Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths

or STEM as the acronym goes is the "big" thing in education now. Forget the arts, languages, the social sciences, creativity and the like. No, you won't need those - but you will need maths and science and computer coding skills. 

Anyone who has been following the news in the English speaking world will be aware of the "AUKUS Alliance" and the "submarine deal". It all involves billions of dollars of defence money and is demanding all sorts of STEM skills. This is particularly so in this state where there will be some submarine building activities. 

Naturally the Premier is talking up the need for schools to be concentrating on teaching STEM skills. He is heading back here and straight to the Education Department to demand to know how this will be done. He does not want to know whether it can be done but how it will be done. Fair enough I suppose. Schools are supposed, among other things, to be a means of educating the younger members of society to cope with the future. If the future includes nuclear powered submarines then they need to be able to handle the building, use and maintenance of such things.

But there are some problems here. Yesterday one of the local children could not add eighteen and five without resorting to his fingers. He is of an age where the answer should have been almost automatic. He did get the answer right but he was obviously uneasy about having me stand there and wait for the answer. I don't think I am that frightening? He had come and asked if he could have some timber from the shed. Was that one piece going to be long enough or did he need two for his father to cut to size?

At least he will get some minimal practical skills from his father. Some children don't get any. As this boy's father put it to me later in the day, "They don't know a hammer from a screwdriver." Most of my generation knew those things before we went to school. My brother and BIL can both turn their hands to anything. They have added rooms to houses and renovated the interiors. Middle Cat and I know something about those things, indeed Middle Cat has done a lot to help her partner from time to time. 

But STEM does not teach these things. "Tech studies" as it is called can be done without ever touching a tool. You do it all with a computer apparently.  Really? 

But they will need people who can actually make the components for the submarines. They will need fitters and turners, welders, panel makers and much, much more. It can't all be done by computer. These huge things are going under the water. They will be nuclear powered. They are incredibly complex pieces of engineering. All the smartest STEM graduates in the world are not going to be any good if they have never tried to bend a piece of steel - or some equivalent activity.

Teachers are going to say, "There isn't time. How do we add more to an already crowded curriculum?"

I suspect there is an answer to that. It may not be a very popular answer but we could remove a lot, indeed almost all, of the "social education" which takes place.  Do all those "woke" ideas really need to be taught in school? Could we replace them with more reading, reading comprehension skills and creative writing? Could we add art, craft, metalwork, woodwork and more? What if we actually taught children to read and to think creatively? What if we gave them the skills to both design and build the submarine?