Focus on STEM education only, good or bad?

[YAK'ker]

I am a proponent of a well-rounded education, STEM, LA, everything. What I don't like about the current direction of education in the US is that if it can't be applied directly to standardized testing, it's going to get marginalized.

That translates to most of our industrial arts, drafting, art, and music being cut from funding in public schools. It doesn't matter that these all contribute towards raising IQ's, vocational readiness, relevancy, or creative problem solving skills. Our budgets are being slashed nationwide and we have become entirely too focused on written and computerized skill assessment.

Quite a few FIRST robotics teams have been kicked out of their schools, simply because their admins don't see their value. It's important for all of us to advocate on all levels to retain and restore hands-on learning experiences, even if they aren't applicable to the Common Core standards. If anyone is interested in helping make a petition to the US Dept of Education and Congress advocating for FIRST I will help write and circulate it.

[brrian27]

I think FIRST is the perfect example of STEM education done right. In my experience during high school, FRC obviously taught me a lot about engineering and technology. I've always been interested in engineering, and FRC reinforced that. But beyond that, FRC got me hooked on business and other aspects of the competition. Now, as a college freshman, I am trying to somehow balance STEM and other interests, but finding it more difficult. But, my university does a pretty good job actually at mixing entrepreneurship and engineering.

Education needs to be less compartmentalized. As others have said, STEM majors should learn business, literature, philosophy, etc. and vice versa. I would love to see more combined majors, such as a business/engineering combo, but I don't know if that is practical or useful.

In the end, we need to be educated in more than STEM. We should be building robots, not becoming one.

[cxcad]

How is this modified STEM education different than a liberal arts education? It seems that the more we extend the acronym, the closer we come to the liberal arts ideal. There's nothing wrong with that as I personally think that a liberal arts education with a strong technical focus is great for aspiring engineers and scientists.