Issue 15 September 2020 thebrilliantclub.org Your Breakfast Cereal or Molecules? + Academic essays on how emotions influence our financial behaviours and fighting inequality in education from Brilliant Club Scholars. 1 Vol. 1 No. 15, September 2020 This issue Updates Contents Introduction from The Brilliant Club Welcome to the latest edition of The Scholar! We are delighted to be celebrating the incredible work of pupils who have taken part in The Scholars Programme and Uni Pathways from schools across the UK. In this edition, you will find 30 outstanding assignments with course titles ranging from ‘We all want to change the world: Understanding social movements’ to ‘Black holes and the nature of spacetime’. This edition of The Scholar features some of the most impressive articles ever produced by pupils who have taken part in The Scholars Programme and Uni Pathways. The university-style 3 5 learning that pupils are exposed to on our programmes is Updates STEM Articles designed to provide pupils with the freedom to develop Introduction and welcome This term, we hear from scholars in the their own ideas and approaches. to The Scholar. science, technology, engineering and maths disciplines on subjects including possible cures Not only will this help pupils who go on to study at for neurodiseases, the conservation of the university, but we believe these are crucial skills to 4 develop in the adult world. The development of rhino, and the chemistry of a cupcake. The map above shows the locations of all pupils featured. Guest Article independent study skills and support with critical thinking Guest article from Lord Chris Smith, Master of provides young people with a platform to share their Pembroke College Cambridge. 35 ideas. We hope it will empower these young people to If you are a teacher who would like to find out how your Arts and Humanities Articles engage in debates that shape our world, whether they school can get involved with The Scholars Programme, The arts and humanities articles in this edition concern the psychology of our eating behaviour or we would love to hear from you! Please get in touch via explore subjects including creative writing, using archaeology to study the Middle Ages. this email address: [email protected]. the American Revolution, and conflicts The Brilliant Club is passionate about exposing pupils on between tenants in the fourteenth century. Do you want to recruit PhD subject experts to train as our programmes to these important aspects of university. teachers in your school? The Brilliant Club’s Researchers We hope that these projects encourage pupils to dig a In Schools programme is a unique teacher-training 61 little deeper into subjects that matter to them and to route for high-quality PhD graduates. The programme seek opportunities to make unique contributions to their recruits subject experts to train on Schools Direct and Social Science Articles fields. In doing so, pupils can change their own lives by Our social science scholars look at fighting work in nonselective state schools across England enriching them with opportunities for learning and being for EBacc subjects including Maths and Physics; inequality in education, international media & inspired by the topics they cover. This year, we had a politics and planning the future smart city. they work to promote education research, increase record number of nominations for The Scholar, so we subject expertise and champion university access. would like to say a huge congratulations to the pupils If your school is interested in finding out more about published in this edition and to the pupils who completed Researchers In Schools, get in touch with the team here: The Scholars Programme and Uni Pathways. All the pupils [email protected]. who graduate from the programmes should be very proud of themselves! On Page 4, we are delighted to have a guest article from Lord Chris Smith, Master of Pembroke College Cambridge. We would like to say a massive thank you to Lord Chris for taking the time to write his interesting perspective on the power of great teaching. 2 3 Vol. 1 No. 15, September 2020 Guest Article Symptoms STEM Symptoms are the result of your immune systems (Kurzgesagt, 2016) response to the infectious agent and The transformative power are similar to flu, which include: • Fever of great teaching • Chills Lord Chris Smith • Headache Master, Pembroke College Cambridge • Nausea and vomiting Design a strategy to help stop an • Muscle pain and fatigue outbreak of Malaria spreading When I was growing up – in Edinburgh – no-one from He quoted passages, he took books down from the through Franklin Village, and was my family had ever been to Cambridge or Oxford bookcase, he paced up and down, he crouched in there anything that could have Difficulty Controlling Spread of Malaria before. I was enormously excited to be encouraged his chair to give added emphasis, he spoke about The spread of malaria is particularly difficult to stop, as by my school to apply; I was also scared stiff; I had a how these poets created a revolution in English helped to prevent the outbreak to there are billions of mosquitos, who reproduce at high car-crash of an interview when I came to Pembroke thought and literature, about how they opened start with? rates, who carry the malarial parasite and are prolific in College for the first time; and I was overjoyed to be up our understanding of the power of the human late spring and especially after monsoons (Reisen, 1978). Year 7, Key Stage 3 offered a place, despite the interview, and to come imagination to transform our perception of the world However, many mosquitos are still found in abundance to make a start in this very new and strange world. around us. I came out of that room walking on air. Pupil: I. Russell-Turner during the dry weather and much research has been I really had very little idea of what to expect. But I School: Ixworth Free School, Suffolk undertaken to understand if this is due to mosquitos came, and I overcame all of my fears, and I had I went on in later years to write my PhD thesis on Supervised by: Dr C. Ley being dormant or migrating (Abamou et al., 2011). some of the best years of my life. Wordsworth and Coleridge. I was Chairman of the Tutor University: University of London Course Title: Disease Detectives Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere for fourteen years. I’m Ethnography provides in rural villages such as Franklin I came to Pembroke to study English. And there still its Honorary President. And it all goes back to that Introduction village, living conditions contribute to the high volume were two moments of exceptional teaching that afternoon in a room in New Court in Pembroke, with History of cases: stand out in my memory from those undergraduate Roy Park changing my world. The word malaria is Italian from ‘mala’, which means • Villagers live in close proximity. years. The first was the very first supervision that I ‘bad’ and ‘aria’, which means ‘air’; as it was believed • High population density in shared living spaces. had. “Supervisions” in Cambridge are the very close This surely is the transformative power of great it was caused by polluted air (Youngson, 1995). Malaria • A lack of cleanliness and drainage resulting in stagnant one-to-one or two-to-one teaching sessions that teaching. It can happen anywhere, in schools or is in fact caused by protozoan, called plasmodium water where mosquitos thrive (Vince, 2019). happen every week, organised by your College; Colleges or Universities. It depends on an inspirational (Vince, 2019) which is a single-celled parasitic organism, • Villagers frequently have bare feet and may not cover they complement and in many ways are more person and a readiness to be inspired. And one of the that eats tissue and is carried by the female Anopheles’ their arms; there is a lack of education and healthcare important than the more formal lectures organised reasons the work of The Brilliant Club is so important mosquito, who live around stagnant water (Youngson, (Malariamustdie.com, 2019). by the University. We were studying “medieval is that it is all about opening up these possibilities to 1995). romance” – in a language and with material that the widest range of students. Giving anyone, from In addition, villagers may choose to not adapt to was very strange – and as we settled down on the any background, the chance to be inspired in the Facts preventions available as the cost of said preventions are too sofa with cups of coffee the supervisor said “You can way that I was inspired. That surely is a great and a The mosquito is worldwide and is responsible for 725,000 high or they are skeptical due to being under-educated. never understand the medieval world until you have necessary ambition. deaths per year (Smithsonianmag.com, 2019) and was listened to this”; and he put on the record player responsible for 200,000,000 cases in 2015 (Kurzgesagt, Mosquitos are also, becoming resilient to pesticides, Guillaume de Machaut’s Notre Dame Mass, a piece Lord Chris Smith 2016). It is estimated a child dies every 2 minutes from which are overused (Vince, 2019). of the most glorious early music, and we listened April 2020 Malaria. (Vince, 2019). spellbound for twenty minutes, when he stopped the record and said “Now I can tell you what the Guest article for The Brilliant Club – Lord Chris Smith, Transmission medieval world was like”. It made everything come Master of Pembroke College Cambridge The transmission of malaria through the mosquito is alive for me.