STEMing the Crisis
Winning the Race to Educate Our Kids: To understand the gravity of the following phrase, it’s important to spend some time setting the tone of January 2011. The country was struggling through two devastating wars – one closing in on a decade and the other nearly eight years long. In economic terms, the US was slightly over two years removed from the housing market crash that brought the global financial markets to the absolute brink of collapse and spawned what is now known as the Great Recession. Environmentally, the Gulf oil leak, the largest oil leak in history, was fresh on the minds of citizens along with an alarming number of other natural disasters. That’s why, when President Barack Obama made the following statement during his State of the Union address, it made me take note:
”Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success. But if we want to win the future – if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas – then we also have to win the race to educate our kids”
At a time when words are chosen so carefully, the importance of this statement should not be taken lightly. As the world economy struggles through it’s biggest change since the industrial revolution, it’s clear that the U.S. economy is caught in it’s own revolution as well. Growing up in the Detroit area, it was a foregone conclusion that, if you were un interested in going to college, factory jobs were easily obtainable and paid very well. These days are but memories – today’s youth are presented with a much more complicated, turbulent, and globally connected world. To be competitive in this economy, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education is not a nice to have but an absolute requirement. This is only emphasized by Mr. Obama’s recent announcement to train 10,000 new engineers each year.
Through this blog, I hope to bring to light the crisis that we’re facing while highlighting some things that others are doing to combat it. Topics may be contentious or controversial but, in my opinion, the important thing is to keep the dialog open. Let me be clear, there is no silver bullet for this. We will have to challenge ourselves and others if we want to have a chance to win the aforementioned race.
David J. Dronzkowski
Vice Chair, Math & Science K-12, SAE Detroit Section Board
Powertrain Research and Advanced Engineering, Ford Motor Company