It seems like not a day goes by that I don’t see an article published in all fields promoting the need for our education system to focus on Stem – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Teaching critical thinking is for sure something we must do and hopefully a good science and engineering education will do that.
However, I truly believe we need to forget STEM and concentrate on STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math.
I can’t enumerate the number of technical graduates I have met in my long career who have a very narrow field of interests, mostly if not exclusively technology. Place them into a social setting and if the conversation doesn’t come around to technology they soon become silent. What I have found is that the most creative of technologists I have met are well rounded people with broad interests, studying the liberal arts not only makes them interesting people to be around it appears to boost their creativity in their highly technical fields.
So, let’s try to drop that extra letter “A” into STEM and go full STEAM ahead with the next generation of creative technologists.
Keep soaring … Sid.