An article published on eSchool News, “Summit: Save STEM or watch America fail” reports that the United States is falling behind in math and science education, and that this is endangering America’s competitiveness in the global economy. Recently, education leaders, lawmakers, and cabinet members met for a national summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss what progress–if any–has been made in closing the gap. Their verdict: The U.S. needs to make a greater investment in critical math, science, and research programs for these efforts to succeed.
Now, being educated as an engineer and having worked as an engineer, I don’t know that I’d encourage anyone to actually to take up engineering as a profession, but I think that technical literacy will be nearly as important as the ability to read if we are all to make rational choices about our future. That being the case, educating kids in the basics of math and science are certainly important.
How does ham radio fit into all this? Well, learning about ham radio gives kids an incentive to learn about the math and science behind the phenomena. It also helps those who take up the hobby as adults. Even if they never get deeply into the technology, most people who get ham licenses at least come to some appreciation of it.
So, there you go. Ham radio will save America.
David N8SRE says
I think my biggest concern with encouraging people to go into engineering is I suspect those jobs will be the next to be outsourced. The stable technology jobs are going to be technician-level positions that require a physical presence.