I’ve been interested at the new flurry of comments about the need for STEM emphasis in Virginia higher education, emanating from the gubernatorial campaign. I find myself both attracted and annoyed by the arguments.
Attracted: I assume we do need more scientists and engineers in the United States. Mason has a very good record in training undergraduates and in developing relevant Masters programs, with unusual attention (thanks to boosts from relevant faculty) to gender issues as well. We are eager to help develop teachers and assist in K-12 programs as part of our regional outreach. We plan some new developments in the science education and outreach front even in the coming year. So at one level the STEM emphasis is welcome, and provides an opportunity to seek additional support for things we’re doing and want to do.
Annoyed: at least two kinds of distortion potentially lurk in the STEM arguments. Both involve a potential narrowing of what higher education is supposed to be about. First, there’s every reason to attend to a substantial number of fields, outside STEM, that also deserve emphasis as meeting measurable national needs. Admittedly, I speak here as a non-scientist, eager to make sure the fields I know best continue to get some attention. But why not a bit of a push as well for global expertise including appropriate foreign language facility, just as one case in point? Second, STEM training itself must be flexible and anchored in a liberal education framework, else we’ll train for current and not future needs and produce specialists inadequately aware of broader social and political issues. On both these fronts, of course, Mason is also well positioned and eager to contribute.
So let’s welcome the fashionable emphasis but with appropriate balance and context, and be willing to speak up for larger educational values even as we seek to pluck some petals from the STEM approach.
Academic vs. Vocational: Is this really the question?
I would like to begin by quoting my friend Dr. David Thornburg from the Thornburg Center for Professional Development during a phone conversation as we were both doing speeches in two different cities with the same issue on our audiences agendas–academic vs. vocational education: “We are failing both sides today-academic and vocational.” To continue from my letter above regarding consilence or conflict I would like to begin with an excerpt on the liberal arts and general education perspective:
“Recent days have brought yet another challenge to liberal learning in the schools: well-meaning business leaders and policy makers, rightly concerned about America’s (and their states’) competitiveness and the dearth of highly skilled workers able to sustain tomorrow’s technology-driven economy, are pushing so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) training (Finn and Ravitch, 2007).
“STEM seeks to give students the skills needed to handle the technology-rich tools that undergird the modern economy. Understandably, leading proponents of STEM have included the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), vividly aware of the difficulties that employers face in finding, hiring, and retaining such people. NAM reports, for example, that 90 percent of America’s manufacturers now face shortages of skilled production employees such as machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors, and technicians.
“Such problems are real. Yet those who see K-12 education as the solution to them are pointing America toward yet another curricular tightening and another round of unintended consequences. In the long run, America’s true competitive edge is not its technical prowess but its creativity, its imagination, its inventiveness, its people’s capacity to devise new solutions, to innovate, to invest new organizational as well as technological forms, and to eke productivity gains out of what others see as static situations. STEM cannot claim to inculcate such attributes any more than the basic-skills folks can. Indeed, too much STEM may mean too few leaves and flowers. If children are deprived of the rich content of American history, as well as the history of other cultures, geography, the arts, languages, and literature, they will face unmanageable challenges on many fronts. (Finn and Ravitch, 2007)
Though this argument is valid in terms of its call for Liberal Arts education as an important foundation for K-12 education, it is equally invalid because current Career and Technology Education (CTE) practice in the form of “Tech Prep” integrates the worlds of STEM, CTE, and Liberal Arts rather than creating a zero-sum game. The issue of all parties, STEM, CTE and Liberal Arts is resolved with a simple conjunction–an “and” rather than an “or” statement. For example, the Maryland comprehensive Liberal Arts, STEM, and CTE model is proven to increase student alignment to university, community/technical college and the world of work.
According to Pat Mikos, Program Manager of the Division of Career Technology and Adult Learning at the Maryland State Board of Education, during the 2006-2007 school year, 51 percent of CTE concentrators (26-percent of all students) met the University System of Maryland’s entrance requirements, up from 14 percent a decade earlier (Telephone Interview, September 24, 2008). Maryland’s comprehensive model (as well as Tech Prep in many states) reconciles the perceived shortcoming of STEM-based CTE by defining a systems model that creates a more rigorous model than simply one approach or the other. The integration of these two separate paths is supported by current research into the validity of integrating Liberal Arts and STEM-based CTE:
“Those who complete both a strong academic curriculum and a vocational program of study (dual concentrators) may have better outcomes than those who pursue one or the other (Silverberg, Warner, Fong, & Goodwin, 2004; Plank, 2001; Stone & Aliaga, 2003)” (National Alliance for Secondary Education and Transition, 2005, Career Preparatory Experiences, ¶ 3).
The worlds of CTE, STEM and Liberal Arts are not divided by opposing pedagogical practice (Applied vs. Theoretical), rather, they are divided by a lack of collaboration and supportive P-20 systems. At a minimum, the integrated STEM, CTE, and Liberal Arts model should be considered as an additional option for K-12 students in the U.S. similar to Maryland. This practice and the results are starkly contrasted with current successes of schools in relation to student achievement, engagement, and costs associated with stopgap measures in remedial education. In Texas, the direct cost of remedial education during the 2006-2007 biennium was $206 million (Terry, 2005).
According to a recent study from Pacific Research Institute (Murray, 2008), “The High Price of Failure in California: How Inadequate Education Costs Schools, Students, and Society,” direct and indirect costs rival California’s $17 million budget deficit. Specific cost estimates related to remedial education include $274 million for public colleges and community colleges, $107-million-to-$447-million for California businesses, and $1.1-to- $5.5-billion in annual earnings lost to students who do not graduate. Maryland’s model illustrates that the union of STEM, CTE, and Liberal Arts is not at odds with the needs of 21st century civil society. Rather, the comprehensive integrated model is a method to increase college, workforce, and civil readiness simultaneously.
Today, the way ahead for U.S. K-12 schools, communities, and students is transdisciplinarity-the unification of theory and practice and the connection of learning to action in the context of real world problems. We do not have to sacrifice our freedom, or ability to innovate, to think critically, to lead, to advance through the highest levels of academia and indeed society. All we need to do is to work together to design a system to nurture our local capacity for innovation and human creativity. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are nothing without the arts or the whole of education. Assuming cooperation and the exigencies of time, foreign competition and the need for rapid advancement through adaptation we have a short window (2009-2015) in which the US can leverage its position to new heights of social, economic and political standing in the world. The alternative I choose not to contemplate.
Exigency \Ex”i*gen*cy\, n.; pl. Exigencies. [LL. exigentia: cf. F. exigence.] The state of being exigent; urgent or exacting want; pressing necessity or distress; need; a case demanding immediate action, supply, or remedy; as, an unforeseen exigency. “The present exigency of his affairs.” –Ludlow. Syn: Demand; urgency; distress; pressure; emergency; necessity; crisis.
Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Everything is at stake,
–Jim Brazell