Careers In Math And The Sciences? Juggle Deadly Chemicals and Electricity? Rubbish! - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Careers In Math And The Sciences? Juggle Deadly Chemicals and Electricity? Rubbish! - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Frustrating is not the word. I just took time out from my busy day to read up on STEM, as advised by a worthy but misguided junior "colleague". High time, I believe, to bring back the old Common Room rule that addressing senior academic staff except in writing is the polite way to communicate with one's elders and betters. Let Adjunct Professors debate day-to-day trivialities amongst themselves and leave those deemed worthy of tenure to contemplate pressing matters of import, such as improving one's US News and World Report ranking with some new on-campus tea shops.

Anyway, my interest was piqued as I presumed I was about to enter the fray debating whether sociopathic, liberal high schools should be allowed to breed their own stem cells, only to find that STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. Why on earth use one misleading word when four will do?

It turns out that the fine folk at ASQ (American Society for Quality) have commissioned research to work out whether teachers were inspiring their charges sufficiently to make them want to become food scientists, telephone hygienists and computer hackers. The sample they worked with will be referred in future by me as SIGHS! or Selected Ignorami at High Schools. Basically, the research showed (surprise, surprise) that teachers were not selling their SIGHS! compellingly on a career in the sciences. What a waste of time, money and effort!