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There is little I can do to teach a student chemistry or physics if they don't come to me with the prerequisite math and science backgrounds and they can't read the book.
We can chant "STEM, STEM, STEM" all we want but until we prepare more kids for STEM, nothing changes. I find initiatives like "Chemistry for all" to be a joke. All that is happening is we are lowering the bar to get the lower kids through. I'm spending my summer trying to figure out where to cut material from my curriculum because my principal thinks one of my problems is I teach too much (I teach less chemistry than I learned in high school as it is)....translation...I don't give enough A's and my class isn't an easy pass (actually it is the way I grade but I put the responsibility to pass on the student and he doesn't like that).
As a society, we have brainwashed ourselves into believing that education is the cure for all of our economic and cultural woes. It's laughable that so much emphasis is placed on teaching kids science when in reality very very few jobs require any knowledge of science. (Waitresses don't need to know much about biology or chemistry. Truck drivers don't need to know about quantum mechanics, etc.) The dirty little secret is that the overwhelming majority of jobs require little more than a high school education.
As a society, we have brainwashed ourselves into believing that education is the cure for all of our economic and cultural woes. It's laughable that so much emphasis is placed on teaching kids science when in reality very very few jobs require any knowledge of science. (Waitresses don't need to know much about biology or chemistry. Truck drivers don't need to know about quantum mechanics, etc.) The dirty little secret is that the overwhelming majority of jobs require little more than a high school education.
I agree. I have no idea why we're in love with the idea that everyone must go to college. I find putting everyone in classes that are intended for the college bound depressing. I can't teach the way I want to teach because the bottom can't/won't keep up. So I'm cutting material. Or maybe not. This is my last year teaching so I may just do it my way to a vengeance. The kids who do go on to college will thank me later.
As a society, we have brainwashed ourselves into believing that education is the cure for all of our economic and cultural woes. It's laughable that so much emphasis is placed on teaching kids science when in reality very very few jobs require any knowledge of science. (Waitresses don't need to know much about biology or chemistry. Truck drivers don't need to know about quantum mechanics, etc.) The dirty little secret is that the overwhelming majority of jobs require little more than a high school education.
Picking crops and washing cars has little need for science but that goes against a individual's desire to overcome his economic woe.
STEM fields are better than other fields, but that's not saying much. We still have an oversupply of people in many STEM fields, at least in area of science, see:
Having all college students major in STEM fields is not the answer; it would just result in large numbers of unemployed and underemployed-involuntarily-out-of-field STEM grads. The real problem is that far more people are going to college than there are college-education-requiring jobs for them.
Incorrect. The problem is not too many college graduates. The problem is a slow-growth economy. And while these two are related obviously, they are NOT the same thing. When the economy is going full-tilt there are always enough jobs for college grads, whether they be in STEM or non-STEM fields.
Moreover, it can be quite problematic to tell some high school students "You don't need to go to college." Minority groups in the US have a long history of being discouraged from school, underestimated in the classrom, and dismissed as "just not good enough." To even imply that they shouldn't, can't, or don't need to have a higher education can be seen as -- and sometimes actually is -- racism, pure and simple. Whether we like it or not, college is a credential, irrespective of major, that says to employers a graduate is socialized to the degree necessary to joint the mainstream workforce.
And yes, even with inflated school costs and student debt, college grads still make more, on average, than high school graduates (or dropouts), over their lifetime.
When the economy revvs up again --as it inevitabily will -- there wil be jobs aplenty for STEM students who have done thier homework. And jobs for the rest of the kids too. The emphasis now is on STEM because it often directly translates into new product development. But non-STEM students are always needed in every aspect of American life, including tech fields, and that will still prove true in the future.
As already said, writing skills are critical. My DH with his BSEE would have never gone far without good writing skills, for proposals, design work, and now into sales where he can translate what the customers and the techies need.
I sometimes wonder about that - especially when thinking about how NASA and the aerospace contractors got a man on the moon in nine years when nobody had a computer or excel or email. Amazing. Nowadays, every engineer has more power on his cell phone than did all of NASA in the 1960s. I bet we couldn't land a man on the moon five out of six times now. Back then, engineers were forced to be intimately familiar with the calculus, physics, science etc. Now, computer and models separate man from the science.
It is so funny. I am trying to learn to program Android and there is this IDE, Integrated Development Environment, called Eclipse that uses Javascript. Assembly Language was so much easier to understand. ROFL
As already said, writing skills are critical. My DH with his BSEE would have never gone far without good writing skills, for proposals, design work, and now into sales where he can translate what the customers and the techies need.
In some locations the A in STEAM is considered Applied, not Arts-
The Engineers I know and graduated with are all employed three years out, much more so than other majors whom I am friends with.
But what would the economy be like if accounting had been mandatory for the last 50 years?
They didn't say anything about planned obsolescence in engineering school 40 years ago. But how could anyone not know about it? It does create jobs for engineers.
But what would the economy be like if accounting had been mandatory for the last 50 years?
They didn't say anything about planned obsolescence in engineering school 40 years ago. But how could anyone not know about it? It does create jobs for engineers.
psik
Oh, I heard about an engineering professor saying, probably about 40 years ago, that all engineering degrees should be written in disappearing ink, because if they didn't keep up to date, they would be out of a job before long. Yes, we don't have anyone doing punch cards anymore for computer programs, do we?
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There is little I can do to teach a student chemistry or physics if they don't come to me with the prerequisite math and science backgrounds and they can't read the book. 
