This THON weekend many of you may have participated in the line dance (likely many times) and started to memorize its catchy lyrics paired with fun dance moves. But with a closer look, some news events the song talked about were actually pretty sad (“Robin’s off to Neverland,” “Maya gains her wings,” etc.). Another lyric that fits this category was “Michelle: bring back our girls,” referring to the kidnapping by Boko Haram of over 300 Nigerian schoolgirls last April. So, for this week’s blog, I decided to take a look at the conditions of girls’ education in Nigeria, where this awful event occurred.

The situation for education in general in Nigeria is pretty bad. According to UNICEF, nineteen percent of primary school-age children are not in school. This figure represents 5 million children between the ages of 6 and 11. For girls, the numbers are even worse though. In parts of the country, the boy to girl ratio in schools is as high as 3 girls per 1 boy. Literacy rates among women in the North of the country fall at around 20 percent.

Many of the same factors that prevented girls from being educated in Pakistan also harm Nigerian girls. Nigeria has high rates of poverty, and many parents are forced to choose whether to send their daughters or sons to school. Parents nearly always choose sons in this situation, believing that they will later provide for their families. Another factor that prevents girls from going to school is early marriage and pregnancy. Additionally, cultural beliefs impact the willingness of some parents to send girls to school. Due to misinterpretation of Islam, they believe girls should be kept in the home. Groups like Boko Haram encourage these beliefs and also instill fear in parents who may have been otherwise willing to send their daughters to school.

The fear that your daughter would be kidnapped or attacked for trying to go to school is, to me, unimaginable.  It seems like common sense that girls should be educated. Educating girls helps to prevent early pregnancies and improves the likelihood of mothers to survive childbirth and their children to live to adulthood. Educated women contribute to the economy and provide incomes to their families, who often can use the money for necessities such as food and clothing. And once a woman has been educated, her children are more likely to attend school, thus creating a positive cycle.

Yet in many regions of the world, girls continue to face barriers to education. In Nigeria and Pakistan, among others, the presence of terrorist groups who oppose girls’ education worsens the problem. So what can be done? How can these girls be helped?

One initiative I have recently heard about caught my attention. Organizations fighting for girls’ education chose to pay girls’ families in order to send their daughters to school. The idea of this strategy was to provide the money that girls would have made working to their families, so that there is not a financial need for them to work instead of going to school.

Another interesting approach is to provide meals at schools. This summer, some of you may have participated in the SHOtime volunteer project, which was to package nutritious meals for schoolchildren in other parts of the world who may not otherwise be fed. The meals cost around a dollar each to produce and would help that child not to go hungry. The goal of this program was both to provide these kids with healthy food and also to encourage parents to send them to school so that they would receive a free meal.

While both of these ideas would provide economic incentives to send girls to school, they do not help with the safety concerns associated with schooling in areas with terror groups. This obstacle is one that the larger international community should work to address. The kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls was not addressed in a proactive way by the international community and its handling would have led parents to conclude that foreign governments cared very little about their daughters. Initiatives should be started to make schooling safe for girls, possibly through UN peacekeeper presence in these areas.

The obstacles preventing girls from being educated are numerous, but some possible solutions exist to get more girls in the classroom.

Today, I want to dedicate my blog space to the letter “T,” that is, the second letter in “STEM,” that is, technology.

But I’m not talking about “technology” in the connotation that STEM puts it, being a type of major.

I’m talking about the use of technology in the classroom. This is an issue that wouldn’t have come up in the past. Technology in education at that time referred to encyclopedias and typewriters.

In 2015, we have access to a large variety of items that are at times used in a classroom setting: smartphones, tablets, laptops, smartboards, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, iClickers, iThis, iThat, iEverything. You name it, there’s probably something out there like it.

It’s quite amazing the amount of technology that the innovators of our world have produced. And there are obvious positive impacts that our technology can have in an education setting,

Tablets allow students to store all of their data in one place. All notes and textbooks are available for use. Software, like Microsoft Office, allow for students to produce projects beneficial for learning. The Internet access can allow for seamless research, and communication with no boundaries.

Khan Academy is a free website run by one awesome dude that has over 2,400 videos that can teach anyone about a very large variety of topics.

There are countless benefits to the use of technology in education. But also, countless drawbacks.

We live in a generation, like all generations are, much different from the previous. As millenials, we are much more inclined to use technology, and it has become a sort of addiction.

According to a study, the average person checks their phone over 100 times a day. It is a massive temptation, right in everyone’s pockets.

I’m sure many others can relate, as I’m sure I fall around or above this average value. Oftentimes, it’s for no good reason at all. My iPhone is not that special, however, it commands a lot of attention.

And it drives me nuts to see how many people in my college classes are just sitting on their phones. I’ve never done a study to count how many people use their phones in class on a daily basis, but it must be quite a lot.

I don’t understand why so many people bother attending class when all they do is sit on their cellular device, but it is obvious that it has become a distraction for many students paying attention in lecture.

Luckily, as I’m sure many of you may know, Pocket Points has become an incredibly popular app on campus, accruing 10,000 Penn State users since it’s beginning. This app is helping incentivize students to not use their phones in class, which will help in the education setting. Nonetheless, there is still a major problem.

So to sum up the benefits and the drawbacks of technology in the classroom, we benefit from the capabilities for learning that our technology contains, but, we also waste a lot of time doing meaningless things with our technology in class.

So what kind of a solution best utilizes the technology we have, while improving the quality of education?

I believe that the solution is to increase the use of technology in the classroom. Use of laptops should be encouraged. Use of cellular devices should be encouraged (for educational use). Any and all technology that has any use in a classroom should be encouraged.

Because this is how older generations need to connect with our millennial generation, hard-wired with technology. If we convert the use of cell phones from useless Facebook browsing to something more research, or app-based, millennial students will have their phone-unlocking desires filled, while learning at the same time.

I can say that our human attention span is decreasing; it is no longer (and it may have never been) effective to use lecturing as a way of learning. Students just cannot pay attention to one man or woman talking about a certain subject for a 50 or 75 minute period.

I assume that as more millennials become teachers, this problem will be remedied. But a new problem may arise. With new generations come new philosophies, and ways of learning. We need to make sure we keep up with the best ways to educate our youth.

While I proclaimed that STEM education was the focus of my blog posting here, I’d like to shift my focus today a little. A topic that has come to my attention is the debate over STEM vs. STEAM education as well as the debate over whether STEM education should be integrated into more of a liberal arts curriculum.

I found an article in the Washington Post by chemistry professor Dr. Loretta Jackson-Hayes on the subject.

The Dr. Jackson-Hayes advocated the integration of a more liberal arts approach with science and math. By this the author means that students receive one on one mentoring with a professor in which they are able to learn how to design experiments and generally think for themselves. This is an important aspect of liberal arts education that can be applied to the sciences and technical fields.

Furthermore, she argues that society has drawn an artificial line between sciences and the arts. She argues that figures like Leonardo Da Vinci as well as Steve Jobs illustrate that an interdisciplinary approach, the kind that a liberal arts education enhances.

She also says that a key aspect of liberal arts education that is lacking right now in science and engineering is the ability to communicate with people in non-technical fields as well as the belief that it would be beneficial to take classes outside of one’s major that could be later incorporated into one’s work.

In addition to the liberal-arts argument, there is the argument that arts should be incorporated into STEM curriculums. STEAM education for those who don’t know is an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. So basically it is the inclusion of arts into the STEM curriculum. This approach values the arts as an essential way to approach problems creatively. Specifically, when it comes to problem solving, STEAM proponents believe artistic principles extend naturally to the design of products. The communication arts could help with increased communication, which is a skill essential to team projects. Increased right brain activity could also make it easier for kids to plan how they’ll go about finding a solution to whatever problem they’re faced with. In all of these cases, art is taught as an APPLIED subject though, much like in the case of math and science.

However, on the flip side of things, some proponents of STEM believe that STEAM education is an unnecessary extra step. They believe that art and creativity occur naturally through STEM education, and that an extra emphasis on the arts would only water down STEM education. From arts proponents, there is the thought that it would be the arts that would be watered down in STEAM education, because it would be taught as more of a tool to solve problems.

My Two Cents

Now that I’ve given the low-down on what opinions are floating around out there, I’ll talk a little about my experience with interdisciplinary education. Last semester I was plunged into the honors section of Engineering Design 100 where I had to significantly broader my gaze. When I say broaden my gaze, what I mean is that the class included aspects of many different fields. For one project we were required to cook a four-course meal in our dorms. One day we learned from a professor in the department of arts and architecture how to sketch. We did a reading assignment on Plato’s “The Cave.” To top it off, we did design icon presentations, which included a wide variety of artists, engineers, architects and scientists.

This one class in a way epitomized both the liberal arts approach to STEM as well as STEAM education. I’ve come to believe that this incorporation of the arts and a learn by doing approach is essential for STEM education. Engineering is as much an art as it is a science, as the problem solving required of engineers, in turn requires creativity.

In a real-world example, I would like to cite a book recommended to me by my father (the software engineer). The book is titled The Timeless Way of Building and is written by Christopher Alexander. While The Timeless Way is a book on architecture, it is of great importance to software engineers, because of something Alexander describes as the “Quality Without a Name.” He writes:

“To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name. There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.”

Alexander goes on to describe a sort of pattern language throughout the book, but this architectural concept if often used in software engineering to describe the process of software design.

Is art/a liberal arts perspective important in STEM education? Let me know below and if you think it is important, tell me how you’d like to see either approach implemented.

As I got older, most of my homeschooling classes began to rely much more on a dialectic discussion than memorizing facts and “learning” about things. Our instructor would introduce a topic and we would then discuss the issue; picking it apart for logos, pathos, and ethos.

This was a really great way to learn because I became fluent in a different sort of language. I could think critically about any issue and look at the pros and cons. I formed my own beliefs and values, rather than just accepting what others told me. Questioning the status quo was my class time.

Today in public school, students are encouraged to focus on the facts: learning and regurgitating them for tests. According to this article, Steven Weinberg, a teacher on special assignment in Oakland, California, whose  job is “helping teachers teach to the test,” says: “The trouble with teaching to the test is that the standardized tests are not by their nature able to measure meaningful learning and emphasize the trivial rather than the essential.”

This takes away time from critical thinking, which is what fuels students to become high functioning adults in society. By psychological definitions, an adult is able to think abstractly about concepts they cannot envision right in front of them immediately. However, can students really reach this point if they are never instructed on how to think critically?

First, we must ask, do we even really need to teach critical thinking? Shouldn’t this be a skill children just pick up on as they mature? Parental Science says no. Critical thinking is a skill that is best exemplified when children are forced to explain the why and how. Clearly, the evidence supports a curriculum with analytical elements. If children are never implicitly taught this, they end up lacking a skill that allows them all the thought processes of a high functioning adult.

The next question is how: How do we implement critical thinking into the average public school classroom? This is no easy feat. With thousands of classrooms across the country, and a shortage of funding, it is difficult to start an entirely new program. However, introducing critical thinking doesn’t necessarily mean funding a new program. This can be taught simply by asking children “why?”

With math and science problems, don’t just accept an answer as right or wrong. Ask the student to show their work, or demonstrate on the board how to work out that problem. When you are able to explain a concept to others, you have mastered it yourself. With literature, question what certain elements of the story mean. And perhaps most controversial, children should be able to think through current events and devise their own opinions on the issues. In order for this to happen, teachers need to present both sides of an argument, then ask the children which side they feel is “better” and more importantly, why.

When students are able to justify their beliefs, and question them in order to defend them, we will have a society filled with civically engaged citizens, rather than voters who vote for a party or people who volunteer for resume building. We will have a community of people who want to be actively engaged.

Complacency is a huge problem with America today, and it is because many people don’t know what they believe or why they believe it. If we teach the next generation of students how to think for themselves, hopefully the future of America will be in the hands of well educated people who care about the outcome and realize the consequences certain actions may bring.

I am not naive. I realize that this is a huge feat, simply because many topics are touchy and teachers are not always impartial. I certainly had to deal with that experience. However, finding different teachers with different views allows at least a mix of opinions and hopefully exposes the students to different viewpoints. We will never fully rid the world of biases, but we can make a start by hiring teachers who want to include critical thinking in a curriculum.

I’m sure most expected me to write on this topic. My major is literally the title above; of course I want to write about something I am passionate for. While I think that everyone can write about something they’re passionate about, I believe that the only thing that makes something interesting to read about is its importance, and it’s applying that passion to every reader’s life, even those who don’t really care about the subject.

So I’m here to tell you WHY music education is important. I’m here to talk about why you should pay attention to something that I am devoting my life to.

First, glance at this article about the benefits of music education. This lists important benefits, such as higher SAT scores, more involvement and engagement in school, improvement in areas such as coordination, social skills, imagination, teamwork and self-confidence.  Things not included: it gives kids a chance to develop their talents and interests past normal school curriculum and it also gives kids who would normally be considered socially awkward or introverted the chance to socialize with others with similar interests (not all have difficulties socially, but some do). So there are some benefits, but why is it vital to keep music schools?

For many students, music is the one subject where they feel safe, talented and secure. Just like students who love math, English, art, science or any other subject, music kids love it. Trust me, music kids really have to show their devotion in order to be in the program at all. For me, I spent 4 out of 5 days a week after school during jazz and county chorus season at rehearsals, and the entirety of all of my weekends from August to November were spent on the marching field. Many other students spent that or more with musical theater, orchestra, and many other activities. Take this away from them, or take the opportunity away from all future students, and you take away their passion, what gives them happiness and where they fit in. Imagine if your favorite subject was deemed “illegitimate” or “useless” and taken out of school. While that will never happen for the main subjects, it is happening more and more across the country. Not only does music education have many benefits, but it means the world to many of the students who call it their passion.

By: Corey Capooci

The Rise of Charter Schools and Their Effectiveness

Education and politics, they are two topics that together create confusion and debate.  Many people would argue that education and politics should not be combined.  Educational policy should be the policy that is the best for everyone because education influences the future of this country and why would anyone try to worsen the state of education.  It is a core part of what makes a country innovative and successful.  Education is the cornerstone for a bright future of nation.

Education does, though, have choices and because they are choices to be made, politics is necessary. Since education involves trying to bring millions of children as equal an opportunity as can be provided, it must be regulated and because it is a large system, the government must take on the task of managing it.  Politics and education need to go together in order to ensure the best, overarching public schools that the country can provide.

Education is different than most political topics in that everyone agrees that educational policy should strive to make American children the best and the brightest.  The ideologies that politics and citizens believe in to make education better will differ though.  Topics include instilling STEM education into public schools, vouchers, charter schools, and cost of higher education among many others.

One of the most daunting issues for many especially in the state of Pennsylvania is what to do with charter schools.  These schools are an odd mix of public and private and are meant to innovate and improve the educational system of the United States as a whole.  Charter schools are run outside of the public school system, yet still are still given taxpayer dollars.  This is to ensure more freedom to explore better methods of learning to then project on to current public schools.  Overall, though, some people doubt that charter schools are actually doing to job that they are meant to do.

They are many advocates and opponents of charter schools and both sides agree that charters especially in Pennsylvania need to be fixed.  The advocates assumed that shoveling in more money will help solve the problem that charter schools have, but opponents feel that since charters split the resources between charters and public schools it makes it difficult for either to get the appropriate amount of money to successfully educate the children.

The PROS to aiding and supporting charter schools all stems from the freedom that the government gives to the charter system.  One of the most commonly cited benefits is that it creates competition amongst school districts. It comes from the idea that competition brings out the best in everyone.  It is supposed to force both public and private schools to make advancements and create a better education for everyone.

Another pro is that it allows families to find a perfect “fit” for their students.  It gives everyone an option and this option is supposed to allow every student the chance to find their ideal place in education.  Whether it means the public school atmosphere, with stricter rules and standards, or the charter school, with more freedom to explore other educational techniques, the combination of the both public and charter schools are meant to overall foster an educational system where one-size does NOT fit all. It is where people are allowed to experiment with the best educational style for their children.

The CONS  to advancing the progress of charter schools stem from multitudes of issues some of which at the time of implementation could have been hard to anticipate.  For example, charter schools have the ability to choose whichever students they desire.  Some say charters give the appearance that they allow choices and options, but instead because they can choose their students, it actually amounts to the school deciding their students not the students deciding their school.  Also, because the charter schools can choose their students, they tend to shape their school to certain criteria which in the end leads to less diversity.

The more prominent downside to charters is that because they are publicly funded, it splits a budget that some would say is too small to split in the first place. No matter how many students leave to go to charter schools, their costs of maintenance remains the same, so these cuts end up taking away from the student’s education.  Also, It brings up the idea that if you wanted to fixed the public school system, how would taking money away from it allow it to improve.

Overall, these are only a few pros and cons to very diverse and on-going issue.  Not much attention has been drawn to this problem, yet but for states like Pennsylvania it is a pretty widespread issue. So much so, that our current Governor Tom Wolfe ran for governor on a pledge to change PA’s charter system.

In my opinion, it does not seem to be returning the benefits they were supposed to.  Their effectiveness is waning and the innovations they were promising are just not there. Also, they are creating havens for corruption and in some instances tax dollars are being stolen instead of being used to create a viable education for its students.  I do understand that the theory had everything going for it.  They should create innovation, and options, and competition.  I get that.  It is just that in the end, they need to be fixed because right now it feels as though we would just be better off cleaning up the public education system without having to worry about cleaning up corruption.

For more information check out this highly opinionated blog post by a Huffington Post blogger and former high school teacher.

I’m biased; I love math. So I plan to talk a lot about it. And here, I want to try to disprove a common belief.

It’s the common belief that there are “math people” and people who just don’t get math.

And sure, there are some genetic predispositions to intelligence. But we are by no means limited to them.

It’s a label that was given to me all throughout high school: “the smart kid.” I never really liked it. Especially in my elementary and middle school years, I was mostly shy, never really looking for attention.

Basically, what this label meant was that if anyone ever needed help for anything, they would come and ask me (This has paid off, as I am now a tutor making decent money at PSU KnowHow downtown).

But the truth is, I’m really not the “smart kid.” The widely considered best measure of intelligence is the Intelligence Quotient. In what I believe to be the most reliable IQ test I have ever taken (it is hard to find a good one for free), my intelligence is considered to be between the 60^th and 70^th percentile.

For the anti-math folk, that means that approximately 30-40 percent of the population is more intelligent than me. This is nowhere near the “genius” range.

So how was I able to produce the outward appearance that I was “smart?” I’ve had lots of academic achievements I am proud of, but the big one to start it all was skipping kindergarten.

I didn’t skip kindergarten because I was “gifted.” Learning has always come relatively easy to me, but I did do a lot of hard work in my youngest years. And I think it came out of my curiosity for things. I wanted to know how to read books. So I taught myself at age 3. I wanted to do math problems. So I learned from my grandfather how to do multiplication and division at age 4.

While lots of other kids were out “picking their noses,” I was beginning my days of the path to nerdiness. And I’m proud of it.

My point of this is, we as America have a problem—in fact we have a “math problem.”

Here is the math problem we need to solve as a nation: Given that we are in a world where math skills are needed, how are we going to allocate our resources in a more efficient way?

And while college is the easy answer, since it is the place where career choices are made, I would argue that K-12 education is where efficiency needs to be better achieved.

Studies have shown that there is some sort of plasticity to our intelligence. Low-achieving students who were convinced that intelligence can be molded via hard work were found to improve much greater in school than did the control group.

The previous article also mentions how the fact that people say “they aren’t math people” is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning people who say they are not good at math will not be good at math, because they will not put in as much effort as they would otherwise.

So my point is, we need, as public school advocates, to convince children that they can achieve in these math classes via hard work.

Because math is not about how intelligent you are. It’s about putting yourself in the correct frame of mind, and putting in some form of hard work (admittedly, it does come easier for some than others).

This is a great lesson for students, especially at a young age, to learn. It’s the lesson that with hard work comes success. If we can instill the value of hard work in many more Americans, the future workplace productivity would be so much higher than it is now.

On top of that, I don’t even need to cite statistics; there are a shortage of STEM majors. And if we change the attitude in public schools towards mathematics, than more people will become interested in the field.

STEM obviously isn’t for everyone, but it is for more people than we think. I have been lucky to see the perfection in mathematics, and it is a perfection that is greater than many other things that are found in other career fields.

As my economics teacher in high school said: “Attitude is everything.” I believe that could be a powerful philosophy if taken up in schools across the nation.

The subtopic within education reform that I will be focusing on for this blog is girls’ education. In many parts of the world, girls are not given the same access to schooling as their male peers. Here at Penn State, I have joined the Malini Club, which advocates for girls’ education and women’s empowerment in Sri Lanka. Prior to joining the club, I did not know much about barriers to eduction faced by girls. I knew that this topic was an issue and had heard about people like Malala Yousafzai on the news, but I did not feel personally affected. However, since joining Malini, I have been exposed to more information about this issue. We have been passing around a book called Half the Sky that focuses on women around the world who have been subjected to injustices such as sex slavery and who have been able to get out of these situations with education and other opportunities. For this blog, I would like to focus on the status of girls’ education in a different country each week and touch on the importance of providing girls with schooling in order to be able to provide for themselves and improve the world around them.

Since Malala Yousafzai’s story was one of the first I heard about girls being prevented from attending school, I decided to focus my first post on her and on her country, Pakistan. As you may be aware, Malala is a young activist who received the Nobel peace Prize this past year. Malala grew up in Paksitan and wrote about girls’ inability to receive education under a pseudonym. The Pakistani Taliban found out, however, and attempted to murder her while aboard her schoolbus. The attempt failed, but Malala did take a shot to the head and undergo time in the hospital as a result. After recovering, however, she did not back down. She began speaking about her cause and wrote an autobiography, I am Malala. She bacame an inspiration and role model for girls everywhere. She also started a foundation, The Malala Fund, to support girls’ education.

Photo courtesy of:http://karlaakins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/gty_malala_yousafzai_quote_ll_131004_wmain.jpg

Malala’s story is one of incredible success and perseverence, but the situation from which she came is still the reality faced by many girls in Pakistan. According to a UNESCO report on eductation in Pakistan, the literacy rate in the counrty may be as low as 26%, with only 12% of women being able to read. Pakistan has fewer schools for girls than for boys. At the primary school level, there are 163,000 schools, with only 40,000 of those catering to girls. As girls go further into their schooling, the number of schools provided only decreases. If a Pakistani girl wishes to become a doctor, she would only have two choices of medical schools in the country that would allow her to pursue a degree.

And if the sheer lack of schools weren’t enough to deter girls from receiving an education, the practice of educatining girls is entirely banned in parts of the nation. Especially in the northern tribal areas, girls are prohibited from receiving an education on religious grounds.

Another barrier to girls’ education is poverty. Many Pakistani children, 17.6% in fact, work to support their families. Of these, a majority are girls. Parents deciding to send either a daughter or a son to school often choose the son, as he is more likely to find a better paying job. Girls also have more job opportunities at a young age, working as housemaids or taking care of a wealthy family’s children.

Girls are prevented from having the opportunities that come with an education. Many people attribute this situation to religious and cultural beliefs within Pakistan, which may in part be the case. But another interesting perspective I have recently read was that of political scientist Michael L. Ross. In his article, “Oil, Islam, and Women,” he explains how oil, not religious or cultural barriers, squeezed women out of the workforce and made them lose their political rights. He argues that, with the discovery of a lucrative resource like oil, the economy of a counrty shifts from agricultural production and textiles (where women are employed) to the production of the resource, which often requires the physical labor of males. With loss of economic power, women also lose political power. Thus, men can keep them in the home and prevent them from organizing politically or attaining an education.

Ultimately, in Pakistan and elsewhere, girls are prevented from receiving an education for a variety of reasons and the issue has to be addressed while taking these factors into account.

Hello everyone, my name’s Rob. As some of you may know I’m interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, & math) education and how we can make it better for future generations. But first, here’s a little about me:

My major is Aerospace Engineering. I’ve loved science for most of my life but only in recent years have I truly embraced math. I’ve been personally involved with STEM education throughout my high school career as I ran a private tutoring business in which I taught primarily math but also a little computer science. During this period, I got to see a variety of different perceptions among students, but I found that so many seemed to have nothing but disdain for math and science related fields. I’m interested in how we can better introduce students to STEM subject matter in a way that’s interesting and less intimidating than it currently is.

Today I thought as part of my introduction I’d talk about on a broad level why some perceive the need for increased STEM education.

According to the US Department of commerce, between 2000 & 2010, STEM employment grew at a rate of 7.9%, while non-STEM employment grew at a rate of 2.6%. In the future the Bureau of Labor Statistics believes that this growth will continue, with STEM’s growth rate estimated to be at 17.0%, versus 9.8% for non-STEM fields (for years 2008-2018). Furthermore, there is a lack of women populating STEM fields. According to a 2009 statistic, women make up only 24% of all STEM jobs, while they make up 48% of the workforce.

By producing more STEM graduates we can expect to fill an ever growing demand in an increasingly technology oriented economy. Furthermore, by encouraging women to study STEM fields, we can encourage greater gender equality.

STEM fields are also some of the highest earning. According to a recent ranking by Business Insider, the top 10 college majors with the largest lifetime earnings were all engineering fields. So it’s clear that STEM jobs are in demand, and they seem to pay really well, so why aren’t people lining up to study science and engineering?

It turns out that we as a nation aren’t doing that great in math and science. A recent test given to 34 countries ranked the US as 25^th in math and 17^th in science. For the world’s one remaining superpower, these statistics are deplorable. Clearly the reason that we can’t find people to fill these jobs in growing fields is because we are not the best at educating them.

Going back to my experience in high school, I wasn’t always the most interested in math and science, but because of some really great teachers I was able to develop interests and become engaged in the subject matter. I’d always liked airplanes and rockets as a kid, but I wasn’t necessarily a fan of math. I had always done fairly well at it, but I didn’t really like it and I just didn’t see myself as a math person. When I took Honors Pre-calculus my junior year though, everything changed. The class was taught by one of my favorite teachers ever: Mr. Sebastian. He was one of the best teachers in my high school and he had the stats to prove it. Our high school was in the 99^th percentile nationwide for both AP Calculus courses thanks to him. Some years, every student in his AP Calculus BC group got top scores.

Mr. Sebastian pushed his students hard, often to the very limit, but he did so with an uplifting sense of humor and by making the material clear and understandable despite its complexity. After succeeding in Honors Pre-Calc, I had him again for Calc BC. That’s a decision I don’t regret. Because of my success in those classes, I feel confident that I can succeed in engineering. Beforehand, I had more than my share of doubts. Maybe if more students had teachers like Mr. Sebastian, more students would go on to study STEM fields.

So There’s a little background about the situation of STEM education in the US and a little bit of my perspective on it.  In the future I’ll be studying ways that STEM education can be improved so that it’s more palpable to the average student.

Citations:

“Department of Commerce.” The State of Our Union’s 21st Century Workforce. United States Department of Commerce, 6 Feb. 2012. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. <http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2012/02/06/state-our-union’s-21st-century-workforce>

Jacobs, Peter. “The College Majors With The Biggest Lifetime Earnings.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. <http://www.businessinsider.com/college-majors-biggest-lifetime-earnings-2014-9>.

Sung-jun, Chung. “Education.” In Ranking, U.S. Students Trail Global Leaders. USA Today, 10 Dec. 2010. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-12-07-us-students-international-ranking_N.htm>.