What do we do? We are an academy that teaches students at an early age concepts from STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) fields. Are we the only ones doing this? Absolutely not. Do we honestly believe what we offer is unique? Absolutely YES. Our uniqueness is not what we teach, but our educational philosophy, and our approach.
Not too long ago, programming, digital circuits, or robotics, to name a few, where subjects taught once students got to college. This is not the case anymore. We are living in an era where education is rapidly changing, and one of the most visible changes is the introduction of STEM fields as early as elementary school. When a school, whether it is private or public, advertises that students will learn programming, it sounds incredible. Many schools even create robotics competitions and technology fairs to showcase what students have learned. This seems amazing, and in all honesty, we truly hope the day will come when students will truly learn these topics at an early age. But reality is sadly different.
Are we saying that schools are lying about this? That they are not really teaching any of that to students? No, this is not what we are saying. We are very aware most schools nowadays are teaching these subjects. As with many, and we mean, many problems in education, the issue is not the intention, but the implementation. Let us analyze one idea with good intention but an awful implementation: standardized tests. One day someone realized that schools needed a way to assess students’ progress, record this data, and come up with ways to improve. Then data would show that education methods were improving as shown by latest assessments. This is all good stuff – good intention. Where did everything go downhill? There are several factors, but probably the most obvious one is that schools started focusing solely on the students’ scores without paying much attention to what students were really learning.
But wait a minute, isn’t correct answers all that matters? No, what matters the most is the thinking process. It is not what the final answer is, but the process that led to it. The issue with focusing solely on the outcome is that students don’t really learn what they are supposed to. For example, in mathematics problems, it is common to see students fishing for keywords to associate it to a certain operation or procedure. In programming, it is common to see students copying code from some notes without understanding what the code is doing, they just know that if they use that code, the system “will work”. But what happens when the keywords students are looking for are not there? Or when the precious piece of the code they have does not do exactly what the system needs? This is when many students get totally lost.
Many people believe that having an idea of something is better than knowing nothing at all. This is not what we believe. We believe a bad educational implementation is as bad as no implementation at all. This is the foundation of our educational philosophy. We don’t want for students to showcase a complex electrical circuit, or computer program, or robot, or any other fancy things just to show off. We want them to truly understand the building blocks and how everything comes together to build awesome stuff.
When one truly understands the building blocks, things get exciting and truly fun. Many students of all ages get excited with building legos. We cannot blame them, it is truly fun. This concept equally applies to STEM. These fields can be intimidating. But so is to see those incredible figures built with legos. The joy and excitement lies in figuring out how everything connects together.
This all sounds great and convincing, but what if you are just not into STEM? This is a very respectable position. After all, the world needs more than just STEM people. Does this mean there is nothing for you here? There is plenty here for you as well. But didn’t we mention before we are an academy that teaches STEM? We do, but our ultimate goal is to teach problem-solving skills, and STEM is a great tool to accomplish this. Very often, probably more often than what we would like, someone asks why they need to learn mathematics if this is something they will not use. A valid, although weak, response is that in college everyone needs to take some math classes. Therefore everyone aiming to go to college will face mathematics sooner or later. Our take on this is, indeed, very few people will actually use mathematics for living, but who needs problem-solving skills for living? Literally everyone. Mathematics is not about memorizing formulas, mathematics is not about doing crazy arithmetic operations mentally. Mathematics is all about problem solving. So is computer programming. Programming languages become obsolete, programming techniques become obsolete, programming processes become obsolete. Problem-solving does not. Same thing can be said about electrical engineering, and physics, and chemistry, and STEM in general.
This is why we are here. We are committed to teach those much needed building blocks and how everything comes together. We will not show how to build things, we will guide, students will build. We won’t give answers, we will give insights and we will challenge students to find out the correct answer. Students won’t create fancy projects just to show off (but they will build them anyways). We want to create problem-solvers, innovators, thinkers, life-long learners, life-long dreamers. This is the core of our educational philosophy.