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Science Popularization Press 2007 edition
When I first came across this book, I thought it was a popular science book written by Marie Curie specifically for children (later readers please do not have such a misunderstanding). After opening it and reading it carefully, I realized that it was actually a very simple little book.
Let me explain briefly. In recent years, homeschooling—where parents teach their children independently at home—has emerged among China’s various forms of basic education. Families who choose this model are generally well-educated and often form collaborative groups, sharing educational resources and occasionally teaching other families’ children. While choosing this type of education for children clearly carries considerable risks, it also reflects the deep distrust many people feel towards current mainstream education systems, leading a small number of individuals to actively experiment with it.
This book, “Marie Curie’s Science Lessons: Marie Curie Teaches Children Physics,” faithfully records fragments of a similar educational experiment conducted a century ago. Dissatisfied with the state of education in France at the time, particularly science education, a group of French intellectuals wanted to do something about it, starting with their own children. Initiated and actively promoted by Marie Curie, this group of renowned naturalists and humanists established a two-year “collaborative class” for these children, with Marie Curie personally teaching the most basic physics lessons.
So, how did this two-time Nobel Prize winner, a leading scientist, teach physics to a group of children? We might be filled with fantasies, imagining that the scientist’s seemingly magical aura would instantly illuminate the entire classroom and brighten the hearts of all the children. However, based on the records in this little book, Marie Curie’s physics classes were surprisingly unremarkable, superficially no different from what any outstanding physics teacher would teach today. But was this truly the case? I guess I’ll leave it to the attentive reader to judge for themselves.
Originally, a hundred years later, we would have no way of knowing what Marie Curie’s classes were like. Thanks to a particularly attentive girl in this “cooperative class,” she took careful and detailed notes. Fortunately, these notes survived for many years until they were discovered, published, and eventually translated and introduced to China—into this small book.
So I say this is really a very simple little book, because it is just the physics class notes made by a thirteen or fourteen-year-old French girl. The girl, named Isabelle Chavana, grew up to become a chemical engineer, which was rare in that era.
However, I was still very moved when reading this simple little book. What moved me most was Madame Curie’s simplicity and her patience with children!
“A tree that can be embraced by two people grows from a tiny seed; a nine-story tower starts from a pile of earth; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
The A‑League was held in Beijing on March 19, 2010.
English
