Wait what?

[londo]

Ok, so anyone who's looked at education in the last decade knows what "STEM" is.

But now they've added an A. Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.

...isn't that, you know, basically... all human knowledge? Don't we traditionally just call that "education"?

Comments

[ladymondegreen]

STEAM. It's what's for dinner.

[sandrylene]

I'm now vaguely sad they haven't rebooted it as "MEATS." :P

[londo]

Better than Meatloaf again.

[alexx_kay]

"they" who?

[londo]

The city of Cambridge, MA, if no one else. I've seen it a bunch of times in the last week and it's starting to feel like the "all lives matter" of science education.

[alexx_kay]

I'm gonna share that comparison. It seems extremely apt.

[42itous]

I saw it for the first time (on the Arlington Parents' List) literally three minutes before I saw your post here. At first I thought it was a typo.

I think it means "the kind of learning that will keep America a world superpower in generations to come" as opposed to "boring, dry textbook-to-classroom 'education'."

[siderea]

Depends on what they mean by "arts". If they mean, you know, art, that's an interesting way to marginalize literature, rhetoric, languages, history, and critical cultural studies. Also, medicine. But if they mean "arts" as in the "seven liberal", then... yeah.

[emp42ress]

Usually when I see that, it's specifically about integrating the arts with the science curriculum: writing about science, thinking about how to visually display things well, dealing with the intersection of math and music, chemistry and cooking.

[londo]

Oooh. That is much less bullshit-flavored than I feared.

[dkapell]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of STEAM over STEM for engaging kids with science, particularly girls who are constantly told that engineering is for boys, because you can combine the hard science stuff with art, and have a wider audience. The classic example I use is Technical Theatre, which has always been a mix of STEM (construction, lighting, sound equipment, etc) with art (all the various design parts).

STEAM is specifically the mixture of arts and science, and is the kind of hacking I love, i.e. making creative props using art techniques (leather and wood working, etc) with custom-designed electronics.