Today’s Focus on STEM Education Is Missing A Crucial Point
A student in a contemplative pose.
I once saw a fascinating TED talk on 3D printing. As I watched the presenter discuss the custom fabrication, not of plastic gears or figurines, but of living, implantable kidneys, I thought I was finally living in the world of Star Trek, and I experienced a flush of that eager, expectant enthusiasm I felt as a child looking toward the future. I looked at my current career and felt a rejuvenation of my commitment to teach young people the power of science.
The well-rounded education of human beings needs to include lessons learned both from a study of the physical world, and from a study of humanity.
Whether we are teachers or not, those of us who admire technology and innovation, and who wish to support progress, usually embrace the importance of educating the next generation of scientists and inventors. Growing a healthy technological civilization takes a lot of work, skill, and wisdom, and its continued health depends on future generations of competent thinkers. Thus, we may find it encouraging that there is currently an abundance of interest in STEM– the common acronym for the study of science, technology, engineering, and math.
But education is as challenging an endeavor as science itself. Educating youth--if we want to do it right--requires as much thought, work, and expertise as discovering a cure or pioneering regenerative medicine. Before we give our money, time, or support to any particular school or policy, let's give some thought to the details of the educational process.
A Well-Balanced Diet
For one thing, STEM education cannot stand in isolation. The well-rounded education of human beings needs to include lessons learned both from a study of the physical world, and from a study of humanity. This is especially true for the basic education of children, but it is true even for college students. And even for those in science and engineering, there are important lessons to be learned from the study of history, literature, and art.
Scientists have their own emotions and values, and also need financial support. The fruits of their labor ultimately benefit other people. How are we all to function together in our division-of-labor society, without some knowledge of the way societies work? How are we to fully thrive and enjoy life, without some understanding of ourselves, our motives, our moral values, and our relationships to others? STEM education needs the humanities as a partner. That flourishing civilization we dream of requires both technical competence and informed life-choices.
Think for Yourself (Even in Science)
Perhaps even more important than what is taught, is the subject of how things are taught. We want our children to learn the skill of thinking independently, but even in the sciences, we often fail completely to demonstrate how. Instead of teaching science as a thinking process, we indoctrinate, using the grand discoveries of the great scientists as our sacred texts. But consider the words of Isaac Newton himself, regarding rote learning:
A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub.
What's the point of all this formal schooling in the first place? Is it, as many of the proponents of STEM education might argue, to train students for a "good" career?
If our goal is to help students "reason nimbly" about the world around them, as the great scientists themselves did, are we succeeding? When we "teach" middle school students about DNA or cellular respiration by presenting as our only supporting evidence cartoon pictures, are we showing students a process of discovery based on evidence and hard work? Or are we just training them to memorize and repeat what the authorities say?
A useful education needs to give students the skill of following a line of reasoning, of asking rational questions, and of chewing things through in their minds--even if we regard the material as beyond question. Besides feeding students a well-balanced diet of knowledge, healthy schooling needs to teach them to digest this information thoroughly.
Thinking Training
Now step back for a moment and think about the purpose of education. What's the point of all this formal schooling in the first place? Is it, as many of the proponents of STEM education might argue, to train students for a "good" career? That view may have some validity for young adults, who are beginning to choose electives in favored subjects, and have started to choose a direction for their career.
But for the basic education of children, this way of thinking is presumptuous and disastrous. I would argue that the central purpose of a basic education is not to teach children how to perform this or that particular skill, but simply to teach them to think clearly. We should not be aiming to provide job training, but thinking training. We should be helping children learn how to "reason nimbly" about the world around them, and breathing life into their thinking processes, by which they will grapple with the events and circumstances of their lives.
So as we admire innovation, dream of a wonderful future, and attempt to nurture the next generation of scientists and engineers, instead of obsessing over STEM education, let us focus on rational education. Let's worry about showing children how to think--about all the important things in life. Let's give them the basic facts of human existence -- physical and humanitarian -- and show them how to fluently and logically understand them.
Some students will become the next generation of creators, and some will follow other careers, but together -- if they are educated properly -- they will continue to grow their inheritance, and to keep our civilization healthy and flourishing, in body and in mind.
Urinary tract infections account for more than 8 million trips to the doctor each year.
Few things are more painful than a urinary tract infection (UTI). Common in men and women, these infections account for more than 8 million trips to the doctor each year and can cause an array of uncomfortable symptoms, from a burning feeling during urination to fever, vomiting, and chills. For an unlucky few, UTIs can be chronic—meaning that, despite treatment, they just keep coming back.
But new research, presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Paris this week, brings some hope to people who suffer from UTIs.
Clinicians from the Royal Berkshire Hospital presented the results of a long-term, nine-year clinical trial where 89 men and women who suffered from recurrent UTIs were given an oral vaccine called MV140, designed to prevent the infections. Every day for three months, the participants were given two sprays of the vaccine (flavored to taste like pineapple) and then followed over the course of nine years. Clinicians analyzed medical records and asked the study participants about symptoms to check whether any experienced UTIs or had any adverse reactions from taking the vaccine.
The results showed that across nine years, 48 of the participants (about 54%) remained completely infection-free. On average, the study participants remained infection free for 54.7 months—four and a half years.
“While we need to be pragmatic, this vaccine is a potential breakthrough in preventing UTIs and could offer a safe and effective alternative to conventional treatments,” said Gernot Bonita, Professor of Urology at the Alta Bro Medical Centre for Urology in Switzerland, who is also the EAU Chairman of Guidelines on Urological Infections.
The news comes as a relief not only for people who suffer chronic UTIs, but also to doctors who have seen an uptick in antibiotic-resistant UTIs in the past several years. Because UTIs usually require antibiotics, patients run the risk of developing a resistance to the antibiotics, making infections more difficult to treat. A preventative vaccine could mean less infections, less antibiotics, and less drug resistance overall.
“Many of our participants told us that having the vaccine restored their quality of life,” said Dr. Bob Yang, Consultant Urologist at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, who helped lead the research. “While we’re yet to look at the effect of this vaccine in different patient groups, this follow-up data suggests it could be a game-changer for UTI prevention if it’s offered widely, reducing the need for antibiotic treatments.”
MILESTONE: Doctors have transplanted a pig organ into a human for the first time in history
A surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital prepares a pig organ for transplant.
Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital made history last week when they successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a human patient for the first time ever.
The recipient was a 62-year-old man named Richard Slayman who had been living with end-stage kidney disease caused by diabetes. While Slayman had received a kidney transplant in 2018 from a human donor, his diabetes ultimately caused the kidney to fail less than five years after the transplant. Slayman had undergone dialysis ever since—a procedure that uses an artificial kidney to remove waste products from a person’s blood when the kidneys are unable to—but the dialysis frequently caused blood clots and other complications that landed him in the hospital multiple times.
As a last resort, Slayman’s kidney specialist suggested a transplant using a pig kidney provided by eGenesis, a pharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, Mass. The highly experimental surgery was made possible with the Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” initiative, which allows patients with life-threatening medical conditions access to experimental treatments.
The new frontier of organ donation
Like Slayman, more than 100,000 people are currently on the national organ transplant waiting list, and roughly 17 people die every day waiting for an available organ. To make up for the shortage of human organs, scientists have been experimenting for the past several decades with using organs from animals such as pigs—a new field of medicine known as xenotransplantation. But putting an animal organ into a human body is much more complicated than it might appear, experts say.
“The human immune system reacts incredibly violently to a pig organ, much more so than a human organ,” said Dr. Joren Madsen, director of the Mass General Transplant Center. Even with immunosuppressant drugs that suppress the body’s ability to reject the transplant organ, Madsen said, a human body would reject an animal organ “within minutes.”
So scientists have had to use gene-editing technology to change the animal organs so that they would work inside a human body. The pig kidney in Slayman’s surgery, for instance, had been genetically altered using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to remove harmful pig genes and add human ones. The kidney was also edited to remove pig viruses that could potentially infect a human after transplant.
With CRISPR technology, scientists have been able to prove that interspecies organ transplants are not only possible, but may be able to successfully work long term, too. In the past several years, scientists were able to transplant a pig kidney into a monkey and have the monkey survive for more than two years. More recently, doctors have transplanted pig hearts into human beings—though each recipient of a pig heart only managed to live a couple of months after the transplant. In one of the patients, researchers noted evidence of a pig virus in the man’s heart that had not been identified before the surgery and could be a possible explanation for his heart failure.
So far, so good
Slayman and his medical team ultimately decided to pursue the surgery—and the risk paid off. When the pig organ started producing urine at the end of the four-hour surgery, the entire operating room erupted in applause.
Slayman is currently receiving an infusion of immunosuppressant drugs to prevent the kidney from being rejected, while his doctors monitor the kidney’s function with frequent ultrasounds. Slayman is reported to be “recovering well” at Massachusetts General Hospital and is expected to be discharged within the next several days.