STEM vs. STEAM

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

I'm personally of the opinion that adding Art to STEM waters things down*. At some point it makes sense to draw the line on the number of topics included or else there is just too much. If you asked people which of the following is not like the other, I'm pretty confident Art would be the most popular choice.

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*This doesn't mean I don't think there is value in the arts. I absolutely do.

I tend to agree. Honestly I've long been of the opinion that adding Arts to STEM was more of a funding ploy than anything, seeing how it always seems like funding is being cut for Art programs, but more funding is given to sports and more recently STEM. By throwing that "A" in the middle, it likely opens up a LOT more funding opportunities to Art programs than they would otherwise have.

At some point I think you loose focus on the objective, after all, if we're going to include Arts, why not English (or whatever language)? After all, engineers write a lot of notes and other documents when working on a project. Why not throw in Social Sciences too, since technology has such a huge impact on society? Where does it stop? Eventually if you continue down this road, the acronym (STEM) just turns into a synonym for "School".