I, myself, am a very lucky and very lazy mutant, and needed motivation more than enlightenment or enthusiasm, but HHS, despite its flaws then, served me as well as was possible in that day, in that place.
When I came to HHS from grade school as a freshman, I was already a giant science geek. I had little more to do than express my interest in astronomy to Mr. Neiffer when I was encouraged to borrow the only telescope the school owned and USE it, to read every book the local libraries....and within two years I knew as much about the subject as anyone I knew, and I'd saved enough money to buy my own 'scope.
Karen Howe and Ralph Schubothe were just as critical to my obsessions. Miss Howe realized within a few days that I would have no problem keeping up with algebra (and thanks to Mr. Lemley from 7th grade for that) and made a deal with me and a friend of mine: finish the homework before class and we could take her period in the room across the hall, where Mr. Schubothe was the proprietor of two of the very first PC's. Ralph sat us down and found out what we wanted, handed us the AppleSoft programming manuals, and said: "Take 'em home this weekend, read them, and we'll start next week."
The rest is history....I went on to get a scholarship to go to Whitman College in Walla Walla...and if that didn't work out as well as it should have, it certainly wasn't for lack of preparation; my grades were good-to-excellent and my enthusiasm for thinking has never wavered to this day. That whole motivational thing, though....water under the bridge.
After that, I had a lot of shitty jobs coming down the road...but eventually I realized that the most important skill I learned, in all that time, was my skill and ability to learn...in 1990, after I'd landed my first GOOD living wage job (Fleetwood Travel Trailers), I bought the books, did the work, and became a relatively competent technology jack-of-all-trades within five years...and that career has sustained me for going on 25 years now.
So what has changed?
---------------------------------------
1) 'Nothing really.' Yes, as far as teaching talent goes, that is true. Those kinds of teachers still exist, they still have that kind of enthusiasm...if you are interested in one of the most lucrative vocations that exist in this economy..
2) 'Well, they spend a LOT of money on STEM programs now! Never has there been more resources and more support from industry....'
3) 'Th-th-th-INTERTUBES! Yezzzsss! Wid de Intertubes we can learn anything, on YouTube, in five minutes! No need for sshcool at all, itz justa gubbimint conspiracy anyway to pollute our....'
4) 'Participation in sports is immensely valuable and our athletes learn the critical social and personal skills that academic programs lack, and which are necessary to succeed in this fast-moving economy...'
Whoops! Stop right there....
Vocation. Economy. Industry. Conspiracy. Success.
Where, in any of that, do they mention: abstract knowledge, open-mindedness, flexibility, critical thinking, research skills, self-discipline, comfort with failure...sure, you are exposed to all those words, but is where is the philosophical infrastructure that holds all that together?
Because of the lopsided emphasis in STEM programs, at least as they are pitched to school boards, business contributors, and parents, very little mention is made of how to become a useful PERSON through all of this.
That you must...
- live sustainably.
- develop a sense of justice.
- communicate your enthusiasm to others.
- participate in your community.
- take the long term view.
Sorely lacking in this entire conversation is the need to put STEM, and any other vocational programs in the K-12 system, in a larger context. A GLOBAL context, to pardon my French. Liberal education has become a dirty word, to the point where K-12 has entirely abandoned the idea of holistic education as too politically poisoned by 'meritocratic' and 'elitist' ideas to touch. State colleges largely leave that out, too, and private and state universities are left to pick up the slack.
This is the core of the issue, with our entire communications problem. After thirty years of educational reform and budget paranoia, we've forgotten why we wanted kids to do thirteen yeas of school, minimum, in the first place. We wanted (or at least John Dewey wanted us to want) our children to become responsible citizens. NOT consumers, not cogs in the economic machine, certainly not aquisitive racist maniacs with an incurable fetish for Second Amendment rights...(funny how they'll let all the rest of the Constitution go to keep that. Almost as if the Founding Freaks had wasted their time on a bunch elitist European gibberrrr...)
Our whole pitch would be easy, if that was still the case....and any outreach we do to schools should keep that in mind.
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