Science, technology, engineering and math professionals are the backbones of modern society, and STEM educators are the osteoblasts that make those backbones. If you don’t understand that metaphor then you must not be drinking enough calcium. A proper education is just as essential to the development of children as their nutrition, and just like nutrition, well balanced consumption makes for the best results.
As a future STEM educator I take the responsibility of feeding our future generations the education they need very seriously. After all — we as a society want them to grow up to be big and strong, don’t we?
Obviously not everyone is going to go into the sciences for their careers, and if everyone did, that would be a whole problem of its own. However, ever since the scientific revolution, science has been the driving force behind the progress of society and the increase of quality of life for people. We will always need people in STEM careers if we want to continue to move forward.
In the early years of science, all you needed to make groundbreaking discoveries was a little free time and some extra money to throw around. We knew so little about the world that just making a simple observation such as, ‘Things fall toward the ground’ was groundbreaking. This era of gentleman-scientists allowed people with little education to push forward our understanding of the world.
Now science and technology have pulled back the veil so far on the universe that you need what seems like a lifetime of education just to scratch the surface of new ideas. Sadly, that fact means if a person has hopes of becoming an innovator in the STEM field they need to begin their education as young as possible.
Unfortunately science hasn’t progressed far enough for us to be able to tell if a child will grow up to be a scientist or not through their DNA. Until that day comes, the responsibility falls on STEM educators to give every possible child a springboard of scientific knowledge before they become an adult and decide on a career. While many students will forget or never use that knowledge in their future, being a science educator is worth it to watch those few that do that make the small steps — or giant leaps — for mankind.
Connor Smith is a biomedical sciences senior and assistant scitech editor for The Battalion.