STEM vs. STEAM

[Hgree56]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

I think the push to change STEM to STEAM is a reminder to us. Don't cut out the arts in an attempt to expand STEM education. All to often art and phys ed are the first on the cutting block when money gets tight.

I would argue that point in the schools around me. In the past few years, two local high schools had a decrease in funding for the STEM subjects and have had multiple teachers let go from their positions in these fields. However, the Art and Music departments have grown.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Hgree56

I would argue that point in the schools around me. In the past few years, two local high schools had a decrease in funding for the STEM subjects and have had multiple teachers let go from their positions in these fields. However, the Art and Music departments have grown.

This is the opposite of the general trend across the country, and all of my personal experience on the subject.

[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.

...

*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".

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

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".

I think there's a pretty clear division there, even though skills are representative across disciplines. To me, STEAM is about creation of discrete objects and ideas. In science and math, it's creation of new knowledge, laws, and theories that describe our observed experiences in the world. Technology and engineering are about creation in a more obvious way - creating the gizmos and gadgets that run modern life. Art is about creation of media (in all of its forms) that enriches the human experience.

English, Social Studies, etc. are about communication. English is learning the standard methods of communication across all that speak and read the language. Social Studies are "applied communication" in the way engineering is "applied science" - they are communicating ideas, histories, abstract concepts, and observations about the social world we live in and how humans interact with each other (see sociology, history, etc).

Maybe I'm inventing this distinction, it really is more of a gray line than anything else, but I really think art has a place in STEM, and that I'm a better STEM person for including art in my education.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I think there's a pretty clear division there, even though skills are representative across disciplines. To me, STEAM is about creation of discrete objects and ideas.

How does this definition include both music and mathematics but exclude literary criticism (you pretty clearly create distinct "ideas" in the latter)?

If it does not - why on earth must we also advocate for literary criticism whenever we mean to advocate for STEM?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

How does this definition include both music and mathematics but exclude literary criticism (you pretty clearly create distinct "ideas" in the latter)?

If it does not - why on earth must we also advocate for literary criticism whenever we mean to advocate for STEM?

I don't think literature isn't art, per se, but that in an academic context, the arts refers to things like music, performance art, sculpture, drawing, architecture, etc. If we are going for A meaning "everything that is an art", I think the acronym would just have one letter and cover almost all human output.

I think the fundamental difference between you and I on this issue here is that I want to advocate for STEAM, and you want to advocate for STEM. I value the arts as part of the umbrella and you don't. All of your arguments are starting from the premise that there's STEM, and we're jamming art into it, and I'm starting from the premise that STEAM is the more natural choice and that STEM forced the arts out in order to make itself more palatable to certain benefactors.

I'm going to try and cut back my posts on this thread; I don't mean to be such a force in this discussion. I just feel pretty strongly about it.

[JesseK]

In my experience, strictly-technical STEM people generally care more about the product and less about the people using it. Arts people are the exact opposite: they empathize with the person and see the product as a means to an end. It is a metaphorical marriage, or symbiotic relationship. Whether we like it or not, one will not exist without the other at a holistic level.

Personally, I think the name STEAMWORKS is kind of fun. It gives a nod to Disney's future (more technically-driven art-minded people) and also to their biggest rival in animation.

[jweston]

For a long time, I thought the A in STEAM stood for "and", as in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Silly me.

To explain my POV, I need to preface this with some definitions. There may be people who disagree with how I define these words but it's hard to have a conversation without a common understanding.

Science is the practice of organizing a system of verifiable facts through observation and repetition.

Technology is the collection of skills and processes derived from scientific knowledge.

Engineering is the application of scientific knowledge to intentionally effect an outcome typically through machine or structure.

Math is really just a subset of science, albeit a very abstract one (props to maddog175 for already saying this).

Art is expression meant to tap into human emotion. Emotion happens in the observer's head. That is the antithesis of science. It seems incongruous to me to include it. That doesn't mean it's unimportant, but it is dissimilar to the others.

Human beings are complex creatures. Each of us is an emotional being. We all have some art that speaks to us. But we also all have the capacity to observe and draw rational conclusions. One is not inherently more important than the other but they are not the same thing.

The question we should be asking is not whether it should be STEM vs STEAM but what is the mission of FIRST? If it's to produce well-rounded individuals through robotics, go for STEAM. If it's to get more people to learn, love, and live science and its related disciplines, go for STEM.

[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.

[mathking]

Originally Posted by jweston

The question we should be asking is not whether it should be STEM vs STEAM but what is the mission of FIRST? If it's to produce well-rounded individuals through robotics, go for STEAM. If it's to get more people to learn, love, and live science and its related disciplines, go for STEM.

Not sure I buy this distinction is warranted. It seems like you wrote a definition of art in order to get this conclusion but even so, how does this conclusion necessarily follow?

There are plenty of fields that are clearly in the STEM world, such as architecture, that are also clearly in the world of art. If some fields in STEM involve art, how can we say it is not a part of STEM?

As I said in an earlier post, I have a friend who is an engineer for an auto company. She has been paid to take art and design classes precisely because the aesthetics has become a very important part of her job. When her group is hiring they have interview question designed to elicit the interviewees ideas about the place of art in the design process, because that is important to them.

My own view is that there are some fundamental differences between art and science. Nonetheless, there is a growing body of research showing the importance of arts education in developing creativity. Note, the same research shows the positive role that good STEM programs also play in that. The key to developing creativity seems to be giving kids lots of problems in which at least some of the components are open-ended and require them to make their own judgements.

I am actually reminded of the debate in academic circles back in the 70s and 80s about watering down or fundamentally altering physics, geology, economics, biology, etc... when interdisciplinary computational science started to become a big thing.

I actually agree with you Sean, in that my big worry with STEAM is that it becomes something that isn't really about STEM. But as an educator I have the same feeling about many STEM programs. "Hey we are going to have kids use computers for things?" STEM!!! But that really comes down to the implementation of a program and not what we call it or include. Many, many supposedly STEM curriculums are really math class with a little bit of Excel and SketchUp in which students never actually design, build and test anything.

As an example, I have a friend who is a STEM teacher, and her sister is an art teacher in the same school. They do some lessons together. For example they have a lesson where the kids design a vase in Inventor and then make it on a pottery wheel. The kids in the STEM class are pushed to think about why they make the design the way they did. They answer questions like why did they choose a particular shape? They are asked to think about which designs they think are the best. The art kids are learning how the design software works. One of the most interesting parts of this lesson (I have observed it a couple of times) is when the kids are rendering the designs and trying out different colors and design patterns. The discussions that are generated are very interesting. It is also interesting to me to the art students learning about the technological tools that are becoming more and more important in the world of actual working artists. I have also observed a lesson on a day when the students are learning about two point perspective in art. This generated some fantastic STEM discussion about scale, visual perception and the best ways to represent complicated three dimensional objects.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by mathking

Not sure I buy this distinction is warranted. It seems like you wrote a definition of art in order to get this conclusion but even so, how does this conclusion necessarily follow?

It was meant to be a curation of my train of thought but maybe you have a point. I welcome alternate meanings for "(The) Art(s)" to compare.

I didn't consider the end of my post to be so much of a conclusion as an observation. Words matter. The choice of STEAM vs STEM reflects on priorties: developing well-rounded individuals by incorporating art vs spotlighting science. They're both important but you can only have one highest priority.

Originally Posted by mathking

There are plenty of fields that are clearly in the STEM world, such as architecture, that are also clearly in the world of art. If some fields in STEM involve art, how can we say it is not a part of STEM?

Most fields are a little bit of both science and art, even the ones at the extremes. Both art and science are part of the human experience. Using the term STEM over STEAM is not meant to bannish art. It's meant to highlight science.

Your story about your engineer friend at the auto company and your observation about the benefits of engaging in artistic thinking support what I call "developing well-rounded individuals." That is, enhancing all modes of thinking by diversifying the kinds of thinking in which one engages. You can argue that by promoting well-rounded thinking, one is supporting scientific engagement since well-rounded thinking benefits all forms of thinking. One could also argue, as others here have done, that it also dilutes the focus on science. Taken to an extreme, we wouldn't be talking about science anymore. It would just be called learning and doing.

I'm not asking which one is important: spotlighting science vs developing well-rounded individuals. They're both important. I'm not trying to advocate one over the other. I'm wondering which one FIRST considers its highest priority.

[bduddy]

There are two core issues:

-Whether art is important (to teach in schools, to have in FIRST, etc.)

-Whether art should be lumped into STEM (because it's similar, to get funding, ???)

The first issue is, of course, much more important than the second. That doesn't mean it's the same issue, or that it's even particularly relevant.

[gblake]

Question: How many possible reasons are there for someone to convert the acronym "STEM, into the acronym "STEAM".
Answer: About a zillion.

Question: Why did FIRST use the term STEAMWORKS in their teaser about the upcoming on-the-field competition season?
Answer: FIRST HQ knows, but I don't think they have shared their reason(s) with the general public.

Question: Do Chief Delphi discussions about the acronym "STEAM", often resemble the fable about the blind people describing an elephant?
Answer: Yes - Lots of truths are written, but it's difficult to piece them together into a comprehensive result.


Blake

[Linkathon1986]

In regards to STEAM and the thought of Arts being added, I am all for it. Unfortunately, we have reached an age where the importance of the arts is vastly under rated. Musical and Visual Arts programs around the US are getting cut down, or even completely taken out, due to over all budget cuts in the education system, and the "unimportant" nature of these programs. I may be in robotics here, but my dream is to become a high school band teacher. Art is m whole goal in life, so I am happy to see it gain a bit more recognition.

In regards to the Robotics side of STEAM: art is still a valuable asset. between the average Gary Busey "Gingerdead Man" Photoshop tutorials, to the actual application to photography, advertisements, and many other aspects, Art is a big part of our goal as an organization.

P.S. FRC Rhapsody

[xjschwen]

I have not read every post in this thread but it seams that some of you seam to have missed the point. Art complements the STEM subjects... it is not a replacement of, but a complement to them. Art is the secret sauce that takes competent engineers and scientists and makes them truly great.

From Leonardo Da Vinci to Steve Jobs the greatest engineers and scientists are those that blended art into the STEM subjects to create designs and ideas that move mankind forward.

Art does belong in STEM, Art belongs in our schools and it belongs in the First Robotics Programs.