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Arts are important in their own right, but STEM is about the numerate disciplines - and they include creativity as an intrinsic part. If you're going to add Art

Arts are important in their own right, but STEM is about the numerate disciplines - and they include creativity as an intrinsic part. If you're going to add Arts to STEM, why not Humanities? At what point do you just get to a broad and balanced curriculum?

jdietrich 9y ago
I'm reminded of the Sesame Street song "one of these things is not like the others...". STEM makes sense as an interconnected cluster of highly demanding but economically valuable disciplines. The arts might be equally important on a personal and social level, but they don't fit the category. You can reasonably tell a young person "study a STEM subject and you'll probably get a good job". You can reasonably ask "why are there so few women in STEM?". You can reasonably ask "why do so many students start high school without the maths skills needed for STEM?". You can reasonably say "arts and humanities students are being used to unfairly subsidise STEM students, because STEM degrees have the same tuition fees but cost much more to teach". Add arts to the category and it suddenly becomes a much less useful term. I understand why arts educators want parity with STEM subjects, I understand why they want a piece of the hype and the funding that goes with it, but I think that the term STEAM might have a detrimental effect by creating a meaninglessly broad category.
- eesmith 9y ago
  While I don't think STEM makes sense, precisely because it isn't "an interconnected cluster of highly demanding but economically valuable disciplines." Eg, we don't see politicians who want more people in STEM calling out for more people to go into anthropology, archeology, marine biology, horticulture, or linguistics. The US government also seems to de-emphasize an education in ecology or climatology, compared to those fields like computer science which are more economically valuable for US companies.
aoki 9y ago
i think it's hard to get kids into these topics (beyond shallow youtube factoid videos) at an age when they're mostly into fun. for the STE part of STEM, you can engage more of them with "maker"-type projects aimed at creative enjoyment rather than at strict utility. i would find it hard to get #1 Son to do physics experiments for fun on his own, but he's pretty happy to learn about pendulums and gears using tinker crates [0]. somehow it's more interesting when the gears are making a bird mobile flap its wings. [0] https://www.kiwico.com/tinker https://www.kiwico.com/tinker

jdietrich 9y ago

I'm reminded of the Sesame Street song "one of these things is not like the others...". STEM makes sense as an interconnected cluster of highly demanding but economically valuable disciplines. The arts might be equally important on a personal and social level, but they don't fit the category. You can reasonably tell a young person "study a STEM subject and you'll probably get a good job". You can reasonably ask "why are there so few women in STEM?". You can reasonably ask "why do so many students start high school without the maths skills needed for STEM?". You can reasonably say "arts and humanities students are being used to unfairly subsidise STEM students, because STEM degrees have the same tuition fees but cost much more to teach". Add arts to the category and it suddenly becomes a much less useful term. I understand why arts educators want parity with STEM subjects, I understand why they want a piece of the hype and the funding that goes with it, but I think that the term STEAM might have a detrimental effect by creating a meaninglessly broad category.

eesmith 9y ago
While I don't think STEM makes sense, precisely because it isn't "an interconnected cluster of highly demanding but economically valuable disciplines." Eg, we don't see politicians who want more people in STEM calling out for more people to go into anthropology, archeology, marine biology, horticulture, or linguistics. The US government also seems to de-emphasize an education in ecology or climatology, compared to those fields like computer science which are more economically valuable for US companies.

aoki 9y ago

i think it's hard to get kids into these topics (beyond shallow youtube factoid videos) at an age when they're mostly into fun. for the STE part of STEM, you can engage more of them with "maker"-type projects aimed at creative enjoyment rather than at strict utility. i would find it hard to get #1 Son to do physics experiments for fun on his own, but he's pretty happy to learn about pendulums and gears using tinker crates [0]. somehow it's more interesting when the gears are making a bird mobile flap its wings. [0] https://www.kiwico.com/tinker https://www.kiwico.com/tinker