Clive Caines Cultural Contributor
On the face of it a musician doing something of significance for the community that they grew up in deserves applause.
Lord knows there are more than enough artists making a pretty dollar from telling us of the plight of the poor and the oppressed yet apparently failing to see any irony in this situation and, more importantly, show a willingness to impoverish themselves in order to help the less fortunate.
So I can say that Black Eye Peas’ Will .I .Am in building a STEM centre school deserves some praise for being a musician willing to show a sense of social responsibility. (STEM subjects in educational terms are Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.)
Will’s reason for building the STEM centre is that he fears that the children currently growing up in what is known as ‘the projects’ are not able to keep up with the advances in technology. What’s more these children do not appear to consider careers as designers for Apple, rocket scientist for NASA or even the inventors of those products we imagine using in the future.
From what I can gather Will’s views come from an awareness of the impact of poverty on those growing up in the projects – though anyone listening to Will on the Graham Norton talk show might have the impression that the problem was caused by children not being thought out enough on career possibilities or not being properly informed.
There are many people aside from Will I Am, among them government ministers, educationalist and business leaders from all around the world, who are evangelical in their belief in the importance of STEM subjects. I do not have a great deal against this view and would go as far as saying that any compulsory state educational system that doesn’t recognise the importance of information technology isn’t worth having. However purely focusing on STEM subjects is just as dangerous as ignoring their importance.
Will I Am. Photo courtesy inquisitr.com
Many an educationalist has championed the importance of a well-rounded education but chances are this would not be on offer in a school where STEM subjects were valued above all else. However the worry that there aren’t enough schools with the knowledge and know-how to impart a good education is not my major concern here: I worry that the importance of literacy skills will be sidelined with the drive for STEM subject attainment.
In 2009 ‘USA Today’ reported the following, ‘A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children’s picture book or to understand a medication’s side effects listed on a pill bottle.’
In a similar vein The Guardian, one of the UK’s leading newspapers, reported earlier this year that, “Schools minister Nick Gibb says literacy problems are still ‘heavily orientated towards poorest’ … Poor neighbourhoods in England are still beset by Victorian-era levels of illiteracy, the schools minister has claimed. In a speech on reading, Nick Gibb said that despite two centuries of technological and social revolution, there were “still shadows of Charles Dickens’s world in our own”.
He said that, just as in Victorian times, literacy problems were still “heavily orientated towards the poorest in our communities”.
The two newspaper reports are a confirmation that literacy issues persist on both sides of the Atlantic and if it isn’t written large in the ‘USA Today’ article then it is certainly made clear in the Guardian that poverty is a major factor.
I also wonder how you can bring a product that you’ve been dreaming about into reality if you don’t have the skills to articulate your ideas to others. This is where I have a concern for Will’s STEM centre: would it recognise that unless its pupils are able to read and write to a high standard then they will find it difficult to succeed in STEM subjects?
Or would it be the case that those children who don’t appear to have good literacy skills from the outset wouldn’t be among the school’s recruits? Once the children become pupils their literacy skills will need to be fine-tuned as the budding product makers will need to know how to connect with the people they hope will buy their products.
WILL I Am on the Graham Norton show
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