I'm all for using something like this to teach a child, but I hope that the mother isn't also teaching the child that polling for results is a good way to come to a scientific consensus on something like that subject matter though.
I think my point was that most of the 'work' was probably not without parental help, and I think that a lot of the subject matter ('double planet', etc) may be over the head of a six-year-old. Though I may be under-estimating six-year-olds.
> I hope that the mother isn't also teaching the child that polling for results is a good way to come to a scientific consensus on something like that subject matter though.
A word means what people to use it to mean, so in this particular case, polling is an entirely reasonable method of deciding whether pluto is (or should be called) a planet.
Of course, if the kid was claiming that "evul-ution is wrong because all my friends at Oral Roberts Primary School say so"...
Generally, what your saying is probably correct. However, in scientific discourse, there are different definitions of words. E.g. the word "work" in science is force * distance (or the appropriate calculus version) but in regular discourse it means something else.
The mother was mentioned in the letter as taking the child to the museum. Somehow I latched onto that and created the idea that the child was being raised by a single mother (don't know why). It could equally be both parents or just a father 'leading the child astray.' The point I was trying to make was geared towards how the child is getting guidance and what kind as opposed to who was actually giving it.
[edit] Upon further reflection, I may have been projecting my own mother a bit but, the gist of what I was saying doesn't depend on who the parent is (mother/father/both) -- at least I didn't intend it that way, if that's how it comes across.
I think my point was that most of the 'work' was probably not without parental help, and I think that a lot of the subject matter ('double planet', etc) may be over the head of a six-year-old. Though I may be under-estimating six-year-olds.