The real problem with school
I have become the bane of my kids’ teachers existence. They go running when they see me. Part of the reason is because I think school isn’t demanding enough. I’m sure they view me as one of those parents who thinks SO highly of their child and wants them to be in advanced everything. Maybe there’s a bit of truth to that, but I have an even more serious reason: I want them to be challenged. The other day while talking to several fellow engineers on Twitter, the discussion turned to failing courses. It turned out that a lot of us had actually failed courses at some point during our career. Yet all of us had gone on to become engineers. Chris made the point that failing teaches us something. While I think it would be better to be given the tools to prevent failure, he is right: failure can…
STEM Employment Data
This past weekend, Ken Cid from the US Department of Commerce was nice enough to leave us a comment about the administration’s jobs prospects for STEM workers. The link to their blog is here [figure credit] and the actual report can be downloaded from here. Naturally, this sent us Engineer Bloggers into a tizzy for two reasons. One, They found us! And two, we would actually have to craft some sort of response that might actually be read by government media folks. You’ll probably find a better response from Chris Gammell or FrauTech, who are much better with stats than I am. Sadly, they post later in the week so you’re stuck with me for now. In Summary: The STEM Jobs Report says that 7.6M people or 5.5% of the workforce is employed in STEM fields and over the past 10 years, STEM fields have had more job growth than non-STEM fields. Also,…