You might notice there’s a bit of a Batman Dark Knight trilogy theme going on in this STEM Warrior post series, and you’d be right. I’ve always drawn inspiration from “hero survives against all odds” tropes such as “Just One Man“, the Training Montage and the Lock-and-Load Montage. As a university student, I used to wear a green bandana (actually, it was just a lime green necktie that I found in a charity clothing shop in Brisbane) to psyche myself up while studying for exams. My wife will testify that I once cried at the end of Die Hard 2.
When I’m going through a tough time at work or with my health, I think of that scene in Rambo II where he’s just been abandoned by his government, beaten and tortured by the Russians, then somehow manages to bust out of there using a microphone stand that he ripped out of the table with his bare hands as a weapon. For me, it’s a powerful metaphor for finding the bottom and then turning the corner and an important part of the STEM Warrior origin story.
This might be starting to sound a little weird, and if there are any psychologists out there reading this, feel free to email me your analysis! My take on it, though, is that if you know something works to get you into a positive mindset and helps you to persevere through hard things, then use it. For me, other than listening to some uplifting cosmic funk, there isn’t a much better way to improve my mood than watching the good guys kick some ass in a B-grade action movie. In fact, I’m getting emotional just writing this.
The origins of the cause
So what was it that motivated Batman to persevere through the “training from hell” at Paro Taktsang? Why did Rambo leave a peaceful stick fighting retirement in Thailand for a dangerous mission in Afghanistan that would pit him against his old foes, “The Russians”? Because they had a cause to fight for. And just like Batman decided to dedicate his life to fighting crime, I decided, about 10 years ago, to dedicate my career to fighting scientific ignorance, suspicion of new technology and anti-science sentiment. To understand how I came to this decision, we’ll first need to take a deeper dive into my relationship with Carl Sagan and Elon Musk.
I can’t quite remember which came first – deciding to teach high school physics or becoming a fan of Elon Musk. I do remember first thinking what a legend Elon was when he released his “Hyperloop Alpha” white paper, a proposed futuristic, high-speed, pneumatic tube-based ground transportation system, in August 2013. Here was a guy running Tesla and SpaceX, and he comes up with this stuff in his spare time, and then gives it away for free? When I searched up his history and discovered that he took all the money he made from PayPal and put it into a rocket company, my respect for the man went up even further. And, not content with becoming the world’s richest man, he now has his sights set on Mars.
The Musk Ecosystem
If the Elon Musk “ecosystem of companies” is going to achieve its goals, however, it needs an army of engineers and scientists to keep designing and manufacturing electric cars, rockets and brain-computer interfaces. Moreover, Elon Musk is only one man – imagine what the world would look like if there were multiple Elon Musks out there working to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness. And therein lies the connection with STEM Education – if we inspire more kids to become scientists and engineers, maybe, eventually, the world will produce another Elon Musk. Or at the very least, we’ll ensure the continued technological progress of our society.
Unfortunately, it seems that the wealthier a society becomes, the more they turn away from learning science and technology. I first made this connection when reading Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World in 2011. In one chapter, he laments the decline in the scientific and mathematical abilities of school children in the US, citing young peoples’ preference for service industry jobs, perhaps seen as an easier path to success, as one of the reasons. He also mentions cultural factors, such as the stigmatisation of scientists as nerds, and the idea that getting good grades and being cool were mutually exclusive.
Sagan’s lament
This certainly paralleled my experience growing up in Australia in the 1990s. Everyone wanted to be a rockstar or a football star, not some nerdy scientist with a pocket protector. As the Dire Straits song goes, everyone wanted their money for nothing and their chicks for free (it’s important to note here that Sagan was not promoting blind faith in science and technology either – throughout the book, he stresses the importance of critical thinking and updating your beliefs based on what the evidence tells you, even when it suggests that your current hypothesis is wrong. It’s precisely for this reason that I believe science is the best hope we have for a better future because it strives for an ever-more accurate model of reality).
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.
-Carl Sagan
Granted, the situation has reversed somewhat in the 21st century with the rise of Silicon Valley, but the anecdotal evidence from my classrooms suggests that we still have a way to go. During conversations with my mechanical engineering technology students in Shanghai (2009-2012), most of them admitted that they weren’t really interested in learning the material – they just wanted to get a piece of paper so they could graduate and get on with their lives. Some of them said they didn’t even plan to work in the field of engineering and technology.
Money for Nothin’
When I asked them what they planned to do instead, typical responses would be “I want to be a manager” or “I want to be a boss”. Such was the distortion of the labour market at the time, that many of them believed that learning English would get them further than learning technical skills. They were just taking my class because it was the only bilingual major they had managed to gain admission to. Learn English well, they said, and you could bluff your way into a highly paid management role. Learn engineering, and you’ll become a low-paid technician.
This puzzled and concerned me. Weren’t Chinese students supposed to be, well, studious? As I moved into teaching pre-university STEM subjects (physics and mathematics), I saw the same thing. A lack of willingness to put the effort required into learning hard things. A belief that computers and outsourcing could take care of the “technical stuff”. Sure, at this age level, there was a higher percentage of students willing to put in the work, but it was mostly for the purposes of getting into a foreign university so that they could get their brand name piece of paper; few seemed genuinely interested in truly understanding the material. Perhaps the “rot” that plagued Australia and the US in the 80s and 90s was now beginning to set in in China. I resolved to do my best to stop it.
Generation Z – a new hope?
Along the way, there have been plenty of glimmers of hope, though. Every year, I’ve had a handful of “mentees” in my classes who seemed to truly value the education they were receiving and who sought understanding rather than just results. In my Shanghai classes, these were the ones who would actually take the opportunity to upgrade their diploma to an engineering degree in Brisbane (which was the original purpose that the Queensland government set the bilingual programme up for). In my high school physics and maths teaching career, these have been the students who have gone on to study STEM majors at good universities. And these are the students who make all the effort that you put into your courses worthwhile.
The STEM Warrior beginning
“I think it’s really important that teenagers in high school and college have good role models and mentors in the engineering area, to encourage more of them to choose technical career paths. It’s quite rare that an engineering graduate would choose to work as a physics and maths teacher, and for this reason, I am proud of the unique role that I am able to play, and I know I can bring something special to the classroom that an ordinary science teacher can’t.”
-my 2012 self, applying for my first high school Physics teaching job
I was not (and am not) intending to devalue those who only teach one or the other, or those who have only worked as teachers since graduating with Physics or Mathematics majors – those people are often more versatile teachers across a wider range of ages than I am, and I still have much to learn from them. At the end of the day, though, I think all successful teachers need to find a way to inspire and motivate students to want to study their subject(s), and I personally believe that the combination of physics, maths, space engineering and Air Force is a pretty cool and unique combination that not many people can bring to a school!
The STEM Warrior emerges
I don’t remember exactly how or when I decided to start calling myself a STEM Education Warrior, but I do know that I updated my Linkedin title from a Lampang coffee shop while on summer break in Thailand in 2015. I also remember that it was around the same time that I was reading Seth Godin’s “Stop Stealing Dreams“. Whatever the case, I know that once I started thinking of myself as a STEM Education Warrior, it started to become a part of my identity, and in a sense, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. And when you adopt a warrior mindset towards the work that you do, when you get up every day, you’re not just doing your job, you’re fighting the cause. Your classroom, your desk, and your laptop are no longer just places to work – they’re your battle stations.
In recent years I’ve leveraged the STEM Warrior mindset idea further, giving my extension classes nicknames such as “Physics Warriors” and “Maths Ninjas”. This year, it’s the Further Maths Samurai and the Higher Level Maths Jedi. Next year, I might need to start working my way through the names of special forces units :-). At any rate, no matter whether I’m using the warrior mindset to motivate myself or my students, the point is that, just like Rambo and John McClane’s fictional ordeals, it’s become a tool that I use to develop positivity and perseverance.
Well, back to work…
To quote Elon Musk again, “you want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse”. And what is Elon’s solution to this dilemma? Roll up your sleeves and get to work on making that better future happen. When informed that he had replaced Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world earlier this year, he responded to the news on Twitter with “How strange. Well, back to work…”.
So as the Average White Band song goes, “I’ve got work to do“. And this STEM Warrior is gonna tighten his bandana and get back to work.
