STEM vs. STEAM

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Calling it like I see it here; lots of people in STEM fields don't have respect for the arts, and that's where a lot of the pushback on this change is. Lots of STEM majors in college look down on art majors as being unemployable or unrealistic, and feel their majors are superior to theirs. This extends into the professional world as well. I think fighting this stigma that devalues art is important.

Even if it's the case that a lot of people in STEM do not respect the arts, that alone doesn't really provide any good justification for adding "art" to the acronym.

When we speak of STEM education, we are speaking of a group of things that are similar enough that they share a large number of common features and problems, and thus it is fruitful to discuss them as a single unit. Value judgments aside, "art" simply does not conceptually fit with the rest.

If you want to have a discussion about the devaluation of art in STEM fields, then have that discussion - but don't try to insert that discussion into every discussion of STEM, which is the only real end I see of using the "STEAM" acronym.

Edit: This may be a bit more contentious, but some of the advocacy for using "STEAM" instead of "STEM" also strikes me as carrying vague connotations of postmodernism, which I do not like one bit.