Bringing science education to the incarcerated

In a world filled with misinformation, geophysicist Philip Heron is on a mission to share the benefits of critical thinking.

He is founder of a program called Think Like a Scientist, which he pioneered in the U.K., and has now brought to Canada.

It’s a brief course — only seven weeks long — that he’s taught in schools, but more surprisingly in prisons.

And for some of those who’ve experienced the program, it’s been life-changing.

Dalton Harrison, a former participant who attended the first program session offered in a prison, is now completing a masters degree in criminology.

“When I got out, [Phil] contacted me to do a talk at Durham University … and that was my first ever talk,” said Harrison. “That moment changed my life. Standing in the front of that lecture hall, in a life I never dreamed was possible … that made me want to keep going in academia.” 

As a day job, Heron teaches in the department of physical and environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, and runs this program in the summer, including at a number of Canadian prisons. 

He says he designed the Think Like a Scientist to teach the scientific method to those who don’t necessarily see themselves as students of science, including people who have been incarcerated.

The importance of failure

Heron says one of his aims is to help people understand that failure — in life, as in science — can be a pathway to success.

Heron says that many people in prison have had negative experiences with traditional education methods for a variety of reasons, including learning differences, race, gender, class or neurodiversity. So he avoids structuring his program like a traditional classroom, and instead encourages conversation about the topic he is presenting.

Some of the topics explored are climate change, earthquakes, robotics, space mission and the science of sleep. One of the key points in this course is the idea of embracing failure. Heron says this is a fundamental part of the scientific process.

“Behind the scenes, scientists fail so often that it’s just commonplace,” Heron told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. “And really what I want to teach the students in prison, as well as to students at the University of Toronto, [is] that failure is part of the process and it’s something that should be accepted.”

“We don’t just fail and stop, we fail and move forward.”

In part of his curriculum about space exploration, Heron shares a quote from Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques about managing mental health in space, given that when conflict arises, there’s nowhere to go and you’re far away from the people you love.

“After I finish …the whole room is like, ‘that’s prison! Throw in terrible food and you’ve got prison. I could be an astronaut!'”

Opening new possibilities for the incarcerated

Some of Heron’s former students in the U.K., such as Phoenix Griffin, say they were so inspired by the course they have gone to pursue academic careers of their own. 

“The biggest thing I took away from it was the confidence to try new things,” said Griffin, who is now out of prison and in her third year of university.

“It just gave me a new way of thinking. You learn from your mistakes so if you get it wrong it’s fine. So that was really big for me.”