How YouTuber Hank Green is bringing STEM to a new generation

Bill Nye is a millennial nostalgia heartthrob, and Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Twitter king -- but they're also where many Americans' everyday exposure to science ends.

Because we're facing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education deficit, the U.S. is in the midst of a major push to boost the accessibility of STEM education and job resources. 

A lack of educational resources -- something that the Obama administration has fought to address -- is partly to blame for the deficiency. But young people who misunderstand the kind of life and future a STEM career could bring them are also part of the problem. A recent survey of 1,000 adults found that 1/3 did not purse a career in STEM because it "seemed too hard."

Luckily, one technology company is trying to change that by speaking to teens where they live: online.

Emerson, a global manufacturing company that celebrated its 125th anniversary last year, partnered with YouTube star and digital entrepreneur Hank Green on its I Love STEM initiative.  

"Getting education up is very authentic to our success and the future success of our company and human progress," Emerson CMO Kathy Button Bell explained to Mashable. "And Hank was so genuinely supportive by living the dream in his videos." 

Green began with his successful YouTube channel Vlogbrothers, which he started in 2007 with his brother, bestselling author John Green. Now the pair run a digital empire, having started the popular convention VidCon and running many philanthropic and educational endeavors.

It was one of those projects, the science education video series Sci Show, that made Green the perfect partner for I Love STEM. 

As Button Bell believes -- and the success of Sci Show and the Greens' other educational series, Crash Course, shows -- many people learn best by video. "If you don’t know how to do something, you go online and figure it out." 

Mashable spoke with Green about his role as an online educator, the best ways to get kids excited about STEM, and why they should care at all.

It's common -- and incorrect -- to expect that science is "hard"

“There may even be this sort of expectation among teachers and students that [STEM] needs to be hard," Green explained. "If it’s not, then it’s not 'real' science." Move beyond that expectation, though, and you can begin to delve into the complexities of the sciences.

When "hard" sciences do get simplified, they are often reviewed using multiple choice tests.

"Then you remove all of the subjective stuff, because it’s a lot easier to be objective with multiple choice. So then you lose the reality that this is part of a process," Green said. "It frustrates me that you take a science class and there’s never any moment when the answer isn’t definitely known."

In fact, science is inextricably tied to other disciplines like history and philosophy. “I do understand that it is hard," said Green, "but I think it’s also very exciting and fun if you understand why you’re learning it.

"[Science is] building a tool kit to make the world better."

Hopefully, the videos can help teachers, too

“I know for sure that the job of teachers is harder than my job, so in that way I do not want to consider myself an educator," said Green. But sure, I am a YouTube educator."

"Part of the reason why what I do is so rewarding is that teachers like to use it to help teach their students."

Green says his work can also help them be better teachers: "It helps them free up some of their time so they can do more of what [the videos] can’t do, like one-on-one work or more interesting interactive work.”

Green has heard this firsthand from teachers who have used his videos in class. “They get to move more quickly through topics, whether they watch the videos at home or watch them in class. Then they can spend time answering questions, interacting, and doing one-on-one stuff.

"Every teacher who uses my stuff in the classroom, I want to give them a big hug.”

Advanced technology has its downsides

In the old tays, tech could be taken apart and put back together by anyone feeling ambitious to learn more about how it worked. That's a lot harder to do in the days of the iPhone, Green explained.

"Early computers, to interact with it you typed in commands. You had to interact with it. And now you’re separated from that by several layers." In fact, the more we use technology, the further we're removed from knowing how that tech actually works. 

"A transistor radio, you take that apart and you see all its parts. You see the wires, you see how it works. You take your phone apart" -- a phone that appears to work by "magic" -- "and it’s just other 'magic' parts."

The STEM struggle is real -- but people learn to love science and tech through videos

"We hear all the time from people that really struggle with this material, and, because of the form or the approach we took, people have managed to pass their classes or even do well in their classes," said Green.

Some viewers have even considered careers in the field -- or have at least become more comfortable with science, no longer seeing it as "just something to get through." 

The best way to get teens interested is to show them how STEM can affect their world

As Green puts it, “people want to have a big impact on the world and they want to positively affect society." Engineering and science may seem like an abstract way of doing that, but in fact they're very concrete and permanent.

"The other thing is that [science] seems very much like something that is done by geniuses in their ivory towers. But in fact," said Green, "it’s done by individual people."

That's right: you don't have to be Einstein to be a scientist. "I think a lot of people never consider it as a possible career because it seems so outside of what society expects them to do," he continued. "But if you’re into it, it’s such a wonderful rewarding thing to be passionate about.”

Psst: There isn't a stark divide between arts and sciences

Green, who is also a touring musician, sees no dichotomy: "Any idea that if you’re one you’re not the other is completely made up.”

“I see them as two ways of being a well-roundeperson," he explained. "To me, science is extremely creative; you’re making stuff up.You’re not making up the answers you get, but you’re making up how to get the answers. Every experimental design is a creative endeavor.

"And many of the scientists I know are poets, they’re artists, they’re writers, they’re philosophers, they’re songwriters."

In the end, it's all about curiosity.

“Every question you ask leads to a more interesting question. And that’s okay -- that’s the whole point.”    

Green says that his knowledge and passion for science has expanded his career, and brought him new opportunities.

"I think it helps me to be a more fully rounded human. And now I have a creative career that is based on my STEM education. It’s all possible.”