SCIENCE, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) entered the Jamaican lexicon over a decade ago in a proprietary report entitled “UTech 2020”. It posited foundations for a fledgling campus to escalate CAST “work-ready” graduates to scholarship with no sacrifice in relevance. STEM languished and recent barbs in the press between an ex-professor and a current professor of two State-funded campuses might have been avoided had mission critical decisions for UTech been executed. By now there would be daylight between campuses; respect, pooled R&D assets, and innovation. With trust lost, the State should intervene to excise duplication and get value for our taxes. We need STEM’s competency-based training; as the “I can do anything, Sar!” graduates are no use to them, employers or nation.

STEM came from the ether in 2012. It was embraced by the ministry and infusion is in progress. STEM is about sensible quantities; the tissue of life — liquids, solids and even invisible gases — can be weighed, measured, named, stored, and we know too much or too little oxygen can kill. That STEM be added to (not replace) the liberal arts underpinning of education is crucial to economic, social and intellectual growth; and values as cars need computer diagnostics, lights are LED, and radios no longer have tubes.

Ruel Reid, eminent principal of my son’s school, was in the media and it hit me that, though we both had chatted about STEM, our nation needs information. Dr Grace McLean, Jamaica’s chief education officer, advised the public that plans for mainstreaming STEM would see technical high and some legacy high schools (if they wish) transformed to STEM academies using the PPP model-business, ministry and school. Like the new curriculum, which spans two ministers, STEM too is a process not an event. It will ramp-up innovation, student aspiration and sync with labour market demand. Flagship schools were nominated, one high school demurred, but the most eminent in the genre want in — we shall see. School is conservative as parents want kids to get what they got 50 years ago — strange? That Jose Marti STEM Academy may do majors in “water, hazardous waste, recycling, garbage scow, sanitary landfill management, etc,” should not alarm us, as all kids can’t be uptown surgeons, someone has to know how to deal with toxic smoke. So let’s have our conversation on STEM with grace. We do not have all the cash,, but do not stick out for the perfect and fail to implement the good we can afford.

What is STEM? The acronym may be disaggregated as each letter is a discipline. Life is STEM-science, the technology we use, an engineered world and math. STEM and TVET are not the same. Which idiot could confuse science, engineering and math with technical and vocational education? TVET is technology in action, a substrate of the “T” in STEM. The technologies used to work wood, bond metals, distill alcohol, and split the atom are at different levels of complexity in the genre. Vere Tech students may have weak science, but competent in two areas; Jamaica College students may have strong science, but incompetent to work wood or bond metals. Just imagine if we had age-appropriate STEM from kindergarten, via primary, secondary we might have polymaths by tertiary. If STEM academies achieve convergence of theory and competence — “I know and I can do” we should soon be smokin’. Go for it, Grace!

Who asked “what about arts and innovation; will our kids be STEM robots”? Some say to sing and dance is our lot as STEM is not in our DNA. I disagree. Nations get Nobel prizes and top prizes in music, design, painting, sculpture, dance, fashion, and have the richest artists and scientists in STEM with no “A”. Why not us? We sing, dance and are good in intuitive arts, but do not denature STEM with appendages: don’t colt the game as there is a home-grown STEM Nobel laureate in our stars-I believe!

STEM is life and underpins everything God and man makes — we need it. For 200 years the undergirding of education was the arts. Thus 40 per cent of math and a large percentage of science teachers never passed an exam in math or science, but great words disguise huge deficits. Many favour the oral, artistic, not the rigour of the quantitative for the same reason water runs downhill. Artistry is prized over precision and description over data. You can do anything in any way for as long as people “like it” it is good. Our culture is indulgent, not rigorous. At a dance everyone has moves; the man does his thing the lady hers, but not in-sync. The choreographed moves of the salsa we find boring and white people’s line dancing — country & Western or “Electric boogie!” — is comedic. We deride order, discipline; diss STEM, and if there is a gate we must beat it. We must learn to stand straight, love STEM; if not our path is very dark!

What about creativity? School should cultivate the artistic and STEM from early so kids love both. Dislike of math is like our misguided and pathological fear of lizards. It has no logic: “Math is hard!” and “Lizards slimy…yuk!” Kids love soft subjects as home economics, but fear the numerate or quantitative. Why? You can waffle with words, but the square root of 64 is not changed by argument, and even if most say my lean wall is upright, their majority can’t make it so. The “creative industry” name is sloppy thinking. They use it to mean artistic jobs (craft, film, music etc), but a people is creative or innovative not a job silly! Damien Hirst, multimillionaire creative god of our age, has ex-classmates at Goldsmith’s; all fellow artists, few creative, none rich. Creative is what we call the icon in any field; it is a personal quality.

The STEM fields have led in the creative and innovative since the 18th century — electricity, phone, vaccine, X-ray, car, TV. Since the Renaissance, artists have had little impact. They gave us the cosmos on canvas now images are by space scientists. Yet there is convergence as the best installation, sculpture, painting; technology for synthesising music and art are by the scientist, technologist, engineer, or mathematician. They use chemicals to create fireworks or a light show; tell you the angle to wheelie your bike and more. STEM is rated on innovation, unlike the arts where honed repetition is prized.

In Part 2 we will explore STEM infusion and why a new GSAT with less rote and more thinking skills is a good fit. We must also stop being referential of the UK, USA, Australia, and innovate! What big, rich, white nations do may not work here. Edward Phillip George tells how they came to see HEART Trust and to clone Michael Manley’s National Literacy Project. The underlay of our education is British so this is the first time we will change the colonial substrate of our culture. Let’s make history united as one. Stay conscious!

Dr Franklin Johnston is a strategist, project manager and advises the minister of education. Comments to: franklinjohnstontoo@gmail.com