Today my daughter and I gave an astronomy presentation to three classrooms of 3rd grade students at a local elementary school. This equals about 90 students.
The presentation went fine… since it was third graders we decided to give three demonstrations of the topic (sizes and distances in the solar system) rather than give a powerpoint presentation. This worked out well. We did a scale model of the earth-moon system, a scale model of the solar system (on a 15 foot long roll of paper towel) and a demonstration of why the textbooks give an incorrect impression of how close everything is (they have to, otherwise they'd run out of paper!)
At the end of the demonstrations we did a question-and-answer period, which I thoroughly enjoy every time I do it. There are some smart kids out there, asking very sharp questions!
However, I was dismayed when one of the kids asked about 2012.
I seriously thought I could get away without talking about my least favorite topic for one afternoon, but it was not to be. Without going into a lot of detail, I managed to convey that there was no evidence for anything like the doomsayers were claiming, and that many of them were doing it for money.
When people ask me why I'm so emotional about 2012, why it makes me angry, I explain to them what the 2012ers are doing to kids that they don't even know. It is also interesting to watch some 2012ers try to explain to us why exactly they feel that scaring kids is fun… I have to assume it is fun, because I'm also assured by some that they are not doing it for money, which is my basic assertion.
"Do you ever think about things you do think about?" - Henry Drummond to Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind