The best age for stimulating the sort of creative thinking that leads to scientific discoveries is under seven.
And, a first in Africa, The Unizul Early Childhood Development Science Centre is due to come on stream in September.
Unizul Science Director Derek Fish says that the link between music and maths may help produce scientists for the continent. According to research, if you are good at music, odds are that you are also good at mathematics and, by extension, science – often, an aptitude for the one implies an aptitude for the other. It was, after all, Pythagoras, the ancient Greek mathematician, who devised the octave scale upon which western music is based.
The octave scale, which bridges art and science, has a mathematical basis – that halving the length of a string raises the note produced, when plucked by one whole octave.
The economic success of countries relates directly to the number of mathematicians and scientists it produces, but South African students’ proficiency in maths and science is steadily declining. According to recent Timss (Trends in International Maths and Science Study) tables, despite having the 25th highest GDP in the world, South Africa now ranks below Botswana and Ghana when it comes to the quality of its maths and science teaching.
“This doesn’t augur well for future economic prosperity,” said Unizul Science Centre director Derek Fish, “especially in KZN where the problem is most acute.”
He added that perhaps South Africa’s profound musical talent could be tapped and transmuted into the scientific skills required by modern economies and then “ maybe, South Africa might be out there in the forefront of inventors, using, as Einstein would have had us, our imaginations and not just existing knowledge, to forge new frontiers in science”.
To put this theory to the test the Science Centre is backing the Unizulu Choral Society in a new project, initiated by the provincial department of tourism and recreation and organised by conductor Bhekani Buthelezi, to develop choirs in rural schools – and try to tap their natural abilities for maths and science too.
Key to the link will be Good Vibrations, a sight and sound show developed by Fish, on the science of sound. A whole range of musical instruments, from recorder to vuvuzela and nose-flute, already feature in the show whose section on the human voice will be developed for the purpose of this new project to appeal to choristers.
The Unizul Science Centre entertains some 30 000 schoolchildren a year, mostly from rural schools, in the hope of inducing a desire to study science and go on to become scientists. From September, when its new Early Childhood Development extension comes on stream, the centre will be open to children from three years, at which age creative thinking can still be easily stimulated. “This will be the first science centre in Africa aimed at very young children,” said Fish. - The Independent on Saturday