Essay on STEM fields

What Makes a Good Program?

The programs that keep girls interested in STEM fields and carrying on taking science courses 2 to 3 years after participating in the programs possess some crucial things in common:

Ӣ They are considered by young ladies to be not like a school;

Ӣ They are interesting and at the same time challenging;

Ӣ They comprise lots of activities, projects and development opportunities;

Ӣ They are far less concerned with growing cognitive knowledge than with assisting young females in doing new things;

Ӣ They are relaxed, with little stress on personal competition;

Ӣ They provide opportunities for young girls to talk informally with females (and sometimes males) in science careers and to study about their private and professional lives.

”¢ They not merely provide time for inquiries, but the staff anxious to answer the questions, so that the young students know somebody is there and he or she will keep working with them till they can definitely declare, “I’ve got it!”

”¢ They comprise estimation of what’s working and what’s not working and utilize the results for the program advance.

What Can Parents do?

Without at least 3 years of high school math, young girl will be excluded from a broad variety of jobs. It does not necessarily have to be like this. That is why parents can do many things to help own daughter to give math and science one more chance. In researches of female science students, parents were commonly called the most influential people in young females’ decisions to go into STEM fields (Johnson, E01). Encouragement does not have to be informational or monetary. Parents do not have to be scientists or engineers by themselves to provide a daughter with some confidence. Nowadays, girls know females may be scientists, but many have been told they would not be capable to do it. That is why they prefer not to try.

Help Reduce Stereotypes

Researches of college and high school students have discovered the main obstacles young ladies notice to entering STEM fields are gender discrimination and the insight of engineering as purely “male profession” (The Responsive Ph.D., Innovations in U.S. Doctoral Education, 25). Helping young girl learn about the roles females play in science may alter these dangerous stereotypes. Young girls, especially girls, who are strong in science, worry about the so-called “nerd” factor. It means that people and especially females who are strong in math and science are “weird” and antisocial individuals. Exposing a girl to females and males scientists may substitute the negative stereotypes with positive awareness of actual human beings. Also, somewhat surprisingly, anxieties concerning mixing careers and families are not seen as severe obstacles by most girls.

Conclusion

There is a growing imbalance among girls based on ethnic, economic, racial, and regional dissimilarities. Young females are usually not prepared for these spheres. That is why they either do not enter STEM fields or leave them too rapidly. Young girls deserve to have a choice. And this choice comes from possessing necessary skills and knowledge.

STEM fields are especially crucial for females, who customarily have been underrepresented in these spheres. Over the past 2 decades, females, including young girls, have progressed and are starting to close the gap in some spheres. However, statistics demonstrates the circumstances are not likely to advance soon. In 1996, females represented less than 19% of undergraduate students, 17% of graduate students, and a little bit more than 12% of students in doctorate programs. I am confident that programs to encourage young girls in STEM fields are required to change the situation in the USA. Also, parents may do lots of things to help own daughters to give math and science one more chance. Teachers and parents have to cooperate to help young girls and to lessen the spread of hazardous stereotypes.

 



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