Philosophy

Biochemistry helps us answer life’s biggest questions.

Why Should Kids Learn Biochemistry?

Children are naturally curious about their world—and for a time, this window of curiosity is wide open, ready to take in anything and everything. Interests are sparked, core memories created, but only for a time. Eventually as learning becomes a chore and grades and stress take over a child’s academic life, that window begins to close.

Joyful and natural learning fades, and kids become preoccupied with other concerns, or worse, begin to avoid and dislike the “hard subjects”. Ironically, traditional schooling unknowing (or perhaps knowingly) deprives kids of enriched science learning during the elementary years, when that widow of curiosity is still open.

Unfortunately, this starves kids of the opportunity they naturally want—to understand how the world works. Then, to make up for years of lost time, high school crams hundreds of years of scientific discoveries into a few semesters of classes and culminates in advanced placement courses that often require intensive studying, tutoring, and knowledge of insider tips and tricks of how to outsmart the exams.

Wouldn’t it be more humane and productive to begin in depth science learning early in life, so that kids could grow up seeing the world like scientists and feeding their natural curiosity? As the heart of science, Biochemistry is unique for two reasons. First, it connects the physical sciences and the life sciences—it explains how non-living matter becomes alive, and therefore answers an enormous number of questions that curious kids will ask, and many that they would never think to ask. And second, biochemistry is, for some reason, the one subject that is almost completely neglected by school curriculum, especially in the early years.

Biochemistry explains the living world.

Not only does biochemistry give us the power to understand how a new medicine works, why a food is nutritious, how our eye reacts to light, or how a pollutant is a danger. Biochemistry is also beautiful. The molecules of life are stunning in their complexity, but are made of simple building blocks. If students are biochemically literate, molecules, no matter their scale, become an open book, and they can unlock their meaning, their design, and their connection to our lives.

Biochemistry Literacy allows students to engage in one of the most important but perhaps most neglected scientific fields, from an early age. This program has already produced a generation of “biochemical natives”, kids who have grown up thinking about the detailed molecular nature of the living world, and probably cannot recall ever having seen the world any other way. These are students who will not only get the high scores on their high school and college exams, they will also be the scientific innovators who will be working at a new level of understanding with a lifetime of experience already behind them. For them, the joy of learning never faded.