5 ms·

STEM to STEAM

27 points by ritchiea 11y ago

Elizer0x0309 11y ago
Great initiative! A well rounded person is always better than a person that's really good at one or fewer things.
unmole 11y ago
So, STEAM is Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics? One of these is not like the others.
- dang 11y ago
  I imagine that's the point. They enhance each other: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7054887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7054887. No doubt sciences foster artistic success too. This is a close-to-home question over here. The fact that William Blake can spend time on the front page of HN alongside ZFS is in my view the best thing about it.
- striking 11y ago
  I've heard a lot about this from people who do work at STEAM events. Arts are allegedly just as important as the rest of these, because creativity and artistic design are part of the manufacturing process. I keep my mouth shut, because I don't want to hurt their feelings, because they do a lot of good work with helping kids into the STEM fields, and because they're genuinely nice people. (I can be kind of abrasive, and they're doing good work. So I hold off.) But I fail to see how the color of the packaging affects how tough parts for the space shuttle are. Is it about promoting creativity and free-forming content into Engineering and Science, etc.? The webpage says a whole lot of nothing. I'd be willing to rethink my position if I understood the concept a little better (because I am clearly missing something). Also: friend attends RISD right now. Will ask what he thinks of this.
  - rtpg 11y ago
    Arts can create a sensibility for context, and can answer the "should" of "should we be doing this". At least the hypothetical universe in my mind, a bunch of technocrats are a lot more likely to commit unethical behaviour than people who have a bit more sensibility for the human condition and history.
    - outlace 11y ago
      I think resources would be better allocated at simply educating STEM people in ethics and the like. We don't need to funnel people into arts just as checks-and-balances to the "less sensible" technology folks.
    - gaius 11y ago
      You can teach an engineer history a hell of a lot more easily than teaching an art historian how to do stochastic calculus.
      - deadlast 11y ago
        Can and do are not the same. Just because different forms of knowledge are "easier" or "more difficult" to obtain does not mean that the easier knowledge is somehow devalued, except in the context of labor supply. I would not say that, at this point, many engineers know or are interested much in history or art, regardless of its social value. This is a mild failure on the part of the free market.
      - gnicholas 11y ago
        These examples may be true, but they're not necessarily representative. For example, writing is at the heart of history and literature, but it is not easily taught to engineers (or anyone, for that matter). Becoming a skilled writer takes years, and it probably also relies on innate talents as well.
  - javajosh 11y ago
    Art, in this context, means the content of the render() function. There is a great deal of ambiguity, a great deal of magic, surrounding the implementation of render() for a complex system. It's easy to come up with mechanical isomorphisms for low-entropy representations of state; it's very hard to come up with evocative representations. This is the role of The Artist.
  - stuart78 11y ago
    Design is a bit more than the 'color of the packaging' but I do agree it feels odd to try and get it in w/ the STEM. It calls attention to a certain anxiety within the design community about their own value while at the same time trying to overburden the relatively useful STEM shorthand.
    - 31reasons 11y ago
      I think 'A' independently has much lower value than when its combined with STEM skills (in terms of problem solving). If you are strong in STEM as an individual then adding 'A' would make you much more effective at solving problems.
  - nerdwaller 11y ago
    Without reading, none of these would be possible - so maybe it needs to be STEAMR
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Without Oversight, all of these can turn into a force of evil. The necessary Oversight needs to be framed in the context of Law. Therefore, I introduce to you STEAMROL(L).
  - noobermin 11y ago
    I once got one of the senior researchers in my group talking about the harsh task of writing scientific articles before the advent of the personal computer(and LaTeX, of course). Back in those days, he had to do the usual handwriting of a draft of his papers, hand that off to a secretary, who'd, by rule, only type up two drafts of any of the faculty's manuscripts. They had to be very careful, then, what they sent off...that it was polished and ready for submission to a journal. Then, when someone had a figure to include (again, before the advent of matlab), they had to plot out their data by hand, then send it off to the art department. Journals back in the day had strict requisites on the quality, type (font) of figures, and on their readability, and the artists were careful to follow these rules, turning handwritten figures into quality, readable, and informative figures. Nowadays, you have no fucking idea how often I have to read a paper with figures that are just plain confusing, un-insightful, and with types and labels that are unreadable, and defeat the whole purpose of a scientific paper: to disseminate and communicate your findings. I get it that STEM'ers happy now that they no longer have to talk to the art department, but so often, they do not realize how important design is and how you need at least a modicum of design sense, especially when the entire point of you writing a paper (after using it when writing for grants) is to communicate with your fellow scientist your findings. Design is so much more than "color of packaging," design is readability, type, structure of visual elements, and yes color. Moreover, design, as the name implies, is art for a purpose; often for, yes, attention grabbing and customer wooing, but for us scientists, design plays an important role in the communication process. And going back to color, for fuck's sake, some choices colormaps can really hurt the quality of your publication! 10 panes of Jet heatmaps, each with different limits on each pane? Give me a break. Design is important, just as much as literacy is important, just as much as knowing limits before you memorize the derivative of a sine function is important. Just because you have LaTeX and bootstrap doesn't mean design isn't important anymore, even though it's easier. No one can do everything, but being humble enough to learn from people outside your field (even outside science) can make you a better STEM'er, especially when it comes to sharing your cool ideas.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  I dunno. I saw this today at Target. Thought it was a funny typo, but maybe they're onto something... http://imgur.com/6zPv5xb http://imgur.com/6zPv5xb
- orionblastar 11y ago
  I would only be alright with STEAM if Art majors had to take the same math and science classes as the other majors have to take. There are too many people getting Art degrees and then want to have a STEM job and just don't have the math and science skills required for the STEM jobs. Art is easier because it doesn't have the math and science classes that STEM has. When I think of design I often think of Engineering and not Art, and that might be because I was a STEM student. When I design a program there is no art involved unless it is a video game or something. I usually give the user control over what colors they want the background and menus to be.
  - gaius 11y ago
    It's not about skills, doncha know, it's about inclusivity and safe spaces, these days.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  "Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them" - Steve Jobs' Commencement Address at Stanford University, June 2005 http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
  - j2kun 11y ago
    And that's why we love Steve Wozniak more.
    - dominotw 11y ago
      Not really
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    The real useful advice behind this is basically "know a lot of random stuff". But people end up focusing on the "calligraphy" aspect and fetishizing focus on the less practical.
    - Apocryphon 11y ago
      And yet, the modern Apple that prizes good aesthetics and design in the service of the customer is what separates it from competing tech companies that focus on the practical and profitable.
      - 11y ago
karmel 11y ago
This is not good for STEM, and this is not good for women. If the attention and effort to encourage women, children, underrepresented minorities, etc. in STEM gets diverted into "STEAM," then there is a high likelihood that many groups will tout increased enrollment of women but funnel the women right into the A in STEAM. (Not necessarily on purpose, but for the same complicated reasons that women are underrepresented in STEM right now.) And then we're in the same place we started, but with less visibility into the problem.
- Animats 11y ago
  Hm. That's a good point. Try making it to the members of Congress behind the "Congressional STEM to STEAM Caucus".[1] . "Current members of the caucus include Reps. Jim Langevin (D-RI), Jared Polis (D-CO), David Cicilline (D-RI), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Gerald Connolly (D-VA), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Tim Ryan (D-OH), and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)." The Rhode Island School of Design seems to be the main force behind this. They're not really a design school, in the industrial design sense; they're a "fine arts" school. Teaching kids the rudiments of industrial design might be useful. It's not about self-expression; it's about what the user needs. [1] https://bonamici.house.gov/press-release/reps-bonamici-and-schock-announce-bipartisan-congressional-steam-caucus https://bonamici.house.gov/press-release/reps-bonamici-and-s...
outlace 11y ago
Does the U.S. have an art/design problem or shortage relative to other nations? (non-rhetorical question, please answer). It does seem clear that the U.S. is behind many other nations in STEM fields. Seems like promoting STEAM vs STEM would be somewhat mutually antagonistic.
- zitterbewegung 11y ago
  How exactly is the US behind other nation in STEM fields?
  - outlace 11y ago
    I've seen various sources claim the US is behind other nations in STEM fields, particularly math, at the primary and secondary levels. e.g. https://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/TheSTEMCrisis/STEMEducationStatistics.aspx https://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/TheSTEMCrisis/STEMEducationSta...
    - rewqfdsa 11y ago
      These disparities disappear once you account for certain key demographic differences. In modern service-economy societies, average educational attainment is unimportant. What matters is how many positive-marginal-product people you have, and the US still produces them in spades.
aroman 11y ago
any relation to this (also a RISD project)? http://steamwith.us/ http://steamwith.us/ (edit: why am I being downvoted?)
jamesrom 11y ago
The reason why artists aren't getting tech jobs isn't because there's a letter missing from an acronym...
gluelogic 11y ago
I'm looking at their list of objectives, trying to understand how any of it will benefit the advancement of STEM. It doesn't. The objectives only seek to leverage the concrete validity of STEM as a stable platform for "arts & design," which are intuitive and incredibly debatable by nature.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  If anything I would assume their objective is the exact opposite - draw people to STEM trough something popular/approachable like Art. To be fair the site is very vague - I can't really see how this would be different from something like industrial design/architecture ?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I'm assuming - trying to plug themselves into the acronym to capitalize on the respect (and jobs) STEM has as "the real deal" as opposed to art fields, and framing that as initiative to bring more people into STEM. It's cynical, I know, but I've heard enough art/design people saying "art and design is important too!" and completely missing the point. No one is saying design or art is not important to humans. It's just STEM fields are different because they deal head-on with objective, observable reality as opposed to incredibly complex internal life of humans.
- Natsu 11y ago
  I don't see what good this would do. Art & design are certainly valuable for making a good product, but the fields are not at all alike. There is an objective, correct answer to questions in science to the point where disagreement is simply wrong. I don't think there is an objectively best art or anything like that. So the studies are nothing alike, even if art and design can provide real value to technical projects.
- zachrose 11y ago
  If you're the kind of person who "likes to make things" and is going to college, you basically have two options: art or engineering. As a teenager I was totally turned off by engineering. It seemed like a bunch of dudes who wanted to discover the best way to make something, but with a total disinterest in why that thing should be made. The art (and design) people seemed to get it. They were intensely curious about the bigger idea, and wanted their output to connect to some visceral and/or moral and/or political outcome. So I wound up in an art program. I learned how to make aesthetically satisfying objects and was exposed to a ton of cool things that have happened in art history. Later on when I got into software, I came to it with a mentality of wanting to make "things" that were in some way complete and satisfying. That turned out to be enough of a motivation to learn programming, and it turns out the demand for software is insatiable regardless of your background or skill level. So if I were to talk to someone who was going into school, I would tell that person to do what excites them, and suggest that STEM doesn't really deserve to have a monopoly on creation.
strictnein 11y ago
> "K–20 education" I've never heard 8 years of college referred to like that. It's... strange.
- noobermin 11y ago
  Undergrad + PhD? :/
gaius 11y ago
This is clearly some sort of spoof. Or someone has completely missed the point of STEM, y'know, hard stuff where there are right and wrong answers...
j2kun 11y ago
There is an implicit assumption that STEM does not have any artistic/design aspects to it. I imagine people who claim this have never had a long conversation with a mathematician about what their job is actually like.
Jach 11y ago
STEM is already too much about a gigantic T (apps! apps everywhere!) at the expense of S, E, and M. A would be even bigger. This is nothing but entryism.
- eru 11y ago
  What's entryism?
  - Jach 11y ago
    Essentially the same point made here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572766 Being associated with STEM is lucrative (money, respect, ability to effect change) and STEM explicitly leaves out the more numerous artists, lawyers, political theorists, english literaturers, gender studiers, etc. that are part of college-as-is. The benefits of STEM association are enough incentive for any groups within those left out to try and get themselves in and have a share. Hence, the Rhode Island School of Design (which ought to have no business in STEM: http://www.risd.edu/academics/ http://www.risd.edu/academics/) has been trying to steer things. Hey, at least if they win, there will be no gender representation problems in STEAM...
Apocryphon 11y ago
In Silicon Valley and on communities such as HN, when people talk about STEM, they seem to usually focus on CS/EE. Given that there doesn't seem to be as much focus here on, say, hydraulic engineering, or medicine, as there is focus on what is necessary to create tech startups, I'm surprised to see that people are objecting to Art. Doesn't this industry have a more pressing need for UI/UX designers, HCI specialists, web designers, and video game music composers, rather than astronomers or zoologists?
jhpaul 11y ago
This program misses the point by presenting a very narrow scope. Adding the Arts to STEM is about much more than just "Art + Design" (though that is a piece). It's an important topic of discussion and should be priority in education. Every child in America should leave school with a basic understanding of arts and culture - some knowledge of music, visual arts, literature, history. Societal progress has consistently been tied to the greater appreciation of humanity found in these pursuits. Just as any musician or artist should have the opportunity to understand and appreciate the basic concepts of physics or computer science, so too should the scientist know sculpture. Creative thought sustains critical thinking, and many of the borders between them overlap. If we truly wish to build our future nation to be our best, we must not discount the arts as a core pillar of any healthy society, and one worth supporting in any way possible.

STEM to STEAM

27 points by ritchiea 11y ago

Elizer0x0309 11y ago

Great initiative! A well rounded person is always better than a person that's really good at one or fewer things.

unmole 11y ago

So, STEAM is Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics? One of these is not like the others.

dang 11y ago
I imagine that's the point. They enhance each other: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7054887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7054887. No doubt sciences foster artistic success too. This is a close-to-home question over here. The fact that William Blake can spend time on the front page of HN alongside ZFS is in my view the best thing about it.
striking 11y ago
I've heard a lot about this from people who do work at STEAM events. Arts are allegedly just as important as the rest of these, because creativity and artistic design are part of the manufacturing process. I keep my mouth shut, because I don't want to hurt their feelings, because they do a lot of good work with helping kids into the STEM fields, and because they're genuinely nice people. (I can be kind of abrasive, and they're doing good work. So I hold off.) But I fail to see how the color of the packaging affects how tough parts for the space shuttle are. Is it about promoting creativity and free-forming content into Engineering and Science, etc.? The webpage says a whole lot of nothing. I'd be willing to rethink my position if I understood the concept a little better (because I am clearly missing something). Also: friend attends RISD right now. Will ask what he thinks of this.
- rtpg 11y ago
  Arts can create a sensibility for context, and can answer the "should" of "should we be doing this". At least the hypothetical universe in my mind, a bunch of technocrats are a lot more likely to commit unethical behaviour than people who have a bit more sensibility for the human condition and history.
  - outlace 11y ago
    I think resources would be better allocated at simply educating STEM people in ethics and the like. We don't need to funnel people into arts just as checks-and-balances to the "less sensible" technology folks.
  - gaius 11y ago
    You can teach an engineer history a hell of a lot more easily than teaching an art historian how to do stochastic calculus.
    - deadlast 11y ago
      Can and do are not the same. Just because different forms of knowledge are "easier" or "more difficult" to obtain does not mean that the easier knowledge is somehow devalued, except in the context of labor supply. I would not say that, at this point, many engineers know or are interested much in history or art, regardless of its social value. This is a mild failure on the part of the free market.
    - gnicholas 11y ago
      These examples may be true, but they're not necessarily representative. For example, writing is at the heart of history and literature, but it is not easily taught to engineers (or anyone, for that matter). Becoming a skilled writer takes years, and it probably also relies on innate talents as well.
- javajosh 11y ago
  Art, in this context, means the content of the render() function. There is a great deal of ambiguity, a great deal of magic, surrounding the implementation of render() for a complex system. It's easy to come up with mechanical isomorphisms for low-entropy representations of state; it's very hard to come up with evocative representations. This is the role of The Artist.
- stuart78 11y ago
  Design is a bit more than the 'color of the packaging' but I do agree it feels odd to try and get it in w/ the STEM. It calls attention to a certain anxiety within the design community about their own value while at the same time trying to overburden the relatively useful STEM shorthand.
  - 31reasons 11y ago
    I think 'A' independently has much lower value than when its combined with STEM skills (in terms of problem solving). If you are strong in STEM as an individual then adding 'A' would make you much more effective at solving problems.
- nerdwaller 11y ago
  Without reading, none of these would be possible - so maybe it needs to be STEAMR
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Without Oversight, all of these can turn into a force of evil. The necessary Oversight needs to be framed in the context of Law. Therefore, I introduce to you STEAMROL(L).
- noobermin 11y ago
  I once got one of the senior researchers in my group talking about the harsh task of writing scientific articles before the advent of the personal computer(and LaTeX, of course). Back in those days, he had to do the usual handwriting of a draft of his papers, hand that off to a secretary, who'd, by rule, only type up two drafts of any of the faculty's manuscripts. They had to be very careful, then, what they sent off...that it was polished and ready for submission to a journal. Then, when someone had a figure to include (again, before the advent of matlab), they had to plot out their data by hand, then send it off to the art department. Journals back in the day had strict requisites on the quality, type (font) of figures, and on their readability, and the artists were careful to follow these rules, turning handwritten figures into quality, readable, and informative figures. Nowadays, you have no fucking idea how often I have to read a paper with figures that are just plain confusing, un-insightful, and with types and labels that are unreadable, and defeat the whole purpose of a scientific paper: to disseminate and communicate your findings. I get it that STEM'ers happy now that they no longer have to talk to the art department, but so often, they do not realize how important design is and how you need at least a modicum of design sense, especially when the entire point of you writing a paper (after using it when writing for grants) is to communicate with your fellow scientist your findings. Design is so much more than "color of packaging," design is readability, type, structure of visual elements, and yes color. Moreover, design, as the name implies, is art for a purpose; often for, yes, attention grabbing and customer wooing, but for us scientists, design plays an important role in the communication process. And going back to color, for fuck's sake, some choices colormaps can really hurt the quality of your publication! 10 panes of Jet heatmaps, each with different limits on each pane? Give me a break. Design is important, just as much as literacy is important, just as much as knowing limits before you memorize the derivative of a sine function is important. Just because you have LaTeX and bootstrap doesn't mean design isn't important anymore, even though it's easier. No one can do everything, but being humble enough to learn from people outside your field (even outside science) can make you a better STEM'er, especially when it comes to sharing your cool ideas.
joezydeco 11y ago
I dunno. I saw this today at Target. Thought it was a funny typo, but maybe they're onto something... http://imgur.com/6zPv5xb http://imgur.com/6zPv5xb
orionblastar 11y ago
I would only be alright with STEAM if Art majors had to take the same math and science classes as the other majors have to take. There are too many people getting Art degrees and then want to have a STEM job and just don't have the math and science skills required for the STEM jobs. Art is easier because it doesn't have the math and science classes that STEM has. When I think of design I often think of Engineering and not Art, and that might be because I was a STEM student. When I design a program there is no art involved unless it is a video game or something. I usually give the user control over what colors they want the background and menus to be.
- gaius 11y ago
  It's not about skills, doncha know, it's about inclusivity and safe spaces, these days.
joezydeco 11y ago
"Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them" - Steve Jobs' Commencement Address at Stanford University, June 2005 http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
- j2kun 11y ago
  And that's why we love Steve Wozniak more.
  - dominotw 11y ago
    Not really
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  The real useful advice behind this is basically "know a lot of random stuff". But people end up focusing on the "calligraphy" aspect and fetishizing focus on the less practical.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    And yet, the modern Apple that prizes good aesthetics and design in the service of the customer is what separates it from competing tech companies that focus on the practical and profitable.
    - 11y ago

karmel 11y ago

This is not good for STEM, and this is not good for women. If the attention and effort to encourage women, children, underrepresented minorities, etc. in STEM gets diverted into "STEAM," then there is a high likelihood that many groups will tout increased enrollment of women but funnel the women right into the A in STEAM. (Not necessarily on purpose, but for the same complicated reasons that women are underrepresented in STEM right now.) And then we're in the same place we started, but with less visibility into the problem.

Animats 11y ago
Hm. That's a good point. Try making it to the members of Congress behind the "Congressional STEM to STEAM Caucus".[1] . "Current members of the caucus include Reps. Jim Langevin (D-RI), Jared Polis (D-CO), David Cicilline (D-RI), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Gerald Connolly (D-VA), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Tim Ryan (D-OH), and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)." The Rhode Island School of Design seems to be the main force behind this. They're not really a design school, in the industrial design sense; they're a "fine arts" school. Teaching kids the rudiments of industrial design might be useful. It's not about self-expression; it's about what the user needs. [1] https://bonamici.house.gov/press-release/reps-bonamici-and-schock-announce-bipartisan-congressional-steam-caucus https://bonamici.house.gov/press-release/reps-bonamici-and-s...

outlace 11y ago

Does the U.S. have an art/design problem or shortage relative to other nations? (non-rhetorical question, please answer). It does seem clear that the U.S. is behind many other nations in STEM fields. Seems like promoting STEAM vs STEM would be somewhat mutually antagonistic.

zitterbewegung 11y ago
How exactly is the US behind other nation in STEM fields?
- outlace 11y ago
  I've seen various sources claim the US is behind other nations in STEM fields, particularly math, at the primary and secondary levels. e.g. https://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/TheSTEMCrisis/STEMEducationStatistics.aspx https://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/TheSTEMCrisis/STEMEducationSta...
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    These disparities disappear once you account for certain key demographic differences. In modern service-economy societies, average educational attainment is unimportant. What matters is how many positive-marginal-product people you have, and the US still produces them in spades.

aroman 11y ago

any relation to this (also a RISD project)? http://steamwith.us/ http://steamwith.us/ (edit: why am I being downvoted?)

jamesrom 11y ago

The reason why artists aren't getting tech jobs isn't because there's a letter missing from an acronym...

gluelogic 11y ago

I'm looking at their list of objectives, trying to understand how any of it will benefit the advancement of STEM. It doesn't. The objectives only seek to leverage the concrete validity of STEM as a stable platform for "arts & design," which are intuitive and incredibly debatable by nature.

moonchrome 11y ago
If anything I would assume their objective is the exact opposite - draw people to STEM trough something popular/approachable like Art. To be fair the site is very vague - I can't really see how this would be different from something like industrial design/architecture ?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I'm assuming - trying to plug themselves into the acronym to capitalize on the respect (and jobs) STEM has as "the real deal" as opposed to art fields, and framing that as initiative to bring more people into STEM. It's cynical, I know, but I've heard enough art/design people saying "art and design is important too!" and completely missing the point. No one is saying design or art is not important to humans. It's just STEM fields are different because they deal head-on with objective, observable reality as opposed to incredibly complex internal life of humans.
Natsu 11y ago
I don't see what good this would do. Art & design are certainly valuable for making a good product, but the fields are not at all alike. There is an objective, correct answer to questions in science to the point where disagreement is simply wrong. I don't think there is an objectively best art or anything like that. So the studies are nothing alike, even if art and design can provide real value to technical projects.
zachrose 11y ago
If you're the kind of person who "likes to make things" and is going to college, you basically have two options: art or engineering. As a teenager I was totally turned off by engineering. It seemed like a bunch of dudes who wanted to discover the best way to make something, but with a total disinterest in why that thing should be made. The art (and design) people seemed to get it. They were intensely curious about the bigger idea, and wanted their output to connect to some visceral and/or moral and/or political outcome. So I wound up in an art program. I learned how to make aesthetically satisfying objects and was exposed to a ton of cool things that have happened in art history. Later on when I got into software, I came to it with a mentality of wanting to make "things" that were in some way complete and satisfying. That turned out to be enough of a motivation to learn programming, and it turns out the demand for software is insatiable regardless of your background or skill level. So if I were to talk to someone who was going into school, I would tell that person to do what excites them, and suggest that STEM doesn't really deserve to have a monopoly on creation.

strictnein 11y ago

> "K–20 education" I've never heard 8 years of college referred to like that. It's... strange.

noobermin 11y ago
Undergrad + PhD? :/

gaius 11y ago

This is clearly some sort of spoof. Or someone has completely missed the point of STEM, y'know, hard stuff where there are right and wrong answers...

j2kun 11y ago

There is an implicit assumption that STEM does not have any artistic/design aspects to it. I imagine people who claim this have never had a long conversation with a mathematician about what their job is actually like.

Jach 11y ago

STEM is already too much about a gigantic T (apps! apps everywhere!) at the expense of S, E, and M. A would be even bigger. This is nothing but entryism.

eru 11y ago
What's entryism?
- Jach 11y ago
  Essentially the same point made here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572766 Being associated with STEM is lucrative (money, respect, ability to effect change) and STEM explicitly leaves out the more numerous artists, lawyers, political theorists, english literaturers, gender studiers, etc. that are part of college-as-is. The benefits of STEM association are enough incentive for any groups within those left out to try and get themselves in and have a share. Hence, the Rhode Island School of Design (which ought to have no business in STEM: http://www.risd.edu/academics/ http://www.risd.edu/academics/) has been trying to steer things. Hey, at least if they win, there will be no gender representation problems in STEAM...

Apocryphon 11y ago

In Silicon Valley and on communities such as HN, when people talk about STEM, they seem to usually focus on CS/EE. Given that there doesn't seem to be as much focus here on, say, hydraulic engineering, or medicine, as there is focus on what is necessary to create tech startups, I'm surprised to see that people are objecting to Art. Doesn't this industry have a more pressing need for UI/UX designers, HCI specialists, web designers, and video game music composers, rather than astronomers or zoologists?

jhpaul 11y ago

This program misses the point by presenting a very narrow scope. Adding the Arts to STEM is about much more than just "Art + Design" (though that is a piece). It's an important topic of discussion and should be priority in education. Every child in America should leave school with a basic understanding of arts and culture - some knowledge of music, visual arts, literature, history. Societal progress has consistently been tied to the greater appreciation of humanity found in these pursuits. Just as any musician or artist should have the opportunity to understand and appreciate the basic concepts of physics or computer science, so too should the scientist know sculpture. Creative thought sustains critical thinking, and many of the borders between them overlap. If we truly wish to build our future nation to be our best, we must not discount the arts as a core pillar of any healthy society, and one worth supporting in any way possible.