Kids as inventors
At about the age of eight or nine, many children — boys and girls — develop a fascination with how things are made and want to become inventors themselves. They take things apart and put them back together again, just to see how they work and for the fun of it. They make blueprints of outlandish, Rube Goldberg-type gadgets. They fashion elaborate apparatuses to perform simple tasks. They rig artificial wings on their backs to turn themselves into birds. With sticks and chewing gum, they build things that make life easier around the house or the farm.
In the 1950s, when I grew up, American kids became obsessed with technology and dreamed up inventions that we were sure would exist in the world of the future. Flying cars were a big item. We showed off our proud inventions at Science Fairs in school.
Nowadays my brilliant 12-year old grandson Tolo thinks up amazing apps for smartphones and tablets.
I just stumbled across a news item that made me think about how inventive kids are. Die Welt ran a story about an 11-year old Vietnamese boy who not only came up with the idea of a floating backpack to save kids’ lives in his flood-prone part of the country, but also developed the prototype!
And now Save the Children and UNDP are distributing them so that children can continue to attend school during the rainy season.
Kids are innovators — all children have endless potential. We just need to let them fly. Or float…
