Might the Beaver get serious for a moment?
MIT has finally acknowledged that it can’t achieve the racial targets aspired to in its strategic plan for Belonging, Achievement, and Composition by lowering standards. Like it or not, calculus is the intellectual filter to a productive career in STEM. If you don’t have the mental horsepower to pass through that filter it’s awfully hard to “belong” in STEM.
So, if your goal is to achieve proportionate representation for every “identity” group in every field of endeavor, and black girls are your chosen tribe, how do you best identify and attract those rare individuals capable of mastering calculus?
Robotics competitions? Nah. Dance.
Dance has “always been a source of community, perseverance, and learning how to be determined,” explains Yamilée Toussaint, the founder and CEO of STEM from Dance.
Perseverance and determination are certainly required to avoid drowning in the firehose of a first-class STEM university curriculum. But all the grit, community, and empowerment in the world will only serve up frustration if you set your heart on STEM but you can’t master the moves.
Kudos to those seeking to identify and attract talented young people of any color, creed, or gender to a career in STEM, because you can’t fix a broken educational pipeline at the university level. STEM is certainly open to anyone, notwithstanding a certain chancellor’s false accusations. But it’s not for everyone any more than becoming a professional athlete, musician, or dancer.
Story suggested by Advocatus