Space Opera Fans discussion

Greetings Space Opera Fans!

Sometimes I come across a thoughtful news article which I think is worthy of discussion. If any of you have kids in school today, you might have heard the buzzword 'STEM' education (science, technology, engineering and math). STEM is incorporating the sciences into middle and high school in a very real and visceral way to inspire those children to enter into the technology fields and become proficient in them. I am lucky that my kid's school district just adopted STEM the past few years, and instead of idolizing the latest Disney princess, my 10-year-old is now coming home and saying she wants to be a Mythbuster when she grows up.

However...

STEM still remains an education theory largely only adopted in the wealthier school districts, and even when poorer school districts do adopt it, it is often harder for those students to relate to some of the theories underlying scientific theory because they have not been exposed to things most teachers assume they have. It's kinda like trying to teach somebody to drive who has never ridden in a car before (and trust me, I know about this, because I taught my Russian exchange student to drive and oof!).

Enter S.T.E.A.M. By incorporating art into the technology mix, it can help disadvantaged students make that leap into technology. Having grown up disadvantaged myself, my great regret is there wasn't any support apparatus in place at the time to allow kids like me to explore my natural love of science. Fast forward 40+ years and now that same 10-year-old who wants to be a Mythbuster (and has a learning disability) wouldn't have been able to identify with that show -if- the teacher hadn't also merged the lessons with art to help her learn.

Okay ... here's the news article. Art + Technology. I'll let you guys discuss it as you're all a lot smarter than lil' ol' me :-) My hope is that some of you who perhaps work with people who promote STEM will keep the 'A' in STEAM in mind so you don't forget the art.

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Discuss!

Anna Erishkigal
SOF Borg Queen

Interesting article, although I found it a little difficult to decipher what she was talking about. The one experience I was able to sift out from all the other unfamiliar references was a situation in which students were able to learn technology through the opportunity to create music using technology. That makes sense, but I would like to hear about a lot of other specific examples of how this might work. It seems like the article wanted to talk more about race than about STEAM. Maybe that makes sense because the "marginalized" students being targeted are most often black or latino. But it seems to me that many other students could benefit from this approach, such as poor white students in Appalachia or rural Texas, or girls of all races.

I was going to post this in the 'alternative' section because of the 'race' tonality, but really, bringing STEM and STEAM to kids everywhere are mainstream issues.

Part of her plea is not to cut the 'A' (art) out of school, which is what is happening as schools adopt STEM programs. But yes, I agree the art should be TARGETED if it's part of a STEM program. A lot of the 'E' students are hands-on oriented so 'E' using 'A' manipulatables to build would be powerful lessons.

It seems like they are talking about showing people how to use the new technology in order to create art, which I completely agree with.

Honestly the big things I have wanted mandatory in highschool/middle-school is an entire class on managing your budget, the number of friends I have that seem to have zero concept of basic money management is staggering. The other is a basic office class everyone needs to learn how to use all the complicated template things in Word/Powerpoint and be an Excel wiz before you enter the work force, heck before highschool, it's that important.

Basically even though I'm a STEM major myself, I do have a slight problem with it. In general all it comes down to is supply/demand, STEM in general has a huge demand and the supply overall isn't meeting the maximum demand. Art is generally overly saturated by people who don't understand this basic concept and just want to express themselves and fail to realize art is a job. My main problem with programs like this is more in theory then in practice, it's basically telling kids HEY DO THESE THINGS AND YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL, when that's not accurate it's more find a thing people want enough to pay (insert your wanted quality of life here) for and provide it. That is the lesson people need to learn, along with the basics you need to be successful in basically every way of life.

I agree 100% about the budget-prep stuff. I think my high school was the last one that had a mandatory class on how to open a checking account, balance a checkbook, cook, sew, plan a meal, build a birdhouse, change the oil in your car, whatnot (which, with the hands-on stuff, gave you some logical-spatial reasoning skills). Then everything became 'liberal arts' because it's cheap to teach and easy to measure. And now, we've got kids who never had any hands-on learning whatsoever, so it's all STEM again.

What I do worry about with inner-city kids is a lot of them DON'T have access to any kind of organized fine art instruction. Art isn't just about staring at a Van Gogh and regurgitating a bunch of factoids about the period. It's the ability to take a disparate bunch of 'stuff', visualize it, and then create it using your hands. So insofar as using art to teach visualization, it should have a place in STEM.

But, yeah ... I know what you mean about a lot of people thinking art is easy or a couple of creative moments and fun/no work. To make a living doing it, you really have to learn to buckle down and work darned hard.