STEM, Anyone?

[Chris_Wendt]

S - Science
T - Technology
E - Engineering
M - Mathematics

Ripped from the headlines: Hofstra School of Engineering [/i](link)[/url]...

...along with my comment posted on Newsday dot com:

Hofstra School of Engineering is having college students build contraptions like that wooden car for two reasons: (1) high schools can't be bothered, because this stuff is not part of the Common Core, which means it isn't on the tests, and high schools teach to the tests, and, (2) not enough LI college kids were Boy Scouts who participated in the Pine Box Derby in their early teens. But, hey, it's their money...I mean, it's their parents' money!

Seriously, this basic stuff really belongs in high school-level STEM programs. LI has two school district STEM programs, both in Suffolk, (P-Tech in Longwood, tied a corporate sponsor-CA Technologies, and, the brand new Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School in Huntington Station), plus, one half-baked, half-day Nassau BOCES STEM program in Syosset (the other half day is spent on a school bus going back-and-forth to your home high school).

The Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School recently lost out on a $11.6 Million federal grant, with grant money going to three schools in NY City instead.

The half-baked BOCES Doshi STEM program is less than half subscribed, with only 23 of 50 seats filled this semester. Many Nassau school boards balked at the cost of tuition and transportation while parents and students don't want students' time wasted riding back and forth on school buses every day for a half-day of STEM classes.

Will the Common Core KILL STEM programs in NY?
That is a real question, not academic and not rhetorical.
Will School Districts and Schools become so focused on teaching to the Common Core Assessments that STEM programs and especially Magnet STEM schools be starved for financial and other needed resources?

I do not have the answer.

What do you think?

Sincerely,

Chris Wendt

[Chris_Wendt]

I have read extensively about the life and times of Galileo Galilei. His problem serves as an exquisite example of what can go wrong when education (the dissemination and transfer of knowledge in the public domain) is too tightly controlled by the central government.

Galileo challenged the long-held belief that the earth was the center of the universe, or, at least the center of our Solar System. Instead, Galileo championed the emergent Copernican theory that the sun was the center of the solar system (that we are part of a solar system). This offended and was taken as a challenge to the authority of the Pope, who ruled much of what is today Italy, as well as offending the Jesuit order of priests, themselves an influential teaching order, as they still are today.

The end result was that Galileo was tried by the Inquisition, charged with heresy, forced to recant his teachings that the earth revolved around the sun, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Imagine if the Common Core had existed a century before Galileo lived (1564-1642), with the potential result that we would still be believing the world to be flat, and Christopher Columbus would have discovered Valpolicella, a new wine, instead of America, a new world.

These examples deserve more than just a little chuckle.

Chris Wendt

P.S. for a good and interesting read try "To Father: the Letters of Sister Maria Celeste to Galileo, 1623-1633" (link)
This is a collection of actual letters written to Galileo by his daughter during his house arrest for heresy. -CW