When I heard about STEM, I was confused. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
STEM was promoted by MIT of US as a new way of study for primary and secondary school students. They thought kids should focus on science,
technology, engineering and mathematics as early as possible.
I do not understand why kids have to study subjuects like engineering and coding.
I saw about an APPs competition for primary students on TV. One team said their APP was used as taxi sharing application. I knew that kind of APP was not simple at all.
Maybe they were genieus. However, I wonder whether kids should write such complicated applications.
If asking kids to learn coding is about winning at the start line mentality, I doubt whether it will serve its purpose.
I studied Information Engineering at university. However, I did not study computer at secondary school. I started coding when I was in university. Some of my classmates also did
study computer at secondary school.
When I worked at the local telecom company, we used to work with a US company on a unified messaging project.
The US company sent a Korean American programmer to assist the integration work.
The Korean American programmer said he used to work at Oracle. Although he studied psychology in university, Oracle hired him as programmer when he graduated from the university.
The salary of programmer in US is very high. It is not easy at all to be hired by Oracle as a programmer.
However, the Koeran American was graduated from Stanford. He must be the best to be admited my Stanford.
In fact, software companies focused more on applicants logical analytic capability more than what the applicants studied in university.
I met my professor a few years ago. He said the freshmen's academic public exam results of Information engineering was worse than those of Theology.
In the past, most of the students applied Theology because their academic results were not good enough for other departments.
They would apply to change to other departments after they stayed at the Theology for one year. The applicants' results of Theology were almost always the worst.
When we studied Information Engineering, the pulibc exam results of freshmen were even better than those of medical school.
Now, the freshmen of engineering departments have to take additional mathematics classes.
If HK studetns do not prefer to study engineering, I do not understand how STEM can appeal to them.
I think kids should focus on English, Chinese, Math in primary school and on English, Chinese, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology in secondary school.
They should learn logical thinking through those subjects. They should study specialized subjects such as engineering in university.
Even if STEM is the idea from MIT, I don't buy it.