One of my educational heroes is Sir Ken Robinson, a British expert in education and creativity. A brilliant and funny speaker, he asserts that educators are killing creativity in kids. In the Ted video linked above he makes a bold statement that "schools are educating kids out of their creative capacity."
Another bold thinker, Daniel Pink, devotes an entire book "A Whole New Mind" to the idea that the merger of the brain's right hemisphere with the left, results in a centralized nexus in which ideas are conceptualized and brought about. It is this nexus of conceptualization in which innovation occurs: it is not isolated to right brain thinkers or left.
The premise is this: We cannot simply bring about the kind of education we're calling for in our schools by pushing straight academics. Yes, mathematics, science and English are quite important. But they are not the end-all, be-all of education. Without a student's creative bent, they are, in fact, meaningless.
I, and others, believe educators should be concentrating on what I call the "holistic kid." A holistic kid is one who is trained to live and function in their nexus of conceptualization. They understand and comprehend math, yes, but they also dance and play piano. They can create amazing things with Legos, but it is only because they first imagined the design of something in their mind, then proceeded to make the Legos obey that design. Their left-brain functions as strongly as their right, and vice-versa.
For example, the aquarium in Sydney, Australia features life-size sculptures entirely made out of Legos consisting of sea themes such as great white sharks, sailors, a whale's tail, and a mermaid. While touring the aquarium, the master Lego builder talks about how he first had to lay out the sculpture's design, then craft it using the Legos. This effort is the merger of left-brained analysis and engineering with right-brained design, architecture and modeling. One cannot exist without the other.
I think the misstep we make is in thinking somehow engineers are able to single-handedly craft a brave new world. I would be the first one to gladly assert that engineering is a profession in which we need more dedicated folks, and we must pursue even higher and broader standards within the field. I believe we have not yet articulated all necessary fields of engineering.
That said, without the designer and innovator, the engineer is left wanting: there is simply nothing to engineer.
But imagine for a minute that we graduate kids who are able to navigate their way not only through left-brain activities, but also function equally as well in their right-brains. They are comfortable in both sides of their brain and are able to pull this and that from each side in order to craft the thing they are currently thinking about. This all too infrequent nexus is the very heart of what we educators should be striving for.
What this means for educators is that we put away the idea that classrooms and classes are separate: that biology is in room 204 and music is in room 110 and never the twain shall meet. It means educators from various departments must come together to collaborate on the synthesis of cohesively mixed curriculum that consistently strives for the nexus of conceptualization, regardless of the subject being taught. If we teach biology, we also teach about the Golden Ratio and how Darwin imagined how various creatures might have come about--not so much by scientific thought, but by observing and drawing out his theses. It was through art coupled with scientific thinking that much of the evolutionary pretext came about.
When we advance a cause in which we say English, math and science are the leaders in our educational efforts, I would argue we leave out a great deal of subject matter that is required in order to make those things come about and be meaningful for kids.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Why Is There No "C" In STEM? - And Other Random STEM Grousings
I am at once intrigued and irritated with Big Education's fascination with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). This sexy new buzzword has found its way into the nearly hallowed halls of K-12 school administrations all over America.
I like the idea of STEM--it sounds good on paper and in meetings--but there are many, many problems associated with putting all of our apples into the STEM basket. Just as businesspersons do when the latest and greatest biz du-jour book comes out (e.g. "The Digital Aboriginal," "The Deviant's Advantage," et al) so educators are now slobbering in anxious hunger at the trough that STEM asserts it will supply. And, just like every other "educational reform" initiative American educators quickly run towards--with promise of successful kids who move through the system with amazing ease and wonderful grades--until we reform the reformers, we will continue to not make any progress. But that latter topic I will save for a later blog.
Please allow me the freedom to grouse awhile about some of my perceptions and arguments with regard to STEM: observations I've made in the last couple of years as I've seen several STEM initiatives hastily pushed through.
1) THERE'S NO "C" IN STEM - I wrote an article about this that was published in the August 2010 edition of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Learning & Leading (L&L) Journal. The problem is this: We talk a good game when creating STEM programs, but we never put computers and computer science at the top of the list of things to know about when writing our curriculum. It's all about genning up more scientists and engineers who, oddly enough, have extensive backgrounds in computer science in order to accommodate their jobs.
This is exactly backwards in the efforts we should be making. In all cases, computer science should be the first and always topmost rung of the educational ladder when considering STEM programs, else that program will fail because the students using it will not have the tools to be successful. It is with computers that nearly all of engineering and science work is being done these days. Even in areas where one does not think there is a computer and associated computer code, nevertheless there it is. Examples abound: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, surveying equipment, telemetry devices--you name it: in almost every case there is some sort of computer technology associated with it.
The great thing about computer science is it wields a broad-brush. Computer science students learn not just programming, but algorithms, logical thinking, team-building, project management, and a host of other important professional competencies, in addition to the technological skills. A student who learns how to code C# or C++ learns how to think like a computer thinks, and begins to observe behaviors in a completely different light than before: they see the "point A to point B" logic and flow of a given behavior and are thus ready to mimic that behavior in the computer.
One of the classic C++ (an extensive and deeply useful programming language) books I use in my classes is called "The C++ Primer Plus," by Stephen Prata, a physics professor at the College of Marin in Kenfield, California. What's this? A physics professor writing a computer programming book? Yes silly, that's STEM.
The old adage "...give a man a fish and you'll fill his belly for awhile, teach a man to fish and you'll fill his belly for a lifetime..." translates well into computer science: "Give a youngster a computer and they can use technology, teach a youngster to code and they will have technology for a lifetime."
2) STEM LOCKS US INTO A BOX - Don't get me wrong: I'm not down on science. But science is not the end-all, be-all of our world. There is so much more for a young student to know! Yes, many innovations come about by virtue of science and engineering. I get that. But are all students going to be involved in technological innovations? Or will the majority of them more likely just use those innovations? If we allow science to drive our society, we run the risk of driving out other content that is every bit as valuable: music, literature and theater, for example.
Moreover, we don't even want our students in a box: we want them completely outside said rectangular container. If we are roped in by the expectations of scientific and engineering disciplines we lose the ability of people to imagine a drastically different system. But it is this very innovation we're after.
Let me see if I can try an example with you here: What's the number one greenhouse gas? CO2? Nope. This is the gas that has the "climate change" crowd upset but there are other gases, including water vapor, that are as high or higher in atmospheric percentage. Here's a good reference article.
Methane--cow, sheep, goats, pigs and other farm animals farting--is every bit as big a culprit, if not bigger, than CO2. I had a student suggest that we create "cow bags" in an effort to trap all of this useful methane so we could convert it into automobile and home heating fuel (methane makes a great energy source).
How would these cow bags work? Well, farmers are quite used to applying different extraction devices to farm animals: What if a valve was invented that, when strapped to a farm animal, could capture their daily methane emission into a mylar or similar tough substance bag? At the end of the day the farmer would release all of the collected methane into a large container that would then be collected by people that convert it into useful fuels.
Sound crazy? Sure, but it's completely plausible, and it's that kind of not-in-the-box thinking we must be doing in order to innovate in today's complicated society.
3) WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY ANYWAY? - As concrete as the STEM acronym pretends to be, it dangles a tantalizingly nebulous word in front of us: technology. When we hear the word technology, we think we know what that word implies--we're lulled into thinking about our concept of technology. But what is technology anyway? Is if Facebook? Yes. Is it a stealth aircraft? Yes. Is it a waterwheel and system of pipes that delivers water to a primitive African village? Well, yes again. Is it the aerospace engineering that goes into a golf club? Uh, yes again. When defining technology we discover it is much bigger than the breadbox the STEM acronym tries to put it into.
So what then is technology? I think it's of paramount importance that we know what this word implies (and what it does not) before we can intellectually graft it into our curriculum. If we don't know what we want to teach, then how will know if we're teaching it?
Moreover, that which qualifies as technology may not be. For example, teaching a youngster how to use office automation products such as word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software, teaches them how to use the current technology, but not how to craft new technologies: which I think is a critical differentiation.
If we teach a youngster how to write a web page using HTML and CSS, we've not only introduced them to the web page creation technology, but we've also shown them how to leverage said technology. It is in the leveraging of technology that the real higher-order thinking, project-centric mindset gets cemented in, and makes youngsters think about other possibilities apart from the technology's intended use. This is how eXtended Markup Language (XML) was invented. Someone said "Hey, we could use this cool HTML thing, but give it any old tag name we want and still have browsers read it because they're already equipped to read markup." Today XML is abundant, quickly and efficiently extracting data from myriad databases in order to fuel e-commerce engines.
4) STEM LEAVES OUT DESIGN - Unfortunately, I think most would agree that scientists and engineers, while clearly intellectual, are pretty dull people and ordinarily do not make good designers. Why is this? Well, they're point A to point Z people. They see tasks, project plans, work breakdown structures, and other black and white, cut and dried elements. They think in terms of experiments, hypotheses, construction, and layout, not color, design, rich media--sound and video and animation.
Now before you get upset with me and write me about Professor so-and-so who was a fabulous painter: yeah, I get that. I'm talking about the profession as a whole. These people are left-brained folks who like to think in black and white terms, not in the realm of fascination and dreams.
This kind of mentality completely leaves out the designers--the artsy folks of the world. But we need those people because it is they who are able to envision what the scientist is talking about and put it on the page in such a way that you and I can also readily imagine what they're talking about. Without the designers the world would be in a dysfunctional array of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
I like to watch Dr. Oz on TV. He's a fascinating guy, deeply steeped in science, a heart surgeon by training who continues to perform surgeries in addition to his TV load. He (or his producers or both) recognizes that people don't process deeply technological ideas without benefit of a story and some sort of design that illustrates what he's talking about. So his shows are clever in the way the material is presented: through games and skits and 3D animations. Average people with little or no scientific training are able to quickly assimilate what's happening in this part of the body or that, thanks to the designer that connects them to the complex ideas.
And yet STEM completely negates the idea of design (computer-aided-drafting and architecture notwithstanding). If you'll permit me a deep grouse I've harbored for years--it is in the same vein as the No Child Left Behind theory: teach them harder and test them more and they'll learn this stuff. No! They won't learn this stuff until you learn to couch it in story and come up with ways that people can visualize and harmonize in their mind what you're talking about.
I would guess the majority of math teachers automatically lose 90% of their students when they start writing equations on the board. But if they put a story behind that equation, and come up with meaningful ways of representing the material: well, that's a completely different kettle of fish.
We cannot simply teach them harder. We have to teach them better.
Especially in today's high-tech society, we must find ways to merge the left- and right-brains toward what some have called the "Nexus of Conceptualization:" that point where students are drawing equally from both sides of their brain toward holistic solutions to problems. If we leave design out of STEM, we lose fully 50% of the equation and are thus defeated before we even begin.
CONCLUSION
STEM is a great idea. But it's only one-half of the idea. If what we want are more intellectually rotund students who are in their nexus of conceptualization; who understand both the technology and the design of things; who understand themselves and their propensity to lean toward one side of the brain or the other; who are able to function as deeply technological beings and yet connect with their designer selves; then we must reexamine what we are trying to do: re-charting our course and making adjustments and accommodations along the way.
But if we rely on a perfectly nebulous and inaccurate Ed du-jour buzzword that has the potential to disrupt not erupt classroom teaching: we're just setting ourselves up for failure.
I like the idea of STEM--it sounds good on paper and in meetings--but there are many, many problems associated with putting all of our apples into the STEM basket. Just as businesspersons do when the latest and greatest biz du-jour book comes out (e.g. "The Digital Aboriginal," "The Deviant's Advantage," et al) so educators are now slobbering in anxious hunger at the trough that STEM asserts it will supply. And, just like every other "educational reform" initiative American educators quickly run towards--with promise of successful kids who move through the system with amazing ease and wonderful grades--until we reform the reformers, we will continue to not make any progress. But that latter topic I will save for a later blog.
Please allow me the freedom to grouse awhile about some of my perceptions and arguments with regard to STEM: observations I've made in the last couple of years as I've seen several STEM initiatives hastily pushed through.
1) THERE'S NO "C" IN STEM - I wrote an article about this that was published in the August 2010 edition of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Learning & Leading (L&L) Journal. The problem is this: We talk a good game when creating STEM programs, but we never put computers and computer science at the top of the list of things to know about when writing our curriculum. It's all about genning up more scientists and engineers who, oddly enough, have extensive backgrounds in computer science in order to accommodate their jobs.
This is exactly backwards in the efforts we should be making. In all cases, computer science should be the first and always topmost rung of the educational ladder when considering STEM programs, else that program will fail because the students using it will not have the tools to be successful. It is with computers that nearly all of engineering and science work is being done these days. Even in areas where one does not think there is a computer and associated computer code, nevertheless there it is. Examples abound: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, surveying equipment, telemetry devices--you name it: in almost every case there is some sort of computer technology associated with it.
The great thing about computer science is it wields a broad-brush. Computer science students learn not just programming, but algorithms, logical thinking, team-building, project management, and a host of other important professional competencies, in addition to the technological skills. A student who learns how to code C# or C++ learns how to think like a computer thinks, and begins to observe behaviors in a completely different light than before: they see the "point A to point B" logic and flow of a given behavior and are thus ready to mimic that behavior in the computer.
One of the classic C++ (an extensive and deeply useful programming language) books I use in my classes is called "The C++ Primer Plus," by Stephen Prata, a physics professor at the College of Marin in Kenfield, California. What's this? A physics professor writing a computer programming book? Yes silly, that's STEM.
The old adage "...give a man a fish and you'll fill his belly for awhile, teach a man to fish and you'll fill his belly for a lifetime..." translates well into computer science: "Give a youngster a computer and they can use technology, teach a youngster to code and they will have technology for a lifetime."
2) STEM LOCKS US INTO A BOX - Don't get me wrong: I'm not down on science. But science is not the end-all, be-all of our world. There is so much more for a young student to know! Yes, many innovations come about by virtue of science and engineering. I get that. But are all students going to be involved in technological innovations? Or will the majority of them more likely just use those innovations? If we allow science to drive our society, we run the risk of driving out other content that is every bit as valuable: music, literature and theater, for example.
Moreover, we don't even want our students in a box: we want them completely outside said rectangular container. If we are roped in by the expectations of scientific and engineering disciplines we lose the ability of people to imagine a drastically different system. But it is this very innovation we're after.
Let me see if I can try an example with you here: What's the number one greenhouse gas? CO2? Nope. This is the gas that has the "climate change" crowd upset but there are other gases, including water vapor, that are as high or higher in atmospheric percentage. Here's a good reference article.
Methane--cow, sheep, goats, pigs and other farm animals farting--is every bit as big a culprit, if not bigger, than CO2. I had a student suggest that we create "cow bags" in an effort to trap all of this useful methane so we could convert it into automobile and home heating fuel (methane makes a great energy source).
How would these cow bags work? Well, farmers are quite used to applying different extraction devices to farm animals: What if a valve was invented that, when strapped to a farm animal, could capture their daily methane emission into a mylar or similar tough substance bag? At the end of the day the farmer would release all of the collected methane into a large container that would then be collected by people that convert it into useful fuels.
Sound crazy? Sure, but it's completely plausible, and it's that kind of not-in-the-box thinking we must be doing in order to innovate in today's complicated society.
3) WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY ANYWAY? - As concrete as the STEM acronym pretends to be, it dangles a tantalizingly nebulous word in front of us: technology. When we hear the word technology, we think we know what that word implies--we're lulled into thinking about our concept of technology. But what is technology anyway? Is if Facebook? Yes. Is it a stealth aircraft? Yes. Is it a waterwheel and system of pipes that delivers water to a primitive African village? Well, yes again. Is it the aerospace engineering that goes into a golf club? Uh, yes again. When defining technology we discover it is much bigger than the breadbox the STEM acronym tries to put it into.
So what then is technology? I think it's of paramount importance that we know what this word implies (and what it does not) before we can intellectually graft it into our curriculum. If we don't know what we want to teach, then how will know if we're teaching it?
Moreover, that which qualifies as technology may not be. For example, teaching a youngster how to use office automation products such as word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software, teaches them how to use the current technology, but not how to craft new technologies: which I think is a critical differentiation.
If we teach a youngster how to write a web page using HTML and CSS, we've not only introduced them to the web page creation technology, but we've also shown them how to leverage said technology. It is in the leveraging of technology that the real higher-order thinking, project-centric mindset gets cemented in, and makes youngsters think about other possibilities apart from the technology's intended use. This is how eXtended Markup Language (XML) was invented. Someone said "Hey, we could use this cool HTML thing, but give it any old tag name we want and still have browsers read it because they're already equipped to read markup." Today XML is abundant, quickly and efficiently extracting data from myriad databases in order to fuel e-commerce engines.
4) STEM LEAVES OUT DESIGN - Unfortunately, I think most would agree that scientists and engineers, while clearly intellectual, are pretty dull people and ordinarily do not make good designers. Why is this? Well, they're point A to point Z people. They see tasks, project plans, work breakdown structures, and other black and white, cut and dried elements. They think in terms of experiments, hypotheses, construction, and layout, not color, design, rich media--sound and video and animation.
Now before you get upset with me and write me about Professor so-and-so who was a fabulous painter: yeah, I get that. I'm talking about the profession as a whole. These people are left-brained folks who like to think in black and white terms, not in the realm of fascination and dreams.
This kind of mentality completely leaves out the designers--the artsy folks of the world. But we need those people because it is they who are able to envision what the scientist is talking about and put it on the page in such a way that you and I can also readily imagine what they're talking about. Without the designers the world would be in a dysfunctional array of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
I like to watch Dr. Oz on TV. He's a fascinating guy, deeply steeped in science, a heart surgeon by training who continues to perform surgeries in addition to his TV load. He (or his producers or both) recognizes that people don't process deeply technological ideas without benefit of a story and some sort of design that illustrates what he's talking about. So his shows are clever in the way the material is presented: through games and skits and 3D animations. Average people with little or no scientific training are able to quickly assimilate what's happening in this part of the body or that, thanks to the designer that connects them to the complex ideas.
And yet STEM completely negates the idea of design (computer-aided-drafting and architecture notwithstanding). If you'll permit me a deep grouse I've harbored for years--it is in the same vein as the No Child Left Behind theory: teach them harder and test them more and they'll learn this stuff. No! They won't learn this stuff until you learn to couch it in story and come up with ways that people can visualize and harmonize in their mind what you're talking about.
I would guess the majority of math teachers automatically lose 90% of their students when they start writing equations on the board. But if they put a story behind that equation, and come up with meaningful ways of representing the material: well, that's a completely different kettle of fish.
We cannot simply teach them harder. We have to teach them better.
Especially in today's high-tech society, we must find ways to merge the left- and right-brains toward what some have called the "Nexus of Conceptualization:" that point where students are drawing equally from both sides of their brain toward holistic solutions to problems. If we leave design out of STEM, we lose fully 50% of the equation and are thus defeated before we even begin.
CONCLUSION
STEM is a great idea. But it's only one-half of the idea. If what we want are more intellectually rotund students who are in their nexus of conceptualization; who understand both the technology and the design of things; who understand themselves and their propensity to lean toward one side of the brain or the other; who are able to function as deeply technological beings and yet connect with their designer selves; then we must reexamine what we are trying to do: re-charting our course and making adjustments and accommodations along the way.
But if we rely on a perfectly nebulous and inaccurate Ed du-jour buzzword that has the potential to disrupt not erupt classroom teaching: we're just setting ourselves up for failure.
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