A new kit has been purchased. The kit promises to teach something: coding, or robotics, or circuit design. When the box arrives, it is pristine and full of possibility.
Three weeks later? It's collecting dust. Does that ring a bell?
The uncomfortable truth is this: many STEM kits do not work well. This is not due to poor design or low learner motivation. It happens because these kits are made for consumers and not for creators. They instruct you to follow when what we really want to teach is how to think when given an order of operations. They tell you to assemble when we know that if we want to innovate, we need to learn how to fail and then try something new.
But all this is changing, and it is a welcome change.
The Assembly Line Problem
STEM kits are not like factory work. Step one---doing something that feels more like the kind of troubleshooting that's asked of real engineers: figure out if you can even make the stupid parts fit in the stupid way you're instructed to. Step two---assuming you get to step two---figuring out which way your parts should really connect if you want your invention to work. And step three: what did you just build? Illuminate some kind of...
You didn't make any of it.
You put together something. There's a difference---an enormous one. Putting together teaches mindless compliance. Creating something teaches a mind to think. Most kits and gadgets optimize for the mindless compliance route because it's, well, mindless. Predictable outcomes. Satisfied customers. Enough five-star reviews to make any entrepreneur or inventor proud.
Observe the subsequent outcome. The learning ceases when the kit is finished. Why is that? Because you were never taught to think, only to obey. You aren't able to change the design because you don't understand it. You aren't able to apply the concepts in other locations because you never truly understood them.
You ingested an experience. You didn't cultivate a skill.
The Creator's Paradox
Creators who are real have problems that have no instructional guides. They have failures that no one foresaw. They find solutions through trial and error, not by sticking to a script. Yet most educational kits serve up just the opposite experiences---the ones that can't help but lead to a shallow understanding of the material.
That leads to this next, sobering conclusion. Think about what real engineers do. They don't get boxes that contain solutions in finished form. They meet difficulties head-on, explore possible avenues, test ideas, bomb well and truly, and bounce back.
The point is really the mess. The problem---to put it in plain English---is that uncertainty drives learning, and the more you learn, the more it shadows you in the form of a stupid failure. And of course, stupid failure isn't one of your markers for success.
This is your intuitive knowledge. You do not need to be told, nor do you need to read about it. Your knowledge comes from the figuring. At its most fundamental level---you know this well at your core---learning is about making something intelligible for you.
This is why kits are so appealing, the kind of kits that promise easy success instead of valuable struggle. Completion is the order of the day. We optimize for it.
What Different Looks Like
Envision a STEM kit that lacks explicit instructions on what you should construct. This is what it is like to attend a liberal arts college with no clear end product.
Challenges presented. Components supplied. Constraints imposed.
Create a solution. Think outcomes. Don't think steps. Think objectives. Tools and materials are at your disposal; use them. Use your brain. No elaborate prelude, just an invitation to think like an engineer and not like a technician.
The most excellent contemporary kits endorse this philosophy. Instead of scripts, they provide scaffolding. Instead of procedures, they offer principles. They do not equate failure with mistakes; instead, they celebrate failure as a pathway to learning.
But here's what's really interesting: these kits look worse on paper. No guaranteed outcome. No slick final product for social media photos. Higher failure rates. More frustration. Parents complain. Reviews suffer.
Yet learners emerge fundamentally changed. They think differently. They approach problems differently. They've shifted from consumers to creators.
The Mindset Shift Nobody Talks About
You're looking at STEM kits online. One advertises "Construct an operational robot in 2 hours!" Another claims "Investigate robotics basics through focused experimentation." Which one do you reckon sells better?
The very first one. Without fail.
We have a natural inclination to desire certainty, particularly when it comes to investing in our education. But this desire for certainty can be a creativity killer. After all, if education guarantees a good outcome, then what is to stop a person from just being a good thinker and not an option thinker?
And if we are not option thinkers, then why not expect all students to do things by the book and for all teachers to follow the same script? We've created a generation that expects to be led in all things.
The mindset of a creator is different. Creators anticipate uncertainty. They take constraints as creative challenges, not as limitations. They consider their failed attempts as data, not as disasters. This isn't natural---it's learned.
However, most educational products actively discourage this kind of learning. They optimize for satisfaction, not for transformation.
Why Traditional Metrics Lie
You finished the kit. The LED is flashing. The motor is whirling. The app shows the display "Congrats!" Everything is hunky-dory. The mission was a complete success?
Not at all.
Modify the circuit for different behavior. Do you understand why those specific components were chosen? Could you build something similar from scratch?
If the answer's no, what did you actually learn? You learned to follow instructions---what robots perform better than humans. You didn't learn to think, create, or even innovate.
Creating modern STEM kits that embrace the mindsets of creators requires measuring different outcomes. Not outcomes that reflect simple compliance, like "Did you complete it?" or "Does it work?" or even "Did you follow instructions?"
But outcomes that speak to the kinds of things creators need to be saying, like:
"What did you try?" "Do you understand why it worked or didn't?" "What did you discover?"
I would argue that measuring these kinds of outcomes frustrates parents and baffles traditional educators because, for the most part, these two groups are more accustomed to measuring only the kinds of outcomes that reflect compliance.
The Beautiful Mess of Real Learning
Observe a person who is genuinely engaged in learning with a life-changing STEM kit. It is chaos. Bits and pieces lying about. Attempts at success---but mostly not. Paperwork is a total mess, full of crossed-out hypotheses and wild new thoughts. You see and hear frustration---but mostly in the documentation, for this stuff is not photogenic.
Yet in this chaos, something significant occurs. Intuition develops in learners regarding system operations. They spot consistency across various obstacles. They solve fresh conundrums with confidence earned through the resolution of past uncertainties.
They accomplish the only vital feats in our quickly altering world---the construction of knowledge and the ability to learn.
Kits of the traditional sort conceal this murky complexity. They portray learning as a linear, orderly, neat process that can be predicted. You follow a series of steps, attain an outcome, and move on to the next thing.
But in reality, learning is more like a spiral. You go forward, hit a wall, backtrack, find new paths, and your understanding coalesces slowly (and often newly) as you go.
Kits that are not of the traditional sort embrace these realities and create a fundamentally different kind of learner.
The Counterintuitive Truth
Here's what nobody wants to admit: the best STEM kits make you struggle. Not arbitrary difficulty---purposeful challenge. They present problems just beyond your current capability. They provide enough support to prevent despair but not enough to eliminate thinking. They're goldilocks zones of productive struggle.
You sense this when utilizing them. At first, there's the thrill of using something new that swiftly gives way to the frustration of not understanding how something that should be simple isn't.
"This should be easier," you tell yourself a few (or many) times, until---hopefully---something clicks for you.
And by "clicks for you," I mean nothing like what an instructor might mean when saying, "Now it should be clear!" It's much, much more rewarding. You feel, then, that you've discovered something on par with or greater than the default success likely to come with following predetermined steps. And this is pretty much the only way to feel it.
Selling struggle is hard. Parents want guaranteed success. Learners expect smooth progress. Reviews punish difficulty. So most kits choose easy satisfaction over transformative challenge. They create consumers who can follow instructions, not creators who can innovate.
The market rewards the wrong behavior.
What Actually Transforms Mindsets
Looking to make the leap from consumer to creator? Select kits that honor your brain power. That offer up conundrums without handing down answers. That laud not-so-successful stabs as good practice. That make incremental learning through trial and error the bedrock of their operating model.
These kits possess certain common traits. They present you with open-ended challenges that have many valid solutions. Their components combine in all sorts of ways. Their documentation explains the principles of operation, not the step-by-step procedures. Supplementing this documentation is an active community of learners who share the thrill of discovery and the results of their project work.
The change is not immediate. At first, even the most growth-minded learner may have some hesitations. You might find yourself looking for nonexistent manuals when the issues you're trying to deal with aren't straightforward. You might feel some frustration. You might even wonder if what you're doing counts as a legitimate act of creation.
Here are some common sticking points---and how to get past them.
Beyond Individual Learning
An interesting occurrence takes place when creator-mindset kits achieve a certain threshold in communities. Learners no longer vie for the title of "best at following instructions." They collaborate to tackle unique, never-before-solved problems.
They resemble---dare I say it?---engineers. And like good engineers, they don't just hold onto the data they collect from their failures; they share it freely. We build on each other's lives and wrong turns. Learning becomes collaborative, exploratory, only slightly less thrilling.
Kits that create "my" experiences are old-fashioned. You build your robot. I build mine. They're the same because we follow "identical" instructions. No reason to share. No opportunity to learn from each other.
Why might either of us care? Because creator-mindset kits generate the kind of diverse-solutions conversations that teach much more than any manual could. Your solution is different from mine. Both "work." How? Why?
This shift---from solitary consumption to joint creation---could be the most transformative thing happening here. It is, after all, how real innovation occurs---not by individuals hewing to a predictable, uptight path, but by communities of interest working together, exploring the many possibilities of the moment.
The Future You're Building
Every time you pick a STEM kit, you're casting a vote for a kind of future. Pick traditional kits, and you vote for a world of people who follow instructions. Pick kits that promote a creator mindset, and you vote for a world of people who invent things.
The impact of an individual's choice of kit seems small. But the cumulative impact when millions of people make the same choice? It shapes not just a single generation but multiple generations in how they approach problem-solving.
This is already playing out. The young people who have grown up with creator-mindset tools approach problems in an entirely different way from what used to be the standard. They think of the tools they're working with as partners in a kind of dialogue. They know it's natural to expect to have to make a lot of wrong turns before finding the right one. They seem to derive a certain pleasure from the work itself.
The shift from consumer to creator involves more than just STEM capabilities. It requires a certain way of thinking. Transforming one's mindset from passive to active takes a concentrated effort. It is not a natural change for everyone. And it should not be portrayed as something anyone can do if they just try hard enough.
The reality is some people struggle more than others with this mental transformation. They are not failing to create because they lack skills. They are failing because they lack a way of thinking that privileges creating over consuming.
When you next evaluate a STEM kit, whether for yourself, your children, or your students, consider the real question to ask:
It's not "What will they build?" but "Who will they become?"
And that answer shapes more than you might imagine.
At Mentis Sciences, we believe in giving power to the people who create, not just consume. We provide the tools and the know-how for you to think differently and build boldly, whether you are developing innovative solutions for national defense or transforming STEM education. Learn more at www.mentissciences.com.
