7 ms·

I have literally been saying just this for years when someone says "STEAM". At that point, it is just school again. I agree that History, Art, Music, Literatur

I have literally been saying just this for years when someone says "STEAM". At that point, it is just school again. I agree that History, Art, Music, Literature, Philosophy...etc are important and can't imagine a world without them, but the whole point behind STEM was to put a focus on Math and Science because those help us keep our economic edge and solve the world's upcoming problems on the technical side. Providing some after school programs to cover programming, computers (real computing principles and not just how to use Microsoft products and type), robotics, and additional math is good and gives our children a leg up. 1-hour of Math a day might not be enough.

damnyou 7y ago
It turns out that those solutions STEM folks have to technical problems have created a whole host of social problems. The pendulum needs to swing the other way.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  There are still grave social injustices in the world, but do you think the US (for example) is worse off than in the 1850's or 1940's? What would your ideal curriculum be?
- corodra 7y ago
  Bureaucrats are not "STEM folks". Bureaucrats make education policy. STEM folks write the guidelines of how it should have been done, then the bureaucrats say "You know what this needs? The critical thinking skills that only liberal arts can provide!" Then everything is just as fucked as before.
claudiawerner 7y ago
Two points: it seems a little grotesque to be focusing on creating people trained in STEM solely for the purpose of keeping an "economic edge", as if they were troops that we need to keep us safe, and university students are some kind of army we need to train, and secondly more and more ethical and cultural issues due to what STEM students go on to create have come to light recently, and training in critical thinking, philosophy and even art may help with that - though in a way that also seems wrong-headed: to encourage people to pick humanities subjects to help the people who picked STEM subjects not be unethical. It's Kafkaesque.
- wbl 7y ago
  The idea that US high schools provide a liberal arts education when colleges increasing find themselves unwilling or unable to is a fantasy. The STEM focus was born out of the inadequate secondary education. Those same inadequacies exist in liberal arts education.
- Viliam1234 7y ago
  Is there any evidence that training people in critical thinking at school actually improves their critical thinking? Also, the same question about ethics.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Critical thinking, at least in my country, isn't taught widely at school. But my proposal wouldn't be to introduce a mandatory 'critical thinking' class, it would be to reform the education system to be built on critical thinking in every facet, whether it be in STEM, philosophy or otherwise. I too doubt the effectiveness of a class that explicitly teaches critical thinking, just as I doubt the effectiveness of ethics seminars at big companies.
  - kiba 7y ago
    Do we actually have a class called "critical thinking"?
- corodra 7y ago
  I mean, you're not wrong. That's the whole point behind a specialized workforce. The whole point to modern society is individuals focus on something and do it, really, really well. We then suffer doing other stuff competently. Other than the occasional hobby gardener, how many tech engineers know how to maintain a vegetable garden? I've asked this to a few people before. They just imagine it's as simple as throwing seeds in the ground, making sure there's water and waiting. Growing food on a decent scale, like feeding just yourself, takes a lot more. Knowing how and when to fertilize soil. How much sunlight. How much water. Seasonal timing for maximum yield. Recognizing disease and ailments. And it goes on. But we're a society where not everyone has to farm. That's both good and bad. Same goes with building homes, bridges, maintaining a water supply, electricity, preserving food, curing disease, etc. But the drawback to that system, it's easier to wipe out a small population and start to handicap that society. Thus, you do have a "type of army" of structural engineers that build and help maintain bridges. If they're gone, there are problems. I do have one... discussion point(?) I'd like to bring up. I constantly see and hear that liberal arts and what not is supposed to teach critical thinking. How does it do so more than engineering? Engineering especially forces you not to just think of the immediate solution, but long term both in terms of wear/tear, environment factors, attack vectors and future proofing against obsolescence. Yet, I'm told, rather often by other people that a liberal arts major can do this better than an engineer. Look, I'm a sub-par engineer and programmer. I say this often and will never hide it. But I've yet to meet someone with a liberal arts or literary degree that can do analysis and solution strategies on complex, real world problems anywhere close to me. Sure, I get hung up on theoretical problems. Really badly too. But when it comes to the real world, I've never met a non-engineer who can step forward on a, again, real world problem.

damnyou 7y ago

It turns out that those solutions STEM folks have to technical problems have created a whole host of social problems. The pendulum needs to swing the other way.

6thaccount2 7y ago
There are still grave social injustices in the world, but do you think the US (for example) is worse off than in the 1850's or 1940's? What would your ideal curriculum be?
corodra 7y ago
Bureaucrats are not "STEM folks". Bureaucrats make education policy. STEM folks write the guidelines of how it should have been done, then the bureaucrats say "You know what this needs? The critical thinking skills that only liberal arts can provide!" Then everything is just as fucked as before.

claudiawerner 7y ago

Two points: it seems a little grotesque to be focusing on creating people trained in STEM solely for the purpose of keeping an "economic edge", as if they were troops that we need to keep us safe, and university students are some kind of army we need to train, and secondly more and more ethical and cultural issues due to what STEM students go on to create have come to light recently, and training in critical thinking, philosophy and even art may help with that - though in a way that also seems wrong-headed: to encourage people to pick humanities subjects to help the people who picked STEM subjects not be unethical. It's Kafkaesque.

wbl 7y ago
The idea that US high schools provide a liberal arts education when colleges increasing find themselves unwilling or unable to is a fantasy. The STEM focus was born out of the inadequate secondary education. Those same inadequacies exist in liberal arts education.
Viliam1234 7y ago
Is there any evidence that training people in critical thinking at school actually improves their critical thinking? Also, the same question about ethics.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Critical thinking, at least in my country, isn't taught widely at school. But my proposal wouldn't be to introduce a mandatory 'critical thinking' class, it would be to reform the education system to be built on critical thinking in every facet, whether it be in STEM, philosophy or otherwise. I too doubt the effectiveness of a class that explicitly teaches critical thinking, just as I doubt the effectiveness of ethics seminars at big companies.
- kiba 7y ago
  Do we actually have a class called "critical thinking"?
corodra 7y ago
I mean, you're not wrong. That's the whole point behind a specialized workforce. The whole point to modern society is individuals focus on something and do it, really, really well. We then suffer doing other stuff competently. Other than the occasional hobby gardener, how many tech engineers know how to maintain a vegetable garden? I've asked this to a few people before. They just imagine it's as simple as throwing seeds in the ground, making sure there's water and waiting. Growing food on a decent scale, like feeding just yourself, takes a lot more. Knowing how and when to fertilize soil. How much sunlight. How much water. Seasonal timing for maximum yield. Recognizing disease and ailments. And it goes on. But we're a society where not everyone has to farm. That's both good and bad. Same goes with building homes, bridges, maintaining a water supply, electricity, preserving food, curing disease, etc. But the drawback to that system, it's easier to wipe out a small population and start to handicap that society. Thus, you do have a "type of army" of structural engineers that build and help maintain bridges. If they're gone, there are problems. I do have one... discussion point(?) I'd like to bring up. I constantly see and hear that liberal arts and what not is supposed to teach critical thinking. How does it do so more than engineering? Engineering especially forces you not to just think of the immediate solution, but long term both in terms of wear/tear, environment factors, attack vectors and future proofing against obsolescence. Yet, I'm told, rather often by other people that a liberal arts major can do this better than an engineer. Look, I'm a sub-par engineer and programmer. I say this often and will never hide it. But I've yet to meet someone with a liberal arts or literary degree that can do analysis and solution strategies on complex, real world problems anywhere close to me. Sure, I get hung up on theoretical problems. Really badly too. But when it comes to the real world, I've never met a non-engineer who can step forward on a, again, real world problem.