affiliates take the word "competition" to the next level. Essentially, students conduct research of some sort and present their findings to a panel of three to five judges. The judges then find a category winner (out of nearly 20 total entries) and these get considered for the very prestigious, international competition held in Phoenix.

However, in recent years it seems that the projects that actually make the final competition have a combination of two elements: heavy laboratory involvement and using topics with seemingly (and honestly, often) obscure names.

This is not to say that the projects making the international stage don't deserve it (and many of my friends who were lucky enough to reach Phoenix were pure geniuses). But what such a bias is producing is unhealthy competition.

When only one out of twenty candidates can win the competition, the others feel heavily pressured to "over-boast" their research, often through using "foreign" equipment and using simply different materials to carry out the same genre of experimentation. It has gotten to the point that many students themselves are not developing the research problem that they claim they have. While many of these students still perform the research, I would not be surprised if they feel like they are working under the shadow of somebody else's creativity.

It is true that the world needs scientists and engineers to thrive under the twenty-first century. However, the definition of both a scientist and an engineer involves or implies the word "creativity." While a knowledge of physical chemistry or general relativity is enough to understand research being performed, it is not enough to come up with new problems.

In my eyes, improvement has two parts: finding a problem and figuring out how to solve it. Ironically, before the STEM revolution overtaking American high schools, problems were readily found, but few could truly solve them. Now, the phenomenon has capsized: problems can be solved by more and more people, but a creativity crisis be being to engulf us: what are future problems that need to be solved?

That, in my eyes, is the key trait of many science research competitions that could soon become alarming in the near future. When scoping around the Delaware Valley Science Fair floor this past year, I was excited to see the research performed by high school students, but had a harder time searching for projects that truly solved a novel problem. Some went their creative ways in formulating experimental methods, but most were nonetheless solving a problem that the majority of the population knew existed.

Meanwhile, most other high-school "competitions" rely much more on the individual bettering himself rather than one-upping a foe. Take for example the Charlotte Huck Creative Writing competition: while undoubtedly extremely competitive, this form of competition is not apples to apples; it is apples to oranges. Writers develop their own personality and often have pride sharing their novel worldviews with others. Unlike research science, one-upping a memoir or soliloquy is quantitatively impossible; it is coming up with new ideas that spark interest and discussions that drives the students in the competition.

This is not to say that all winners of the Huck Writing competition go on to becoming world-renowned novelists. Somebody that graduated from my high school several years back was interested in both science and writing, but focused her "spike" on creative intuition, making the top 25 in the Huck competition. Today, she is a research biologist at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, often praised for her work on digging through the treasure chest of problems that encircle our inner-chemical interactions.

In all fairness, these science competitions (and all high school competitions, for that matter) do not stew up career paths; they shape the attitudes of students involved. Attitudes on competition, cooperation, and creativity are the real measures that define a society, and its students are the future generation that will shape the world.