STEM; What is it?

I really come in on the Science end of STEM. I am not the strongest problem solver and only worked on one major novel research project for a few months while in college but I have always had a great interest in how the world around me works. I was always fascinated by animals and loved learning about the human body. Chemistry could be great fun in school and I found lots of it to be quite intuitive. Physics was quite boring to me (my teacher certainly was no help), but long after college my interest was piqued, and I do read books and watch documentaries about Space and mind bending theoretical stuff. I can appreciate the arguments that Physics, with its Mathematical basis is the central Science.

I try to tell people that STEM should reach back to the childhood sense of wonder, and should allow us to ask more focused questions. Kids learn by trying things out and coming up with predictions about what will happen. What parent does not get slain by the “Whys?” and “but Why’s?”. There is a natural inquisitiveness which is really Science! The question what if? can be turned into a Hypothesis with great ease! This is what breeds scientists. This is where STEM is alive! Not learning through repetition, with only a pen and paper, being preached to. You will not find STEM there!

I argue that people should know how their own body works, and am often dumbfounded when they are apathetic. “Don’t you want to know what this little device can call someone anywhere on the planet instantly?” I ask, and lead that on to people who question Science. Do you doubt the guys who put satellites up into orbit, when you believe them when they tell you where your car is to the nearest meter, or blindly accept Instagram posts from Australia? New technologies are rarely made for bad purposes, and they have made our lives easier than we give them credit for. Civilization leaps forward with the advent of, for example, farming, writing, plumbing, microbiology, the combustion engine or the Internet! We need to keep that progress going, maybe now more than ever! Getting kids thinking tinkering, critiqueing, revising and producing will do wonders for them and our future. The more the better. We want boys and girls from all races and creeds learning how things work and saying….What if…?    

After review of Live Binder/Social Media…

A few overriding things that have struck me while reviewing for this round two about STEM. I find it interesting that the issues with STEM these days are well aligned with the issues in mainstream education. There are minorities which are being eased out and there are difficulties with filling positions. Drop outs are also an issue amongst STEM students in college according to America’s STEM problem video. It seems that the issues first studied which led to the STEM push in education have not been impacted as people would have hoped.

When I started my Science degree in Ireland the class I was in was 70% female. Diversity would have been an issue but Ireland of the 90’s was not very diverse. I do remember the Engineering course students being overwhelmingly male however. I am as guilty of implicit bias in this case as the next person though would my mental picture of engineer would be a man. I do not feel it would be an issue if everyone had the same opportunity to follow a path, but the innate biases push people away from certain roles beginning at a very young age. The answer to that particular issue may have to wait for another day!

Another thing you will see from perusing the internet and asking friends on social media is that the general public do not have a good definition or idea of what STEM education is, what the issues are and why the issues should be of concern. We are all educated and educators reading and listening to essays and thoughts of like-minded people.  But even when discussing a STEM program in my school there was differences in opinion about what it was, so what is the person on the street supposed to think? For what it’s worth I think a STEM school should have a range of subjects available to students, but also a spirit if discovery, problem solving and inquiry based project work throughout the classes.

I do not know the numbers for minority AP students in my school but from my Physics class last year there was not a large minority population. I am sure this can be tied into the issues faced by minority students in equal treatment in schools that we have been learning about this year.

As I wrote before I feel like we all have a sense of wonder and instead of censoring that it should be nurtured. The potential is there for all students to grow up with a STEM attitude and appreciation for the roles it plays if certain elements were not so heavy handed and curbed the wonder. We have read many times this year that kids born now will be doing jobs that have not been invented yet. Therefore they need skills and problem solving, they need to know how to learn, adapt and apply knowledge in order to succeed. We need people who can do all these things as we surely are entering a tumultuous time. As I saw in a picture of a protest banner at the Science March in the Spring, how many time did the rich guy save the day on Gilligan’s island? Never. How many times did the Scientist? Every episode…

Thanks