Love and Science
When I was a nerdy lil thing some 50 years ago, I was madly in love with George Washington Carver.I imaged myself as Mrs. Terris Mae Washington Carver, cooking up sweet potatoes and reading books together with my hubbie in the shade of a big ole pecan tree.
I found out about George Washington Carver in one of my sweeps of the school library at Thompkins Elementary School where I went to hunt down books about “Negroes.” I discovered Harriet Tubman on one of those sweeps, and Langston Hughes, too.
In a book of black and white photos whose placement in an elementary school library full of little negroes could only have been an act of terrorism, I also discovered the ungodly practice of lynching.
But back to my first love, George. I learned that George Washington Carver discovered about a million things that could be made out of peanuts, and about a million more that could be made out of sweet potatoes. I learned that he practically, singlehandedly, saved southern agriculture after the great boll weevil infestation of the early 1920s.
I learned all of this without once thinking of him as a scientist. Somehow the books I read fifty years ago didn’t emphasize that.
“Of course he was a scientist," says my daughter. "Didn’t you see all those test tubes in the background of his pictures?” Maybe I didn’t know what a test tube was in those days, but it never dawned on me that he was a scientist.
I knew he was smart, but I pictured him holding a peanut to his forehead and saying, “Hummm.”
I wish I had known Carver was a scientist. That would have meant a lot to me. I think I would have viewed science from a different perspective. It would have made science more accessible.
I could have been a contender.
Labels: George Washington Carver, girls and science, urban youth and science
posted by Mother @ 12:54 PM
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