I hate to be cynical about this piece in The Columbian. Yes, kids should learn math. There is interesting stuff there. It opens up worlds later on. I wish I had studied harder as a kid. But math and science will never be cool.
In Our View: Science & Math Are Cool
In my view: Cool? I hope there’s some evidence to back that up instead of a HEYKIDS!!!!!! type intro.
Many middle-school students fear science and math as much as cooties and wedgies. Neither subject is ranked on their cool-things-at-school list. And later, in high school, those preconceived notions improperly guide their course selections and career choices.However, those stereotypes are fading, thanks in part to Washington STEM, a nonprofit that is celebrating its first anniversary this week. For the purpose of this editorial, the key letters in the STEM acronym are the first and the last. “Science” and “math” form the foundation — especially in middle school — for meaningful high-school diplomas, attractive résumés for college applicants and, ultimately, lucrative careers. First, though, we have to convince kids to stop hating on science and math.
Cooties? Are middle schoolers 6? For goodness sake. Look, kids should learn hard sciences. They should learn them for the somewhat important things in the paragraph, and more importantly they should also learn them for their own sake. But teachers, journalists, and other authority figures are never going to be cool. They should recognize that, and focus on why these programs actually matter.
And the rest of the article is praise for the program mostly couched, bizarrely as this sounds, as statements of praise for the program as the program. I don’t know enough about it, but I’m happy to spend money on the hard sciences. But it’s a strange intro and last line.
So spread the word: Science and math are cool. Even journalists think so.
No, I’m going to spread the word that math and science are important, and you’ll be glad you took them. But sorry, they still aren’t cool.
I laugh, a lot, any time the septuagenarians who write newspaper editorials, and the octogenarians who read them, try to weigh in on youth culture. They’ve never known what kids think is cool, and they never will.
I find it bewildering that people who write things like that were ever young in the first place.
Math and science are never going to be “cool” as long as they aren’t rewarded by society. There were a couple of brief periods in the 20th century when math and science were “cool”. Herbert Hoover was a geologist and engineer. Airplane designers were “cool” until the 1950’s. Rocket scientists were “cool” during the Space Race. But with only those exceptions, scientists aren’t “cool”. Neither are manufacturing engineers, tool & die makers, etc. which are needed for the country to be a manufacturing giant again.
Currently math and science majors are not rewarded by industry, except in the field of software design. I expect that to change in the near future, as industry out-sources software design.
Holders of other degrees – scientific research, engineering, geology, etc. get laid off by industry during down-turns. During up-turns in their industries they tend to get higher initial pay ($75K or so), but they tend to “top out” at $125K or so, assuming they can keep their job that long).
What DOES pay over the long run is the guys who have enough money to start with (or family connections) to buy and control the business. They figure they can ALWAYS hire the guys who know math and science, when needed, and lay them off when they aren’t needed, and if their skills are inter-changeable out-source their jobs at lower wages. Those are the folks society rewards, and they don’t hold math and science degrees. They have business degrees, and perhaps MBA’s as a graduate degree.
STEM is cool…..if you deliver in practical ways. After retiring from the trade, I taught four years of Auto Technology and Welding here in Las Vegas, finishing up last year. Kids walked in thinking that it was an auto shop class and would get to work on cars all day. Welding, they learned math through measurement and layout, science of metallurgy, physics of heat, etc. Auto….chemistry of emissions, physics of horsepower and torque…..I probably taught more practical physics than the Physics instructor. My best kid [a girl btw] went on the lead the pack at UTI and is headed for NASCAR chassis school.
There is a significant place in education for STEM project-based learning.
Science and math are inherently cool. That does not mean that they are rewarded, however.
Perhaps I’m just a nerd/geek/whatever the parlance is now – but I was thrilled with the beauty of The Calculus, and though you could know everything and anything about the world when I first leared Newtonian physics, kinematics and dynamics, in high school.
Biology, in its messiness and complexity, and nearly infinite degrees of freedom, is awesome, literally, and leaves one speachless with reverence, at least me.
But no, non-scientists ‘marketing’ science and math as ‘cool’ never will be. Kids are generally far from stupid, and usually very saavy observers, and can clearly see that the guys driving the Porches are the ones that control the money. Alas.
Carly Simon has finally revealed that the song You’re so Vain was about J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Not only is Science cool, but so is nuclear fission and vitamin C.
As a sexagenerian (and no, that doesn’t –necessarily– mean a horny pervert) who grew up in the Sputnik era, I can attest that math and science most definitely used to be cool, and that every effort should be made to make it so again.
This is something I’d suspect that I and David Koch would agree upon. (Otherwise, why would he be picking up a major chunk of the tab for Nova?)
I managed to sit through a whole episode of The Big Bang Theory last night, and it made me want to vomit. The message throughout that scientists are all maladjusted misfits was pervasive and disgusting.
I have a middle school aged niece and I really doubt she and her friends have any fear of cooites and wedgies.
How science, on the other hand, is taught at my nieces school is very cool. They’re not just learning facts and figures, there’s alway application. There’s never the question of “why do I need to learn this*.”
*¾ or more of what I thought “why do I need to learn this” about in middle school and high school in the 80’s I can now say that I really didn’t need to learn. Waste of time. With my nieces and nephews they seem to be learning stuff they’ll actually need and will use. Which is a change for the better.
I think that math and science should be taught in the public schools, although I agree that as it stands now they are taught pretty badly. Apparently, the human brain is generally not developed enough to properly understand math and science until about the age of 14.
Paradoxically, American primary schools waste lots of time trying to teach children mathematics that their brains aren’t prepared to handle, while utterly neglecting to teach them foreign languages, which their brains ARE built to absorb like sponges. It’s stupid. And don’t get me started on the order in which the sciences are taught. I managed to get through high school without ever having studied physics. This was a travesty, and should not have been allowed by my school.
@3: Math and science need to be rewarded again. Strangely enough, it wasn’t until I was well into my twenties that I began to think of math and science as sexy. Yes, you heard me — sexy; reading science fiction helps encourage that kind of thinking. Part of it also was that at that point, people had stopped trying to cram math and science down my throat, and I began to see how fascinating and beautiful they were, and how important these things were.
Although for fuck’s sake, is there any college degree that IS being rewarded lately? Is it seriously only business majors? I got my first degree in the humanities, and am switching over to engineering partly because my job prospects as a guy who studied Asian history in college are slim with just a bachelors, and none too certain even with an advanced degree. I’m still going to do it, but good grief… there is something fucking wrong with the people running the business world these days.
re 9: Why not learn an Asian language? I’ll bet there’s a market for that skill.
Nukular ———– Someone had to say it!
Science, math and engineering can be cool. You just have to figure out how to Mythbuster-ize the school curriculum.
I had a chemistry teacher in high school who used to do fun stuff like make water out of oxygen and hydrogen gas and a match or set magnesium and sodium on fire. Stuff that gets your attention and gets you thinking.
@10: If I were a smarter or more industrious person, I would do just that. Really, I ought to make an honest effort to do that, since I already speak Japanese fairly well. The main reason I haven’t done that, stupidly enough, is that I was under the strong impression that my Japanese wasn’t good enough to actually get a job in any kind of field related to that. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been the most industrious as far as job hunting goes; it doesn’t help that for a long time I didn’t even really have a good idea of how it is done.
Is this a temporary or permanent position? http://byijasahybi.de.tl little girl bedding Nice video. The music is cool too even though it’s fake screaming. It’s just whispering with a crap load of distortion. I did a song like that years ago when I was into recording metal like this. You just whisper like you’re screaming, then add distortion. Sounds like like this… without the moaning in the background haha!