I agree with the posters who have pointed out the importance of getting
youngsters excited about science. That's a basic issue that most would
agree is an important one. I guess the dilemma is about how to not
discourage them by firing off a stinging note about adding to the
noise on the net, while maintaining a (relatively) high signal-to-noise
ratio.
I think prefixing the header with STUDENT POST or some such is a
good idea, but I agree with the previous poster who stated it would be
difficult to enforce. As many (most?) of these seem to come thru a
teacher's email address, perhaps the teachers could be the
enforcers/screeners/"kind souls". As for the header, it would simply be a
matter of deleting them from the index (not all of us have a mechanism to
screen out messages that contain specified text).
Regarding the other option--a separate newsgroup/list--I know of
at least one attempt to create such a list. Deborah Colbern, at UCLA
(ibtidlc at mvs.oac.ucla.edu), has recently submitted a grant that would
create just such a group. She described the project in a poster at the
November 1993 Neuroscience meeting. She was calling it BEEM, but I don't
recall what it stands for. The idea was (in a nutshell) to create a group
where elementary school students can ask neuroscientists about the nervous
system.
AND A RELATED POINT--> Someone had mentioned Bioethics and had
linked it to this discussion (about students). I just thought I'd mention
the existence of a Biomedical Ethics discussion list (BIOMED-L) at
LISTSERV at VM1.NODAK.EDU.
-Steve
(PS: Is anyone else getting 3-4 copies of messages for the past several days?)
