If attendance figures are anything to go by, the eighth annual Science Week Ireland is proving a resounding success. Still under way with a handful of events yet to take place next week, including Galway's science fair, thousands of students and adults have participated in the talks, presentations and shows included in this year's mix.
Waterford Institute of Technology has attracted more than 6,000 and Sligo Institute of Technology another 5,000. Events at University College Cork and the institutes in Carlow and Dundalk brought in another 11,000, mainly primary and secondary students. Thousands more attended libraries, universities, institutes and other venues that collectively delivered more than 350 Science Week events.
Science Week organisers, the Discover Science and Engineering (DSE) programme, are funded by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to foster student interest in the sciences and improve public understanding of the importance and value of research. The DSE targets primary pupils in particular during Science Week, acknowledgment that it may be too late to attract students to science after they reach secondary school. The task force charged by Government with finding ways to reverse the ongoing decline in the numbers of students taking science at Leaving and third level recommended support for science classes at primary level, and science now features on the primary curriculum.
This makes the DSE's role in society an important one given that the success of our economy is increasingly dependent on companies involved in science. Yet the DSE leads a hand-to-mouth existence, with its funding granted on a year-on-year basis. Its current budget is €1.5 million, and while DSE management confidently expects funding for 2005, this has yet to be announced. The Institution of Engineers of Ireland this week called in a pre-Budget submission for a doubling of the DSE's budget with its director general, Kevin Kernan, arguing that building science, engineering and technological competence resides at the heart of any realistic aspirations for the Republic becoming a knowledge society.
Some argue that the Science Week emphasis on "science is fun" as a means of attracting youngsters leads to disillusionment when students learn that science is also difficult. This is a limited perspective, however. The "fun" of Science Week may well provide the spark that will light up a lifelong interest in a young mind. A young person attending at Carlow or Sligo might go on, in time, to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences on the back of something that started as a bit of fun.