os900705 Why I hustle for STEAM online: A structure for collaboration
Where have all the students gone?
Singing to the tune of the Peter Paul & Mary song from the 1970’s war
protest era.
People worked so hard to get here. Parents invested so much. Teachers
invested. Students are their shared interest. They built infrastructure and
organized their lives around the classrooms for teachers and students. Not only
classrooms, but playgrounds and even sports arenas.
Art, craft, and design rooms, too, kitchens for culinary education, science
labs – the list goes on. I believe they are all empty now – as if struck what was
called the “neutron bomb” in the old days, during the cold war and during the
build-up for the final war we feared would come. It would kill life but leave infrastructure
standing for the victor’s takeover.
It can’t be said that no one expected viruses to be the “bomb” because
thousands of scientists, doctors and world leaders knew how pandemics are a
constant threat and measures should be ready when pandemics come.
National leaders, however, are not as smart as doctors and scientists when
it comes to disease. They can’t handle the truth - like the truth that came out
in 1992 when over 1,500 leading scientists from around the world declared
humanity had no more than 30 years to solve five critical problems to save Earth’s
human and other life sustainability.
What did the politicians do? The only national leader who comes instantly to
mind is Al Gore; but he was no match for Florida politicians. Gore made a
splash with his books and his movie – even winning an Academy Award! Not only
did the court’s decision to back Bush thwart America’s participation in
sustainable action, the decision damaged the reputation of the court,
increasing the view of judges as partisan, and decreased many citizens’ trust
in the integrity of elections.
The schools were under siege by the time the Union of Concerned Scientists
made their plea for help. In the 21st Century the United Nations
mapped out their sustainability strategy, but by the time Donald Trump took
over the presidency (with help from America’s enemies oversees) teachers were
nearly helpless.
It got worse. The winter of 2020 will be remembered when millions of
students and teachers were deracinated[1] from their classrooms,
parents were enlisted to teach at home. In the USA, it wasn’t for sure the
schools – including colleges and universities – would open for months or years.
Kids – from preschool to high school – lose the most because they are in
the prime of their learning readiness. The kids born after 2017 will miss preschool
(if they had access to one). First graders halfway through their year stayed
home and no one knows when they’ll have classes like before. Seniors’ last year
of school ended early. Those going on may have no “on” to go to, as schools of
every kind – and most jobs - are unavailable, as it’s unsafe.
Everybody knows this by now. Why am I writing about it? Because I feel the
urgency, the need for action, immediate, 14-hour day action to bring all
classes online. To me it’s like an amber alert. The technology is there for
amber alert, and it’s there for online or distance learning. The USA is the
world leader in distance learning technology and experience. Distance learning
is the only way to continue education after the “clean bomb” has emptied the
classrooms of America.
Act now
The root problem created over the past half-century was a process of
uprooting and cutting democracy off at the root – education. A people cannot
have good governance without education in the deepest sense. Cutting off at the
roots of our future hopes - children’s’ education - is to deracinate our hopes.
The remedy to stop deracination of our hopes is a structure for
collaboration to act on distance learning. A structure for collaboration is an insurance
policy for hope.[2]
From the domain of arts, craft, and design I offer the printing press as that
structure. The printing press served the authors of our constitution (even
though the constitution was written by hand on parchment) because already the
printing press had assured the disparate colonials a degree of willingness to
work collaboratively to overthrow the British.
Printmaking is the only form of art suitable to include in STEM, to make
STEAM. Print is the ancestor of all the technologies that make science, technology,
engineering, and math what they are today. For better or worse, there’d be none
without print having structured collaboration.
Now is the time to put printing press toys and games in children’s hands
and links to other children and teachers all over the world. Join me to build the
production of presses and software to make it so.
[1] There is a hint about the roots of deracinate in its first definition. Deracinate was borrowed into English
in the late 16th century from Middle French and can be traced back to the Latin
word radix, meaning "root." Although deracinate began life referring to
literal plant roots, it quickly took on a second, metaphorical, meaning suggesting
removal of anyone or anything from native roots or culture. – MW Word of the
day
[2]
Rosabeth Moss-Kanter
