I happened across this article and found the response that had (at the time I read it) no votes, the one that scored the most points with me for its address of many issues gone wrong with our educational system.
Worth quoting:
“I think there is something missing from our high school though post secondary STEM [science, technology, education, math] programs. Something that would better prepare our students for the competitive global economy. I think they also need to be equipped with the skills that can bring it all together for them–entrepreneurship. So lets reboot it, and for those of you who look for the next acronym, we can call it STEEM. STEEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Math. With innovative entrepreneurial curriculum in the mix, we can get to work on developing the best equipped generation to help lead the next phase of growth of our innovation economy.”
JM: Given the nature of our hypercompetitive global economy and the
lack of incentive, opportunities and innovation in the moribund
wage-and-salary system, it makes sense to introduce a more expansive
Silicon Valley mindset early and often. And STEEM makes STEM a whole lot
more interesting to more students.
Response by dduggerbiocepts:
What’s missing from STEM education
“I think there is something missing from our high school though post secondary STEM [science, technology, education, math] programs. Something that would better prepare our students for the competitive global economy. I think they also need to be equipped with the skills that can bring it all together for them–entrepreneurship. So lets reboot it, and for those of you who look for the next acronym, we can call it STEEM. STEEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Math. With innovative entrepreneurial curriculum in the mix, we can get to work on developing the best equipped generation to help lead the next phase of growth of our innovation economy.”
- Dean DeBiase, chairman and CEO of entertainment.com, co-founder of boardroominnovation.com and Innovation Excellence, and a co-author of The Big Moo.
Response by dduggerbiocepts:
Wrong E - wrong direction.
STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) is a typical
"education" pseudo-scientific buzz word desperately looking for a
meaningful (federally fundable) acronym. First of all it reveals the
true ignorance of educational administrators and politicians because
it's a redundant concept. Technology and engineering are already
subdivisions included under the colleges of science and math.
The idea of adding "entrepreneurship" as a teachable single topic just shows how intellectually crippled our society has become. However, if you want to increase the level of successful entrepreneurship, then we will necessarily have to increase the higher education focus on economics - and not just the fiscal "book keeping/CPA" type that pops into the average person's mind. Entrepreneurship success also needs physical economics already taught under heading of Physics - creating an awareness of mass transfer and mass balance processes and analysis and their relationship to fiscal economics - and how profits are really created scientifically and not by luck. Without a basic understanding of mass balance and transfer functions you end up with scientifically illiterate political/corporate leadership and private investors spending billions of dollars on dead end alternative energy programs (like biofuels, cold fusion, etc.). All the while not preparing for the end of cheap critical commodities like oil and phosphates - that produce cheap food.
Our understanding of the transfer of knowledge is fine and growing - but not being scientifically employed in our "one size fits all" educational system. What we need is a major re-organization of our entire political cronyism driven, greed motivated educational system. We need to take out political and economic motivation and return education to those with demonstrated teaching skills and an informational transfer process based on real science - reflecting the many different types of human learning processes and not the warm and fuzzy psycho/social pseudo science that is pervasive in the current dysfunctional ed. system. We also need to accept the finite economic limitations of our old rural school based education system concepts and embrace the far more efficient online course education process for the majority of students. Like it or not - online education is currently in the process of economically gutting the traditional classroom course system. High quality online courses are far preferred to over-crowded classroom courses. Good professors who teach both classroom and online courses see the overwhelming preference by students for well taught online courses - as do the college administrators. Unfortunately, the administrators are faced with tasks of filling the bricks and mortar facilities that they and their political allies coerced the public into paying for - which is allowing for-profit online institutions to grow by leaps and bounds over the past decade. STEM is simplistic solution for a complex problem proffered by those who demonstrably have no clear understanding the of the problem.
The idea of adding "entrepreneurship" as a teachable single topic just shows how intellectually crippled our society has become. However, if you want to increase the level of successful entrepreneurship, then we will necessarily have to increase the higher education focus on economics - and not just the fiscal "book keeping/CPA" type that pops into the average person's mind. Entrepreneurship success also needs physical economics already taught under heading of Physics - creating an awareness of mass transfer and mass balance processes and analysis and their relationship to fiscal economics - and how profits are really created scientifically and not by luck. Without a basic understanding of mass balance and transfer functions you end up with scientifically illiterate political/corporate leadership and private investors spending billions of dollars on dead end alternative energy programs (like biofuels, cold fusion, etc.). All the while not preparing for the end of cheap critical commodities like oil and phosphates - that produce cheap food.
Our understanding of the transfer of knowledge is fine and growing - but not being scientifically employed in our "one size fits all" educational system. What we need is a major re-organization of our entire political cronyism driven, greed motivated educational system. We need to take out political and economic motivation and return education to those with demonstrated teaching skills and an informational transfer process based on real science - reflecting the many different types of human learning processes and not the warm and fuzzy psycho/social pseudo science that is pervasive in the current dysfunctional ed. system. We also need to accept the finite economic limitations of our old rural school based education system concepts and embrace the far more efficient online course education process for the majority of students. Like it or not - online education is currently in the process of economically gutting the traditional classroom course system. High quality online courses are far preferred to over-crowded classroom courses. Good professors who teach both classroom and online courses see the overwhelming preference by students for well taught online courses - as do the college administrators. Unfortunately, the administrators are faced with tasks of filling the bricks and mortar facilities that they and their political allies coerced the public into paying for - which is allowing for-profit online institutions to grow by leaps and bounds over the past decade. STEM is simplistic solution for a complex problem proffered by those who demonstrably have no clear understanding the of the problem.
