Primary Times teams up with Konnie Huq to ignite a passion for STEM subjects

Primary Times teams up with Konnie Huq to ignite a passion for STEM subjects in our children and to take inspiration from Cookie, the inquisitive hero of her new series of science-rich children’s story books. 

Konnie, we aim to get the nation’s children inspired by maths and science, why is it important for primary school aged children to take an interest?
If children are enthused by something at primary age and it strikes a chord with them, they will take it through with them for life. Primary years are when we shape and form and become the blueprint for who we will be as adults. It is a crucial time. By the time we are adults we have by and large already formed preferences, passions and our core values.

Is Cookie a character that children will be inspired by and try to emulate?
I hope so. She’s got a thirst for knowledge and I think that’s really important – wanting to find out more, and thinking it’s cool to be clever is good.

Why did you write story books with science themes?
We have a dearth in the UK of people going into the STEM professions, girls in particular but boys as well. And it just struck me that my parents, when they came over from Bangladesh in the 1960s, came here to give us a good education, and where they came from the revered professions were STEM – they wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer or an accountant. Over here it’s the other way around, with a focus on the media and being famous. But that’s only to do with cultural perceptions of what’s cool and what’s not, so I wanted to make a book where verything is a bit flipped.

Tell us more…
In the book there’s a character who’s into fashion and there’s a television presenter, but they aren’t necessarily the cool ones. I wanted to flip-reverse traditional thinking in the book. So, science is cool, hopefully in this book, and knowledge is cool. There’s a perception of education as geeky but actually surely knowledge is amazing.

Did you study STEM subjects?
Yes, I have science A levels. I always liked maths and science, and I always liked the arts as well. Often people think the two are mutually exclusive and I don’t think they are – even less so in society today. Anything you think of, for example, the smart phone you might be using today, is designed so stylishly, from its interface to the art used for the icons.

You can do jobs that intricately bind up arts and sciences, and tech is very different from what it was before because we are in such a progressive society. Without sciences we’d mstill be cavemen. We wouldn’t have houses, cars, phones, all of that is to do with science and maths, and being able to build and invent things.

How can we help children stay true to their passions for STEM if they feel a little bit nerdy about it?
Nerdy is cool! The more people that embrace that ethos, the better! People are too hung up on ’cool’ which by its very definition is naff!!!

And alternatively, can you help parents who struggle to enthuse their children about maths and science?
This can be done by relating science to everyday life. Just like Cookie says, without science we would have none of the progress in our society that we have to today. For example, when you realise that it’s thanks to maths that you know how much water can run through a pipe, at what rate, or how much electricity can flow through a wire without blowing things up. Without having maths to work all of these things our cars wouldn’t drive and planes wouldn’t stay in the sky – because it’s all to do with balancing equations and forces.
Who are your science heroes?
Ada Lovelace. An amazing woman, ahead of her time who worked with Charles Babbage on the first ever computer, which he believed would only ever be a number crunching machine. Ada had the foresight to see the potential beyond this, to see computers would be able to make music, pictures and have so many other applications; the basis of modern-day computing. She was way ahead of her time!

 

Cookie!...and the Most Annoying Boy in the World | RRP £10.99 | Piccadilly Press

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