The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > STEM: part culture war, part cargo cult > Comments

STEM: part culture war, part cargo cult : Comments

By Nicholas Gruen, published 17/2/2015

We've nearly doubled educational spending per student in the last few decades. That's funded popular measures with little impact.

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All
Bravo!

I'd go a little further and suggest that the current model of tertiary STEM education could be almost completely abandoned and readily replaced with a model based on projects designed to stretch students learning.

There is nothing required of an undergrad course in engineering or science that is not available as a free or cheap resource online and with access via university library authorisation the resource becomes truly vast and comprehensive.

Allowing students to teach themselves as they do project-based technology development, with really high quality teaching backup in the form of colloquia, seminars, tutorials and simple email support would, I suspect, be far more effective than compelling attendance at lectures given by senior staff who have more important things to do.

We need to move, as rapidly as possible, away from the current linear model of learning and embrace the non-linear technologies that internet access makes possible.

I'd also suggest that it is critical for us to embrace a better model for teaching of the humanities. Mary Shelley's cautionary tale is still relevant.
Posted by Craig Minns, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 6:35:32 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
'STEM is all the rage in education – that's Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.'

Could'a fooled me..

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/20year-decline-in-year-12-science-and-maths-participation-study-finds-20141006-10qvq2.html

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/aspiring-teachers-abandoning-hsc-maths-20150213-13drr7.html

I'm not sure of the cause, there seems to me to be a rise in what we used to call 'airy fairy' subjects back in my day.

I'm not sure whether marks for HSC get scaled these days, but it used to be that you were rewarded for taking on 4 Unit Maths as opposed to General 2 Unit Maths, or 'Maths in society'(ie Vege maths) . At one point I was sure you had to do Maths for the HSC but now only English is compulsory.

So perhaps Maths skills were weighted in line with their difficulty, but now students have decided tactically they are not worth attempting in order to maximize their HSC mark. That's my stab in the dark.

It may be sexist of me, but these changes do seem to coincide with girls now doing much better than boys at school.

Anyway, it doesn't seem to me that 'STEM is all the rage in education'.
Posted by Houellebecq, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 8:00:39 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
“We've nearly doubled educational spending per student in the last few decades. That's funded popular measures with little impact – smaller class sizes – and politico/educational fads some of which have proven disastrous – like whole language learning.”

Education spending may have doubled over the last unspecified number of decades, but undoing that doubling shows how pointless that claim is. We can do that by cutting teacher salaries by 50 per cent (i.e., to $46,779 for the top classroom level in Victoria) or by increasing the maximum class size by 100 per cent (i.e., to 50 students in a secondary school), or by increasing teaching loads by 100 per cent (i.e., to 45 hours a week in a primary school), or by some combination, and thus drive the best people out of teaching into better paid and less demanding jobs.

It ought to be obvious that spending has to increase to keep up with the increased number of students and to allow teachers to share in the rising prosperity that they have helped create. Otherwise, able people would leave teaching and the students’ achievement levels would not just plateau, but plummet.

The Tennessee STAR study showed that smaller classes result in improved student learning.

The average secondary class size was 21.4 in 2013 (Summary_Statistics_for_Victorian_Schools_Brochure-March2014.pdf). The average secondary class was 20 in 1992 (Commission of Audit), so contrary to the myth, many classes are larger now than 23 years ago.

The long term is instructive. The secondary pupil teacher ratio was 10.8:1 in 1999 (the last year of the state’s first ever long-term Labor government, the one accused of being controlled by supposedly militant teachers unions. Yet that ratio had been 10.9:1, way back in 1981, the last full year of a Liberal government that cared about education in the state’s history. It is now 12.2:1, so in 34 years we have had a 12 per cent cut to secondary staffing.

“Whole language learning” might be a fad, but it does not cost any more than phonics.

People who write on any topic should get basic facts right.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 8:54:09 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Chris, student achievement levels HAVE plummeted and in my limited observations throughout my own children's educational journey there are precious few able people in the teaching profession.

Houellebecq's comment is on the money and the original article is pretty close to the bone as well.

I assume you are a teacher, or associated with the education system.
Posted by Craig Minns, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 9:02:50 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
How wonderful to see a sacred cow swallowed whole and spat out in front of my eyes! And by a prominent economist to boot.

As someone who could be seen as part of the STEM establishment, I have tended for many years to button my lip on the topic of STEM education. But I have never forgotten my early attempts to get a job, after studying for seven years and doing the standard four years or so as a post-doc. For each job (this was in the 1960s) there were 400 or so applicants! I should have been delighted to get the interviews I did but what I really wanted was a paying job. Luckily I was eventually successful. So much for a shortage of scientists.

In my early days in CSIRO, and especially while I served my statutory term as a laboratory ‘union rep’, I felt the need to oppose the continual demands that schools and universities turn out more scientists and engineers. After all, I was representing ‘the workers’ and perhaps ‘the future workers’. To me there had seemed to be an adequate supply already. Where were those graduates going to find work? Later as a research manager I became an employer of STEM graduates. We always had plenty of applicants, though I never quite lost the illusion that my own cohort was somehow better than those who followed (I was probably wrong). So maybe the real challenge for STEM advocates is to drag the brightest students away from the attractions of law, medicine, veterinary science, commerce, etc. Good luck with that.
Posted by Tombee, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 12:22:15 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Craig,

There is evidence of some decline in PISA results, but I have never seen any evidence that student achievement levels have “plummeted”. There are many reason for this decline, including the dispiriting attacks teachers are subject to year in and year out, the cost-cutting and chaotic decision-making of ignorant governments, the recycling of fads from the 1970s like the open classroom, the socially segregating socio-economic status funding model (kept in place under Gonski despite the incessant propaganda to the contrary) and the worsening working conditions in education.

The ability of people in teaching has fallen as the pay has fallen. Andrew Leigh did work on this years ago. Teaching has become a less attractive profession to able people. Cutting spending would make this situation worse as it would drive even more able people out of teaching. Once you closely examine any claim made about increased spending on education, its meaning dissolves before your eyes. All these claims have been either untrue or technically correct but without necessary and relevant detail.

I was a teacher. I retired several years ago, fed up with the system, but I resolved to maintain my interest in the field.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 12:31:46 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy