Yesterday Obama kicked off the Federal Government’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign, which will provide $4.35 billion in Federal grants to schools that innovate in STEM (science, engineering, technology, and mathematics) learning intitiatives. This campaign will also be helped along by $260 million in private sector funding. This campaign will allow government funding for much more innovative and exciting initiatives than would have been approved under the test-score-centered “No Child Left Behind”. Instead of simply trying to stop the bad, this will help to flourish the good.

This is a great way to get kids interested at a young age in exciting and in demand fields. From my experience it’s very hard to get most kids interested in anything that resembles learning. But introducing them new things on the cutting edge would be something exciting that they would jump at. When I left for high school in 2001, my elementary school was still running Macintosh Classics, circa 1990. Especially showing kids that they can make real contributions at such a young age can be very inspiring, like what Obama recently did with his White House held Astronomy Night.

Bunyan