If you’re a parent with children in K-12 education, you have likely been STEMed to death in recent years. In primary and secondary education, we are bombarded by STEM this and STEM that. As I’m sure you know by now, STEM is a hot topic these days in the ongoing debate about how to best educate America’s children to prepare them for future careers and maintain its preeminence in the global economic food chain. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Some education reformers believe that these four disciplines are taking a hit in our education system and explain the decline in achievement test scores among U.S. students compared to their peers worldwide. Given these concerns, it would seem perfectly reasonable that these four subjects should be a primary focus of education reform in America.
Those four letters also strike fear in the hearts of parents. Fear that their children will get left off the STEM train and won’t be able to get on at a later stop. Fear that their children will move back in with them after college. Fear that their children will not be able to find a decent career and be capable of supporting themselves as adults. Fear that their children will not be the incredible successes that our distorted achievement culture tells parents that their children must become!
This fear drives parents to make choices that seem to me to be truly irrational and downright unhealthy for their children’s long-term personal and professional development. Math camps, coding classes, dropping physical education from the school day, and reducing the hours for other “impractical” subjects from school curricula are symptoms of our educational system’s worshipping at the altar of STEM.
STEM is also a racket sold to us by Big STEM (led primarily by Big Tech) who feed this fear to make an easy buck (or rather billions of them). Convince parents, educators, school boards, and the state and federal Departments of Education that every child must have a tablet or laptop (and all of the online STEM programs that accompany them) starting in kindergarten or they will be left hopelessly behind and there are some serious ‘Benjamins” to be made.
Of course, there is little evidence that early STEM education will help young people be better prepared for career success as adults or improve America’s educational standing in the world. In fact, a recent article published in The New York Times written by an economist presents research that debunks the notion that college graduates who majored in STEM have a long-term income advantage over those graduates who majored in liberal arts.
In sum, the findings of several surveys found that STEM graduates (computer science and engineering, to be precise) do have an income advantage early in their careers due to the high-demand for those skills in our current tech-driven economy. However, over time, that advantage fades and liberal arts majors catch up by age 40. This shift occurs for two reasons. One, the technical skills that are so desired now become outdated and the new skills that emerge 20 years into a tech career are better suited for younger people whose tech skills are up-to-date and just acquired in school. In turn, the “older” workers (40 really isn’t very old at all!) must be constantly retrained to keep up with the steady flow of advances that are constantly occurring in technology.
Two, liberal arts graduates don’t have specific skill sets that result immediately in well-paying jobs. Instead, they receive what are commonly referred to as “soft skills” such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, interpersonal skills, time management, problem solving, work ethic, and decision making that can be applied to any career path and become more important than specific skill sets later in a career trajectory. I’m not suggesting that STEM graduates are devoid of soft skills, but, let’s be realistic, they are often not held in the highest regard among the STEM community. Also, those who major in liberal arts often continue their educations in a wide range of graduate tracks including business, law, economics, and social sciences (as do some STEM graduates), which lead to careers that don’t necessarily produce an immediate financial windfall, but can be lucrative and stable in the long run. Overall, the key takeaway from this article is that an excessive focus on STEM doesn’t have “legs” and that the soft skills are actually more important than the hard skills of STEM to long-term professional success.
This preoccupation with STEM is causing other essential areas of education to suffer at a net cost to the next generations of young people and to our country as a whole. STEM strikes me as offering too narrow a focus to produce well-rounded people, provide opportunities for lasting career advancement, a truly well-educated and balanced citizenry, and engaged members and vital contributors to all parts of our society. It also doesn’t offer enough to our students for the U.S. to continue to call itself a civilized culture. Though STEM are essential ingredients to many aspects of our society, there are other equally important elements that should be included in the education mix.
The powerful message that parents and educators should take away from this article is that, though STEM has real value for young people (particularly if they have a passion and aptitude for it), it isn’t the only path to a successful and fulfilling career. So, in the spirit of offering parents a balanced perspective on where they should devote their efforts in their children’s overall development and educational pursuits, I would recommend that we broaden our focus onto STAMPER (policy wonks do love their cute acronyms!) which stands for Science, Technology, Arts, Mathematics, Physical, Emotions, and Reason. Let me explain each of these.
I keep Science, Technology, and Mathematics intact because they are inarguably essential components of the equation in which “quality education and much more” lies to the right of the equal sign. But I left out Engineering for several reasons. First, because engineering is the practical offspring of science, technology, and mathematics, placing it along side them seems premature. Second, the specialized and applied nature of engineering appears better suited for college and graduate school programs which is where engineering now resides. It would seem that a comprehensive orientation toward science, technology, and mathematics in elementary and secondary schools would set the stage for excellence in engineering in post-secondary-school education for those who have an interest.
Arts, which doesn’t get the respect it deserves (to be called “artsy” is generally not considered a compliment) is a no-brainer to me because of its perhaps not-so-obvious impact on scientific, technological, and mathematical thinking. New ideas and innovations, though sowed in the firmament of hard knowledge, blossom from the more ethereal creative flights of fancy that the arts encourages. Inventive thinking can not be “taught” in the traditional sense of the word, but it can be experienced and nurtured through the many forms of artistic expression.
I add Physical because our health and well-being have become the rejected stepchild of education despite its clear importance to daily functioning, individual achievement, and societal vitality. At a time when childhood obesity is an epidemic, many schools have dropped physical education classes, ended recess, and continue to offer a cornucopia of junk food in cafeterias and vending machines, all in the name of budget cutting. These decisions are short sighted and counterproductive for both students and our society as a whole because, as the saying goes, without our health, we’ve got nothing.
I’ve added Emotions for the simple reason that there is no more important contributor to the success and happiness of individuals, the quality of relationships, and the functioning of a society than the healthy understanding, awareness, and expression of the wide range of emotions that we all experience. Yet, despite their obvious importance, where do young people learn about emotions? From their parents? That is a scary thought given the apparent emotional capabilities of the current generation of parents. From popular culture? Another scary thought when you consider the unhealthy emotional role models portrayed on television, film, music, sports, and on social media. As I travel the U.S. speaking at schools, I am amazed at how few have any sort of curriculum that systematically educates students on how to master their emotional lives.
Finally, when I talk about Reason, I mean the ability to think logically and cogently, and to engage in thoughtful interpretation, analysis, deliberation, and decision making. In other words, to develop conclusions and courses of action that are grounded in facts and well-crafted thinking. Reason allows people to minimize the pitfalls caused by the cognitive biases that researchers have demonstrated govern so much of our thinking. Given that how we perceive, interpret, and evaluate information dictates just about everything we think, feel, and do in lives, it seems incumbent on our educational system to help students harness their reason to make better life choices.
It just occurred to me that, to create a truly complete education package, I should probably add an H to the acronym for Humanities. Or how about a C for Civics? But then I would be stuck with S.T.A.M.P.H.E.R. or S.H.A.M.P.T.E.R or S.C.A.M.P.T.E.R. or, well, you get the point. And what kind of credible education advocate would I be with such nonsense acronyms!
