Friedman makes some excellent points in his article. I agree there is no reason to waste all our time, energy, money, and our lives on trying to help countries who do not want to help themselves. There will be no long term change unless they want it to take place. So instead of focusing on the "war on terrorism" what should Americans do?
I say they should place a higher value on education. We need to do more to promote STEM careers. Science teachers alone can not make the difference for our country. We need everyone to buy into the fact that if we don't get our students understanding science, technology, economics, and mathematics at high levels we will continue to fall behind. The internet has really changed the way the whole world gets information and communicates and no one can say what will be next. If we don't prepare our young students to understand how to solve problems and collaborate with one another using our current technology we are preparing our students for jobs that do not exist. I think that Americans need to teach our students to read and write, but we need to place a higher focus on science and technology in our classrooms. Students will learn to read and write and use those skills when they are working through different scientific inquiries. I believe that we could change the destiny of the United States by changing to a focus on science education. Teachers can not teach science without teaching students math, technology, reading, writing, social studies, and every other content area.
As a fellow science teacher I can appreciate what you have to say about creating a sort of 'grass roots' movement to create change in STEM education. How do you work with the schools to help create that change? I've found that my administrators are not truly aware of what is going in the areas of science, engineering and technology and tend to focus on reading and mathematics instead. What can we do as science teachers to change our admin's perception of these areas?
ReplyDeleteHello Diana,
ReplyDeleteDiana, you had a wonderful blog, and I applaud you for it. I think we need to focus our students on reading at higher levels and performing math. We as educators cannot do it all ourselves and from what I have seen, it seems that all of the work is placed on the teachers backs. I would like the community to be more involved but at what point does the students and parents become more involved. I would like for the students to take an active role in their own learning, and be held accountable for their own short comings. There are teachers that are not up to date in education, but that is a matter for administration to handle. As an educator, we should give the students as much technological expereince as we can, and keep improving as educators. However, by placing all of the demands of education on the educators,I fear the teachers will be more subject to personal let downs. There are more factors than a teacher can control, and one of them, is the the student. Students must find an intrinsic value to learning and be held accountable for their learning. Demski (2009) says this will be hard to accomplish since Algebra, Geometry, Earth-Science, and Physics are less and less appealing.
Thanks, Adam
References
Demski, J. (2009). STEM picks up speed. T.H.E. Journal, 36(1), 22–26. Retrieved from the Walden University Library using the Education Research Complete database.