In my life experience encountering such people, the perfect educator is not necessarily the most effective educator. The best educators are the ones that
inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience.
I think many people have that enthusiasm, but they are prevented from being teachers because they didn't go through the teacher mill. Now you have teachers who have been through the teacher mill, yet they have no capacity to inspire anyone at all. It's the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That's what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.
Q: What are your views about global competiveness and investing in education?
I think people should
study science because it's beautiful and it connects you to the cosmos in a way that nothing else can. But, it may turn out that beauty is not the most influential reason to study science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. There's a culturally selfish reason to have a scientifically literate electorate: It is to ensure that you remain
economically competitive going forward. Other countries know this. The foundations of tomorrow's economies will flow out of innovations in science and technology that we stimulate today.
There are hardly any unemployed scientists or engineers. There's no starving scientist icon. But there are starving artists and starving musicians. Those are the people who are performing in the streets. Why? Because they can't make a living doing it. Yet we continue to say that we need all these
art classes. I think art should be in school because it's a fundamental part of culture, but consider if my kid brought home one fewer pasta collages in lieu of having a unit on science — that could make a really big difference going forward.
Let's be honest. If you want people to make a living, and you don't want tomorrow's economies to flounder, put more
STEM subjects in the classroom.
The great tragedy is that they're removing art completely, not because they're putting more science in, but because they can't afford the art teachers or because somebody thinks it's not useful. An enlightened society has all of this going on within it. It's part of what distinguishes what it is to be human from other life forms on Earth — that we have culture.
The point is not to get rid of art. It's to, on balance, recognize that putting more science in a classroom will serve society greater than any other incremental extra thing you might do in a classroom.
*This story is from Converge magazine's Spring 2009 issue.
©Photos Copyright Kelly LaDuke.
