I spent this morning working out my lecture schedule and project list for the first part of 2011. I was fairly determined that I would spend more time working on music this year but, already, the lecture schedule is looking stupid. I’ve already started to back out of certain commitments.
In December 2010, I signed up to the government’s STEM Ambassador Programme. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and it’s intended to address the serious shortfall in the number of experienced Science teachers at work in the UK’s education sector. In short, we don’t have enough Physics teachers anymore.
This trend away from the core scientific disciplines began in the early 80’s when Mrs. Thatcher insisted that there was no tangible benefit to be gained from pure scientific research, and that there was no real future in manufacturing industry either. Indeed, she maintained that the UK’s future would be better served by ‘invisible earnings’ such as banking and insurance, and service industries like call centres and tourism. The ‘Thatcher vision’ of Britain in the year 2010 was that the UK would be a great place for Bankers to launder money and for wealthy tourists to visit when the weather was sunny. That worked out great, didn’t it?
With STEM, I go into schools and tell kids all about the joys of a career in the sciences. It isn’t as hard as you might imagine. Kids do still have a tremendous interest in science and, in particular, astronomy. It’s only later, when they get into their teens, that the interest seems to wain.
My STEM Ambassador status more or less formalises what I’ve been doing for the past two years anyway, except that I don’t get paid for it. Sort of. Some schools are happy to pay expenses, some are not. In reality, it’s not about the money. It’s about getting the message across.
If we don’t embrace science then we won’t have a manufacturing industry to fall back on the next time the banking sector decides to screw the country to the floor.
- January 1
- , 2011
