What is the cycle of generational poverty? And how can STEM help break it?
This post highlights the importance and advantages of a STEM focused education.
STEM is one of the fastest growing job fields worldwide, and there are currently more work positions in STEM than there are enough qualified STEM individuals to fill them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, STEM occupations provide a median annual wage of nearly $80,000, whereas the median annual wage for non-STEM occupations is below $40,000 in the United States. Who better to train among individuals to fill this role than children who have experienced financial hardship and can benefit most from this financial compensation?
The Cycle of Generational Poverty--And How STEM Can Break It
As of 2011 in the United States, about 45% of children under the age of 18 live in low-income families (income is below 200% of the federal poverty level, a numerical value of income adjusted for household characteristics), and half of those children are considered to live in poverty (household income is below 100% of the federal poverty level). In both classifications, children’s families struggle financially and cannot afford many resources for regular daily living, much less additional resources and programs for their children’s educational enrichment. Low-income families often live in underfunded communities and do not have access to high-quality education, making it more likely that these students will not attend college. Without a higher degree, individuals often work low-paying jobs and do not have the financial means to go back to school and gain entry into higher-paying careers later in life. Their own children grow up in financial hardship and the additional challenges it brings, and the cycle begins again. However, increasing opportunities for STEM education and career readiness can break this cycle and enable students to gain exposure to STEM fields and enter these well-compensated careers.
As the STEM job market further expands, even with an increase in new job-seekers as underprivileged youth grow up into educated degree holders, employers will be willing to increase pay to attract workers with specific skill sets, such as coding with a particular computer language. However, as the STEM field grows, other areas of work have begun to shrink due to automation and further STEM innovation. In some of these areas, such as manufacturing, this shrinkage will put less specialized workers out of jobs and keep them in financial depths. These events thus demonstrate how building foundational skills for STEM in young students is becoming more and more important as time goes on.
Importance of STEM and Education Resources in Schools
The majority of low-income students in the United States come from underrepresented groups in STEM, such as Hispanic and Black individuals. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the high schools they attend are 55% less likely to offer advanced math and science classes such as calculus and Advanced Placement Biology as compared with the overall national average of high schools that do, which is 65%. Introducing and supporting the growth of these courses at schools that currently lack them not only gives the students attending these schools a more competitive edge when applying to higher education, but also gives them greater exposure to the types of concepts and calculations that many STEM fields are based upon. Lower-income students may also lack the knowledge or resources of how to apply to more prestigious institutions, such as how to navigate financial aid. As a result, many attend community colleges, which may have less resources available than more funded colleges and universities, and students may have greater difficulty making social connections and networking if they end up transferring to a 4-year school. Even if such students enter higher level universities, they may struggle to keep up with more-prepared peers in challenging STEM courses due to their lack of foundational skills. Although some universities are targeting these populations, such as the University Washington with its extended 5-year engineering programs to enable students to catch up, this is usually based on the assumption that the students have all of the high school prerequisites completed in order to be accepted, much less enter STEM majors, at these schools. This is why piquing students’ interest in STEM and empowering students’ both perceived and practiced abilities in STEM during earlier education in elementary and middle school is so important.
Some elementary schools in the U.S. are currently working with STEM-based organizations to further increase students’ exposure to STEM in real-life settings. For example, Promise Academy in San Jose not only primarily serves low-income students, but has also partnered with The Tech Museum of Innovation to form a structured science-based curriculum with design-challenge lessons, and gives students and their families easy access to browse the museum. Organizations also realize that low-income students lose out on 6,000 hours of educational learning and activities that their middle-income students can afford in the form of after-school and summer learning programs, especially those dedicated to STEM. STEM Next has partnered with the YMCA in programs such as Imagine Science, which provides hands-on STEM activities targeted toward underserved youth and girls. As of 2017, YMCA’s in 48 states reached 250,000 K-8 children in these activities, such as building robots with LEGO Mindstorms kits. They also provide online resources such as worksheets, simple instructions for at-home experiments such as improving paper airplanes, and reflection questions to cultivate science exposure even when these children are physically away from the community center. These STEM activities, whether in the classroom or outside of it, are combined with creativity and play, engaging and teaching students in a way that speaks to their social and educational development to cultivate greater interest in STEM.
Many low-income students are also the children of immigrants or are immigrants themselves, introducing potential language challenges. However, encouraging students’ problem-solving skills does not have to be limited to English, and students who hail from underprivileged backgrounds have their own unique experiences of overcoming and coping with challenges that can be useful to develop in the scope of STEM disciplines. Even if students end up not entering STEM careers, STEM-related skills such as ease in using technology has added benefits in many other fields. Almost 80% of all new U.S. jobs in the next decade will require core STEM skills that are not necessarily limited to STEM itself: these skills include critical thinking, creativity, grit, and experimentation, to name a few. Therefore, added STEM resources benefit all students, making them competitive for a variety of work positions. Even through a social lens, exposure to STEM courses and the real-life situations they introduce will give students a larger view of the world beyond their small community and negative environmental aspects such as violence, drug addiction, and lack of food access. Students may even be inspired to use their newfound STEM skills to solve these problems in their communities later on, financially and socially uplifting not only themselves but the areas they come from as well.
Efforts and Partnerships Abroad
Companies and organizations are also taking the initiative to perform community outreach even in socioeconomically isolated areas in countries outside the United States. For example, the Chinese technology company Lenovo has partnered with the Green & Shine Foundation, who focuses on fair education and sustainable development, to donate 652 science toolboxes to 122 primary schools across Huangzhong County in the Qinghai province of China, of which 90% is dedicated to agriculture. Rural populations face the greatest challenge in achieving education, and especially STEM education, due to lack of local resources and monetary funds to send children to college. Additionally, teachers are drawn from village schools to urban ones due to the higher standard of living and pay. Fortunately, each toolbox can be shared among a dozen students and reused over and over again, creating a sustainable resource to introduce 44,000 first and second-graders to the field of STEM and spark their interest in higher education and innovation.
In the Philippines, Globe Telecom, a major telecommunications provider, and Mano Amiga, a K-12 school focused on giving socioeconomically underprivileged students a quality education, have paired up to engage students in hands-on STEM activities. Classes use project-based learning to have their students of all ages practice problem solving skills in real-world scenarios so that the skills they learn will serve them well beyond the classroom. Despite the current pandemic, lessons are delivered safely over Zoom with related assignments accomplished by students on and off the video calls, and Mano Amiga also provides after-school programming so that students can continue to learn in a less formal setting, meet mentors to empower their young minds, and be introduced to STEM professionals who can show them a glimpse of the field and serve as encouraging role models.
Around the world, STEM education and careers can help children, their families, and their communities lessen the impacts of generational poverty. However, as easy and simple as these changes sound, it takes the hard work of many groups, often those not for profit like Boundless Brilliance, to help students go above and beyond the current expectations held of them by society and history. Please financially support these organizations to grow our next generation of scientists if you are able to, and vote on measures to maintain or increase STEM funding at the local, state, and national levels. Even on the individual level, we can start introducing practical STEM skills by encouraging our own children at home to problem solve for simple household tasks such as adding up grocery prices at the supermarket or turning on a light out of reach by crafting a simple device. If we do not tap into the potential of our students in low-income families, the world may be missing out on Nobel Prize winners, inventors, science communicators, and so many more innovators in the generations to come.
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