Understanding The STEM Gaps

I’ve heard a great deal recently from our president and from people within my company about resolving the STEM gap.

This post is my take on the two STEM gaps, the STEM gaps are the perceived lack of students who major in and are employed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  The second STEM gap is the low number of females in the STEM fields which irritates companies focused on improving diversity of gender.

I have felt for some time that the STEM gaps are of our own making and I want to share that opinion in this post.  In fact I began to form this opinion back when I began my chemistry degree in 1992.

The two STEM gaps, I believe, are a result of the dominant academic snobbery found in the University professor.  No where can this be seen more easily than in the majority of science professors from Ivy league schools.  There is an elitist-minded academic-class in the many of American Universities which impose their intellectual superiority on their students and on the public. This spreads to the high school level through high school teachers, being educated at these Universities and this attitude dissuades young people from entering STEM majors.

This snobbery can also be seen in news media reports, in NPR programming, in public school policy and in many movies depicting scientists.

The psychology of vast majority (not all) of 16-18 year old recoils at the prospect of allowing intellectual snobs guiding them for the next 4-8 years.  They are at a stage in their life where they are looking for independence and the freedom to think for themselves. Only students with extreme commitment and resolve to study science or engineering view these majors as an attractive prospect.  Other students who enter STEM actually admire this elitist academic type but these are a small minority. Personally I know of only a handful of students drawn to the academic-elitist type of professor and most of those who do go on to become professors themselves.

The optics of an all-knowing professor looking down his nose demanding agreement on religious philosophical issues is very negative for most future students.

One example of this demand for philosophical agreement is seen in atheism, the movie “God’s Not Dead” depicts a young religious student taking on his aggressive atheist professor and manages to show him up in front of his own class, this move seems far-fetched.

But, I can say I had a professor who demanded this from his students, a renouncing of faith was a major course assignment. This happens all too often in freshman level courses at colleges and university.

For the student unwilling to just accept and who demands the freedom to think for herself, the demands for atheism are baseless and unscientific.  The foundations and logic for this are littered with wild, and borderline irrational assumptions

Look at the current representatives of science and mathematics to children and the naïve general public, they are usually NPR actors, who actively, routinely advocate against and insult religious belief, especially in the school system. It’s not enough for these people to hold their opinions close and ignore the issue of religion thy feel the need to insult, and insist that science has ‘proven’ religion to be false.

A great many men and women have a dull hurt angry sense of being oppressed by the sciences, they are frustrated by endless scientific boasting they suspect that the scientific community holds them in contempt, they are right to feel this way. – David Berlinski

No easier can this snobbish oppression be seen in journalists quoting un named experts with the ambiguous “scientist’s say”, “experts say”.  This snobbery, this dropping of the “scientist” must stop.  As if because they are scientists we don’t need to question veracity or demand to see data. The truth is what “scientists say” in popular media and as education has been one ‘triumphant imbecility after another’ for decades, it changes continuously as we learn more and often can be purchased by govt and corporations alike.

Currently 74% of the American public reportedly believes in God, women more so than men.  Young people are reportedly are religious than are older people, why would many of these talented young women and men want to enter a field full of macho authoritarians who feel the need to disguise science in a cloak of religious intolerance?  Only a small minority of kids find this attractive. These are students who are so determined to get into STEM fields that they don’t care what the professors teach (that was me when I began) and students who already hold contempt for religion. As a result of this thousands of quality engineers and scientist are screened out of the field who otherwise would fill holes in our economy.

It is my opinion that the gap in STEM workers has been greatly exacerbated by of government involvement this is done by the empowerment of the ‘removal of religion’ crowd, and by enriching professors overwhelmed with their own knowledge, skilled mostly in lecturing and grant-proposal writing.

Science and engineering has a gap and its in the halls of the IVY league schools leading the rest of academia, it is seen on television, it is seen within NEA policies with their godless doctrines of imagined evolutionary fossil record from the 1960’s still taught as current with their assumptions not disclosed or reviewed, it is pseudo-science on a grand scale.

The child who believes in God hears almost as soon as his interest in science is sparked the following: “We know there is no God because we are scientist and we say so, you don’t need to see the evidence, because we are scientists and we say so, if you dont’ agree then you are unscientific and unintelligent.” Why would the 74% want to enter a career with juvenile messages like this dominate? They wouldn’t …hence the STEM gaps.

This political hijacking of the STEM fields created and is widening the STEM gaps.

Little is more frustrating to me than reading unnamed “scientists say” in politically motivated media reports.  Most PR wings of these Universities and agencies don’t understand science and human creativity any more than a life-long politician does.

End the juvenile attacks on religions in academia and television and the STEM gap falls away within a decade. Instead you see the opposite from celebrity twitter scientists like Bill Nye and Neil de Grasse Tyson with their Cornell degrees and their anti-God books in pursuit of children.

To sum up the STEM gap in a selfie:

Sums the Gap up well: Corrupt government which twists science as its political battering ram, juvenile ivy league trained pseudo-scientists who've not created a thing with science except juvenile television.

STEM gaps summarized in a selfie: Corrupt government which twists science as its political battering ram, ivy-league pseudo-scientists who’ve only created television with science.

I am creating a course inspiring and helping religious students prepare for a science education, sign up for email updates below to hear when this course is released.

Also, check out this interview video an honest self-critique by a fellow academic and author about this issue – David Berlinski.

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Five Steps to Always Think for Yourself

We all have the freedom of thought and will and no one, no matter how eloquent or politically correct, can take that from us unless we allow it.

I’ve written in the past that there are obstacles to living a creative life.  The primary three obstacles are:

  1. Not thinking for oneself
  2. Emotional wounds
  3. Excessive busyness

We all have struggled with these to certain degrees  but each one of these can greatly hinder our creative fire, they can cover over our creative abilities and cause us to not be able to create as we were designed to.

The first obstacle (not thinking for oneself) is a doozy. This concerns me as I see it seemingly expanding. I see this in almost every area of life, from all walks of life, no one is exempt from this stumbling stone, those who think for themselves are few and far between.

Be it politics (and all the topics being  politicized), religion, handling money, healthcare issues, school systems,  any difficult debate on any topic, we are better off if we have thought it through on our own rather than empowering other people to think for us.  Not thinking is usually a guarantee at getting deceived.

I want to share a 5-step process which can ensure that we can always think for ourselves. I’ll name this process at the end.  Everyone reading this post can begin to think for themselves by following five steps as they approach any difficult question or topic.

  1. Do some learning on your topic first: study what other people are saying on your question, study the facts, if someone feels strongly in a certain direction, try to find opposing opinions.  Look for intellectually honest people, not partisan non-thinkers. To do this well we mustn’t accept anyone’s word at face value, suspend all trust for the moment, for the sake of thinking for yourself. Take no one’s word for anything at step in the process.
  2. Create two or more theories of your own: theories about a solution or answer to the question, they may match closely the existing two sides of a debate or they may be wildly different from any other side.  Create your own idea that you think makes sense and suspend any tendency to take a side for the moment if only for the sake of thinking for yourself.
  3. Test your theories based on reality, based on the laws of physics or based on what you know to be true. Testing of theories can be done with almost anything. Science questions are the easiest to test because of observable experiments.   Look into the popular sides to a question and explore how their hypothesis were tested, look into if they were tested at all. At this stage do not trust anything that has not been tested and demonstrate-able.  If people say its been tested and here are the results don’t trust them unless you can see for yourself.  This is a time of intentional doubt of anything unseen.
  4. Study results, if you are looking at other people’s tests, what assumptions have they made. What assumptions are they hiding? What assumptions might you be making? State clearly all assumptions.
  5. Draw YOUR conclusion, this is the moment where we get to decide on our own what we think about a topic.  This is the moment when we start to think for ourselves.  This process can become rapid second nature over time. As I’ve grown older I’ve learned when to trust and when to not trust people, regardless of their position, intelligence and authority.  I’ve learned to spot unspoken or hidden assumptions a mile away and expose them, sometimes they are terrible assumptions, to the point of deception.

Too many people refuse to think for themselves these days, I’m shocked to hear people who are supposed advocates for science do and openly discourage people to think for themselves.  Science has taken a celebrity/ politics dominated turn away from its roots. Politics has hijacked our scientific mental processes.  Much of the scientific community has become a political battering ram for a minority of non-thinkers.

By following the above 5 steps we can begin to think for ourselves on every topic and not be pushed or pulled around by deceptive or foolish people… no matter how eloquent or well groomed they look on TV.

If you haven’t noticed yet these topics were taken from a popular process from generations past. These process steps were taken from the scientific method. Remember that?

In what areas have you seen people refuse to think for themselves?

004-Social Layer, Signs of Healthy Science, Podcast Name Change

In this episode Adam lists three signs of healthy science and three signs of unhealthy science, how to spot bad science and how to avoid it or better yet… call people out on it.

 

Adam discusses his re-naming this podcast from the science layer to the social layer podcast.

  1. Difficulty finding scientist interview candidates, everyone he’s asked… said no
  2. Adam’s has a passion for social enterprise social media and its potential to help in transforming corporate cultures, particularly in science/ high-tech innovation companies and he wants this podcast to be focused on this niche topic.
  3. Adam wants this podcast to better align with how he is helping companies with their online social platforms.

 

Adam discusses the Google+ announcement about forcing YouTube comment-ers to use Google+, Adam discusses a YouTube video on this topic and Google’s description of their Social Layer.

 

Adam gives his description of the social layer and why every company will need a healthy social layer going forward.

 

What alerts you to question the quality of a scientific report?

 

Thank you to all subscribers, please stay connected through this re-branding,  and please rate this podcast in iTunes, please connect we’d love to hear from you.

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