Hannah Emmanuele
A Teenager’s Promising New Test for Pancreatic Cancer
15 year old Jack Andraka discovered a cheap, quick and noninvasive way to detect pancreatic cancer, setting the stage for possibly eradicating the disease altogether. How could someone so young make such a remarkable discovery? To the astonishment of physicians and researchers, Jack used the internet to learn what he needed to know to solve this complex problem. Jack confesses there are a lot of people way smarter than him, but what he lacks in brains, he makes up for with insatiable curiosity. His parents deliberately cultivated Jack’s curiosity in science by setting up a lab in their basement and letting him free to experiment, play and discover. They subscribed to journals and had many conversations about his “work” taking Jack’s lead along the way. This experience is similar to the conditions Tony Wagner describes are necessary for “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.”
What would happen if we unleashed all our children’s passions and dreams at home and at school?
