For many parents and educators, getting children excited about so-called STEM subjects—Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—is one of the holy grails of education. STEM careers offer great job prospects—and U.S. children tend to underperform, with over 50% of doctorates in engineering, math and computer science awarded at U.S. universities going to foreign-born candidates.
But how do you get children excited about STEM fields?
Today, much of the effort is focused on high schools and universities. As Montessori educators, we’d argue that this is too little, too late. Even if children are successful in Advanced Placement courses at the high school level (which is a big if!), this does not mean they’ll develop the skills to actually succeed in STEM fields. Here’s what Jonathan King, an instructor at MIT, observes about his students:
“I worry about the future of science in this country. For kids to get passionate about science, they have to get their hands dirty—literally. They have to have labs where they study things in depth and learn to observe, instead of just memorizing facts from a textbook. The kids who take my intro lab courses today have gotten top scores on all the Advanced Placement science courses in their high schools, but they don’t know how to observe. I ask them to describe what they see in the microscopes, and they want to know what they should be looking for, what the right answer is.”
quoted in The Global Achievement Gap, location 270