[Lil' Lavery]

What really separates "STEAM" from a "general education?" STEM has a clear focus on a set of subjects and career fields. I feel broadening that to STEAM causes the focus to become blurred and poorly defined. "The arts" are already a very broad set of subjects and interpretations, as this thread has pointed out repeatedly. When you add that whole basket into the mix, STEAM very quickly starts to resemble almost every topic covered by general education.

I chose to think of my 10th grade schedule. I don't remember what I had each period of the day, but these were the 7 classes I took in 10th grade:
Algebra II
Latin II
P.E./Driver's Ed
Chemistry
World History
English Literature
Band

STEM has a pretty clear focus on only two of those classes (Algebra and Chemistry). The only topic clearly outside the focus of STEAM would be my physical education/driver's ed class. History and Latin are a bit tenuous depending on your interpretation of "the arts" as it relates to STEAM, but Universities frequently have one of both of those subjects covered by Bachelor of the Arts degrees. Once the focus expands this much beyond the relatively tightly bound STEM target, the mission and endgame of a STEAM program becomes very hard to identify. In particular, I echo the concerns of those who have brought up points regarding funding and donations to STEAM vs STEM. At that point, you're basically funding education as a whole. By no means is education funding a bad thing, but if our focus is simply on education rather than targeted topics, why use the STEAM acronym at all?

I have zero issue with students learning and embracing "A" subjects in a STEM program. In fact, I've openly argued that there's less separation than we culturally make out between STEM and the arts. For a long time, Dean rallied hard against the celebrity given to rock stars and athletes (up until the point where Dean started inviting a rock star to be a chief spokesman for FIRST). I somewhat rejected that claim, arguing instead that STEM achievements are intrinsic to the mechanisms that allowed rock stars to become rock stars (sound engineering, for example). Areas like that are where I see we can build better bridges between "the arts" and "STEM," demonstrating how the two areas are interlinked and dependent on one another. Showing the importance of STEM fields within the arts is a powerful method of shifting the culture to appreciate science and technology (aka FIRST's goal). But that should be done within the well defined scope of STEM. There's a clear and well defined focus to STEM, and while showing how that focus can be applied outside of core areas is critical, it doesn't mean that other core areas have to be added.