Why every child gets a research-grade microscope

Parents often ask whether our courses line up with the elementary science curriculum. They do — but of course we were never going to pitch them at the level of an elementary textbook. We upgrade, and upgrade, and upgrade again.

Over the years, plenty of people have come to us about franchising or opening branches. But operators used to the model of one teacher, one whiteboard, and you're in business tend to pull back the moment they hear the upfront cost — around a million NT dollars in hardware and teacher training alone.

We're equipment obsessives, and we simply can't accept a teaching model where several children share a single set of gear. Yes, it makes tuition more affordable. But that setup mostly just leads to kids squabbling and drifting off — and that isn't the classroom we want.

If we can't stand to look at it, we can't put it in front of a child

Not long ago we noticed that the resolution of our microscopes' digital eyepieces had fallen behind the 4K interactive display in the classroom — so on the spot we ordered a higher-end microscope and eyepiece online. There went a five-figure sum.

Some might think students can't even tell the difference — it's not as if we're filming for National Geographic. But we can't stand it. We're thin-skinned that way: if we can't bear to look at something ourselves, we honestly can't hand it to a child.

That kind of insistence seeps into every detail of every lesson:

• To teach the sun, earth, and moon, most classes use pictures or animations. We built a strikingly realistic moon by hand, and send every child home with their own sun–earth–moon model — so the moment they forget, the memory comes straight back.
• Volcano experiments are common, but we build the whole scene for the child: a plate lined with an ancient landscape and dinosaurs, and a full plaster volcano at the centre. The usual clay volcanoes turn to a sticky mush after a few washes; ours can be cleaned endlessly, and the lifelike texture pulls the child further into the scene.
• The large scale-model buildings, too, go home one per child. There is absolutely no dismantling-and-recycling at the end of class.

Take it seriously enough, and children feel it

After a lesson on the common forms of earthquake-resistant construction — base isolation, energy dissipation, tuned mass damping — the children immediately set about building sturdy houses of their own.

Once finished, each child places their model on the shake table. We shake it at a fixed intensity for thirty seconds, using a professional Vernier sensor to measure acceleration (accurate to six decimal places) along with the building's own oscillation frequency, and from that we work out the earthquake-resistance data for the child's design. The whole thing is done in deadly earnest.

Even if a child doesn't fully grasp the measurement principles behind it, they can clearly feel that what they're doing is something taken utterly seriously — and that they're being treated to an extraordinarily high standard. In the end, a few children's designs measured up as able to withstand a magnitude-seven quake. Remarkable.

One top-spec instrument per child costs a great deal, and the margin is thin indeed. But we would rather take a small loss than deny any child that experience of being taken seriously, there at their own microscope. That, in the end, is the classroom we want.