I’d like to look into an opportunity to leverage STEM education for a typically underserved segment of the population to combat climate change and conservation challenges. Underprivileged students lack access to the resources to develop a STEM education and take part in Climate Change and Conservation science.
Who: low-income and middle income families
What: lack of access to resources for STEM education
Why: High cost for resources
After interviewing five people, I discovered that this question is much more nuanced that I originally believed, but I also discovered that while a panacea may not exist in a simple form, it would be effective to introduce several partial solutions. MH (name not used because wanted to remain anonymous), Ashley Deutsch, Ari Glixman, Megan Flynn, and Itai Beaudoin de Roca.
Itai is aa Director of the Tangency Foundation, a nonprofit Environmental Organization which creates climate science based STEM education resources. In his experience working with organization, he has visited worked with students from many backgrounds, and says that the difference that low-income students face in access to these resources if unquantifiable. On top of direct factors which affect their access to these resources, they also have environmental problems which affect opportunities they would otherwise have, such as lack of supervision, lack of time, and more. He explained that some resources such as Youtube videos provide what seem to be a ubiquitous resource, but there are a plethora of barriers between students and these resources, particularly students in low-income school districts. He conceded that while income was directly linked to a students access to these resources, that there were still many students from wealthy backgrounds who did not have access to the proper environments to make use of those resources either. For example parents that don’t contribute positive reinforcement to academic gains may have detrimental effects that outweigh the positives of the real access to those resources.
M. H. , an Alachua Country local, described to me his history with STEM education, which consisted of, as he put it, investigations into combustion. I discovered Mike riding his bike with his sister in Northwest Gainesville, starting up a conversation which quickly anabolized into a discussion about certain illicit substances. Mike agreed to met with me for an interview over a beer (both of us being of legal age), and we discussed how he hadn’t taken many science courses in his academic career, prior to dropping out of high school. His parents never forced him to take his studies seriously, and he was now joking about how he learned everything he needed to know about chemistry by “studying combustion,” referencing marijuana. He said he had a daughter who had passed away, and with his permission I asked him some questions regarding his outlook on being a father. I asked if he would want his kids to take STEM courses outside of school, to take these academics as something worthwhile, ad he said he would leave it up to her. Without trying to dwell on his parenting, I asked if he felt that it would be possible for her to enjoy it without the push to consider it, after all many fun things take awhile before you can enjoy them, like studying for scuba diving or flying a plane. He conceded that point, but maintained that it would eventually fall to her, that it wasn’t his responsibility to force her into it - whether he had the money for it or not.
Megan Flynn, a University of Florida biology student from Sanford, Florida (near Orlando) spoke with me regarding her high school education. She attended a public school of roughly 3000 students, and explained that her STEM classes utilized old textbooks, was lacking in laboratory equipment, but had a few after school STEM clubs. While Megan doesn’t live in a low-income school district, her school did face many of the barriers to resources that less privileged schools have to face. From what she told me, it seemed that while the resources were not blatantly available, that students with enough interest could find those resources. However many STEM resources are resources themselves to get students interested, or aware, in these opportunities, so a lack of awareness is itself a lack of access to resources.
Ashley Deutsch, a University of Florida Graduate Student in Anthropology spoke with me regarding her time in high-school. In a relatively poor district, she explained that she could not sympathize with my stories of selling candy in high school because students in her school wouldn’t have had $2 to spend on a candy bar. She says she’s not aware of many students being interested in STEM education, particularly out of school, but she was certain that they existed. She recalled a few clubs that met after school once or twice a month. Being raised in rural Georgia she says that most of her friends were from families where children were more independent, and that parents weren’t readily involved in schooling. She was, however, always really interested in primates and has wanted to be an anthropologist for years, and so she feels she was able to make it to UF through a passion which was internally motivated. She says cost wasn’t necessarily an issue because she spent a lot of time in the library which offered some basic resources, and then followed up with looking up her own interests online.
Ari Glixman is a Miami native who now splits his time between home and New York. For Middle and High School he lived in Miami Beach where he attended Miami Beach High School, and where he dropped out to pursue his GED. He started working in a warehouse and followed that up by starting his own reselling company through Amazon with some friends. They handle now roughly $800k in merchandise, though their profits amount to pennies on the dollar after warehousing and personnel costs are factored in. His success came swiftly, something he boasted about heavily during my time with him. I thought it would be interesting to speak with him because of my history with him, and knowing how he does not consider any formal education as a prerequisite to success (though he define success as financial profits strictly as other forms of success are just, he says, excuses). While he was raised in a lower-middle class family home with siblings, he didn’t let that stop him. When I asked him about STEM programming for students, he says it would be a waste to spend money on it. People should just be allowed to try things out and develop their ideas, not be forced to attend schools and forced into programs that make them think they need to follow some archetypical goal to be successful, all they need is the freedom to experiment. I tried to reason with him, but he stood by his statements. He said that costs had nothing to do with the problem, in fact access to resources was probably a detriment to the success of students, because convenience made things too easy and teaches people to be lazy.
In summary, I find that perhaps a larger population may be in need of access to STEM education resources, but that the need does not need there. There needs to be systematic changes int he environment, perhaps meaning that a solution must find a way to accommodate student’s inability to address many of the barriers between them and these resources. Lower cost resources would not only make it more accessible to students, but it would mean that lower cost solutions could more efficiently be marketed to schools as a resource for students.
