While reading the chapter on integration of formal and informal science education, I kept thinking about a news segment I watched over the weekend – US children were ranked twenty first in the world in science knowledge. The reporters were alarmed by the fact that countries like Slovakia and Lithuania were ahead. They invited experts to discuss the reasons for the situation, as well as what needs to be done to improve that ranking. The main theme was that, in US, parents and schools are happy with mediocrity and children are not pushed hard enough to learn more, as opposed to Asian countries, where children every day go to another school for more studies after their regular school classes are over. This raised doubts in my head about the usefulness of such rankings. I have read that, in the modern world, it is not so much important to retain the vast amount of knowledge (because we can quickly lookup what we had forgotten on a device as handy as a cell phone) but the ability to use that knowledge to solve problems. The informal science education can play a very important role in developing this ability, as well as in developing an inquisitive mindset, which is also crucial in our time when new discoveries challenge the scientific beliefs of yesterday almost daily and you cannot go far on what you have learned years ago. The reporters said that, if Massachusetts were ranked as a country, if would have been sixth, so they suggested to take a look at what is done differently about science education there. Reading this chapter, I kept thinking that the difference could be an efficient integration of informal science education and the traditional one.