My child is evolving. He’s moving between the two worlds of elementary school and middle school. Soon, I suspect he’ll become bored with Legos. His brooding skills have already improved and his mood swings will, no doubt, gain more texture. Sunrise, sunset.
But there are upsides, too. His ability to track complex conversations is increasing and he’s dipping his toe into more subjects that my wife and I can relate to. Our dinnertime conversations have become lots more interesting. We don’t shy away from topics like politics and religion. We invite his curiosity and take care to highlight the issues and the distinction between opinions and fact. 
He definitely has the analytical geek-gene; he’s hot on math, science, and music, but not so much the humanities. He loves to read, but it’s entirely recreational (but he’s reading, right?) That’s contrasted with me: no math skills to speak of, and I bury myself in nonfiction, not all of it very approachable.
I want to expose Adam to these strange subjects, but I must take care. He’s too young to begin associating Big Ideas with Weighty, Unreadable Tome. I understand the Fear of Textbooks that most kids have. I had it, too. The density of such works can make history and social science seem boring. So how can I plant a seed of interest inside his brain? As with so many adolescent boys in geeky households, the answer might be science fiction.
No, Seriously
Are you a human with goofy ears or bumps on your nose? You may be a Star Trek alien.
Our family watches science fiction; Adam and his peers think Star Wars is still cool. 
Eye rolling aside, though, if you look at Star Wars as a stepping stone to more complex works, it’s not so bad. You can’t just throw a twelve year old into The Wire and expect him to understand dense socio-political networks.
This year, we started watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Like most Trek, it has the 1990′s hairdo problem, dramatically over-staged moments, and (at times) insufferable technobabble. It’s dated, but I cut it some slack.
This period found televised science fiction becoming more daring and less conventional. It’s easy to point and laugh at some of the kooky aliens, but you can’t get to Battlestar Galactica without the fumbling attempts that predate it.
I sometimes ask Adam questions that draw on parallels between the story and real life. Some cool conversations have developed before bedtime. While real-world political discourse is somewhat difficult, fictional politics is easy.
It sounds silly even as I write it. But my goals are to develop interest, and if you have a kid who’s bored with the adult world, you could do worse than some of these shows.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Skip the first silly season, but otherwise, it’s a good introduction to the concept of diplomacy. This show excelled at presenting single-episode puzzles. At their worst, the puzzles centered around technobabble, but at their best, human behavior and politics was the thing to be figured out.
For all the negative press at the time, this wasn’t so bad. It’s main contribution to the Trek universe was a far stronger sense of messy geopolitical reality. There are dealings and betrayals between multiple alien races that are akin to the shenanigans before World War II. And we finally see a more believable – and often dirty – Federation.
I actually enjoyed this one, though it too didn’t age so well. I find the show to be an allegory for U.S. foreign policy. The stories starts with heroic military officers freeing humans en mass from parasitic alien overlords. By the end, though, our meddling has overthrown a one order only to find us stuck with the unintended results of a worse order. Sound familiar?
Much of this show was bad, but, like all sci-fi, it found its footing. And even when it was corny, it had an epic scale missing from contemporary shows. Unlike Trek, humans were not at the center of universal politics. Again, geopolitical thinking was evident. Species seemed driven toward ends that they couldn’t completely control. There was even a dash of the long term in there as we learned about the deep influence of ancient, millennia old spacefarers.
Not the original late 70′s show. This 2004 show illustrated that science fiction had finally come of age. A show about the last survivors of the human species would have to feature our ugly nature and dirty politics. The survivors weren’t the heroes we’ve grown used to; they’re flawed, selfish, and had to choose the best from a bunch of bad choices.
This is very new, but highly recommended. 
If you liked Battlestar, then watching SGU is like having seconds. Forget all the prior Stargate shows; this one differs in damned near every way. It has a gritty BSG-style, much sharp writing, and a strong feeling of realism.
The protagonists struggle to survive on an alien ship billions of light-years from Earth. They engage in self-serving politics, operate with limited knowledge of their environment, don’t have the right tools, and frequently screw up. The writers dare to leave mysteries unresolved because that’s life.
Just a Start
Sci-Fi may yet have a way to go on the respectability-front, but we've improved over *this* at least.
And only a start. Adolescence is about drifting from our own internal world to the much wider one. The question “Why should I care?” seems to subconsciously play a role. Maybe spaceships can help.
Adam may care about light saber wielding Muppets now, but that won’t last. These are crude, incomplete tools, but they have the benefit of fully capturing his attention. If you have a distracted kid of your own, you know that you’ll take anything that can help.
Did Colonel Young make the right decision? Why was he wrong? What should he have done? To Adam, that actually doesn’t sound like a quiz; it’s just something cool to talk about.
Do you have any additional shows & lessons to contribute? Please add them into the comments.
Footnotes
: And I sincerely hope that my interest in critical thinking helps equip him through his education.
: I disagree (here)
: This is our family’s new favorite. It gets so many things right that I can’t help but pimp it. The acting, the writing, the setting: all gold.
