Do you want the best and brightest future for your child? Are you willing to challenge her or him, to encourage them to reach their true potential? Well, consider the following opportunity!
The future holds a wealth of challenges for humankind:
- How do we slow the change in our climate, and where will we get our (cleaner) energy?
- How will we feed our growing population, as more and more arable land is lost?
- Many of our aquifers are poisoned by industry, and others are drying up. How will we replenish them, so that your grandchildren have clean water to drink?
- People are getting sicker. Did you know that deaths from Alzheimer's disease increased 89 percent between 2000 and 2014, taking a huge toll on families and the economy? The annual cost of care and treatment, in the US alone, is expected to reach 1.1 trillion dollars by 2050. Who will develop a cure for this cruel killer? Or cancer? Or MS? Or...
I am a patron, and practitioner, of the Arts. Art washes the dust of daily life off our souls. But art is not going solve our looming world-wide problems. Our planet does not need an interpretive dancer to warn people about the perils global warming - it needs solar engineers, nuclear physicists, and wind technologists to develop and manufacture solutions. It doesn't need another Dance Dance Revolution - it needs an energy revolution, a medical revolution, and a space exploration revolution. And those require revolutionaries!
But let's set aside the humanistic aspect for a moment, and simply consider your child's economic future. Any number of sources will affirm that career opportunities in science and technology will multiply, and they will be well-compensated . Take a look at the 2015 statistics published by the World Economic Forum. These are raw numbers, not per capita. (And they do not include the tech powerhouses China and India.) Ukraine, for example, has 3 times the number of engineering graduates, per capita, as the US, while Russia can boast of 4.5 times as many.
Per capita, the US didn't even make it into the top 10 countries, when ranked by employment in "high-skilled" areas.
And for young women in our country, it's even bleaker; according to a recent article by Microsoft, "Only 6.7% of women graduate with STEM degrees vs 17% of men, meaning men are 2.5 times more likely to enter these high paying fields."
I want to help fix this. I want to help turn the tide. I'm offering a Summer's Cool (get it?) program of intellectual enrichment, focusing on STEM skills for middle school-aged students, that I'm calling S*T*E*M Bootcamp.
The goals are daunting:
- Establish a foundation of scientific principles and practices
- Safely learn how to use tools to design, measure and create
- Apply that knowledge during real world, hands-on projects
- Above all - foster curiosity, and promote interest in the sciences
Each week of Bootcamp will build roughly upon the lessons from the previous week: an overview of human civilization, from the dawn of man up to the Age of Enlightenment, leads to a discussion of epistemology and Science; the birth and evolution of the universe leads to discussion about the nature of matter and energy, which leads to overviews of chemistry, electricity, and magnetism; perhaps we'll learn some programming to support an Arduino project; we'll discuss general design and construction principles; methods of visually presenting information; and explore research on creativity and happiness.
Then, the following week...
Just kidding! The pace will be casual. Your child will not be overwhelmed.There will be levity and whimsy, but the focus will be on learning, and the projects will mostly serve that end. We will make things, and destroy things. Swords will be beaten into plowshares, and vice versa. Rockets will roar, bridges will be built, food molecularly gastonomized. Hair will be raised, and magnets levitated. (PVC pipe, if you're reading this, consider yourself warned.) Your child's project ideas will be welcomed!
A typical day might look like this: 1) Science lecture 2) Create a group snack with food science 3) Nature hike 4) Learn a "maker" skill 5) Review and reinforce what's been learned
I hope your child will join me!
