OPINION

Everyone loves STEM education, but not STEM's lessons

Kamyar Enshayan

You can't swing a stick without hitting a STEM hub these days.

There is a lot of excitement around Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, otherwise known as STEM. STEM education is seen as critical, governors are promoting it, legislators are funding it. There is an air of discovery, something about space, Mars landing, about frontiers of science, that somehow life will be better as a result of more math and science.

But when math and science produce knowledge useful to living in Iowa, or vital to our health or our survival on the planet, we totally ignore it. The real message to aspiring scientists is: Go ahead, do your math and science, but if you discover something that goes contrary to the vested corporate interests, we will ignore it. Don't expect we will do anything with that knowledge.

Frontiers of science are right here where we live.

Knowledge derived from science on floodplains is ancient and can be vital to our well-being in Iowa if we take it seriously. After the flood of 2008, a committee of Iowa's brightest water resources and hydrology experts suggested to state legislators to make 500-year flood elevation the regulatory flood elevation (instead of the current 100-year elevation), giving more room to the rivers to better match our experiences with recent floods. The best science was ignored by state and local government. STEM promoters did not say anything.

We are so unserious about math and science.

Regarding the alleged intractable problems of corn-soybean commodity agriculture, science and math have produced results we ought to act on. Long-term studies by agronomist Matt Liebman and colleagues at Iowa State University have demonstrated that diversifying the simple corn-bean cropping system can have a huge positive impact on Iowa. Compared to conventional corn-bean rotation, diverse crop rotations:

  • require 88 percent less herbicides, featuring 200 times less freshwater toxicity;
  • require 80 percent less synthetic nitrogen;
  • require 50 percent less less energy per acre;
  • rotations have significantly less soybean diseases.

And, diverse crop rotations have higher yields.

This is what Wendell Berry calls "solving for pattern." What would happen if these cropping systems were incentivized for widespread adoption in the watershed providing the drinking water for the city of Des Moines? What do STEM promoters have to say here?

In a whole category of its own is how STEM legislators and STEM governors are addressing the evidence coming from atmospheric sciences. They are not.

The same science that offers us the ability to do heart surgery, the same science that developed polio vaccine, the prescription for your glasses, the science that built the building you work in safely, the same science that led to Mars landing, the same science based on math physics, chemistry and biology has also produced reliable results: Our burning of fossil energy is negatively affecting the chemistry of the oceans and the stability of the atmosphere that supports all life and our economy.

It really is hard to take STEM talks seriously if so much of what we already know from science is ignored routinely on matters vital to our health, the land and our economy.

The frontiers of space exploration are right here. Think Mars landing: We have water here, we have soil here, and a good climate, and we need to protect them. Science has produced results we can put to practice.

KAMYAR ENSHAYAN is director of Center for Energy and Environmental Education at University of Northern Iowa. Contact: kamyar.enshayan@uni.edu