It’s been known for decades that the American educational system has been in decline. For a country with 130,930 K-12 schools and 5,300 colleges and universities, plus the largest number of top universities in the world …
· Approximately 32 million adults are considered to be illiterate 1
· About 130 million people read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level 2
· The US ranks 29 out of 203 nations in education rankings 3
· The US ranks 38th in math scores and 24th in science — while at the same time decreasing education funding by 3% 4
To intervene in this downward trend, US educators have been instituting a multitude of different teaching approaches trying to instill in students — obsessed with their phones, social media, and video games — curiosity about their world and a love of learning. And, in order to save face on the world stage, educators looked at what would raise our competitive advantage. What they came up with is STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
STEM was first introduced in 2001 by scientific administrators at the US National Science Foundation. A report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine emphasized the links between prosperity, knowledge-intensive jobs dependent on science and technology, and continued innovation to address societal problems.
The thinking back in the early 2000s was that with a workforce seriously lacking educationally, the US would not be able to compete in the world economy and we would thus not only lose our standing as a world superpower but become subject to the economic dictates of other countries (something we’ve been doing to them since forever).
The question on many people’s minds is whether STEM has worked and how people of color have benefitted from it in terms of jobs. An April 2021 Pew Research Center analysis discovered the following concerning the STEM workforce:
“The STEM workforce … has grown rapidly in recent decades. An updated analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since the coronavirus outbreak began projects strong growth for many STEM occupations in the United States, particularly epidemiologists, medical scientists, biochemists and biophysicists, and biological technicians, among others.”
But what the report also found is that …
· Black and Hispanic workers are underrepresented in STEM jobs relative to their shares in the US workforce as a whole.
· Black and Hispanic graduates are underrepresented among degree recipients in STEM fields compared with their share of all degrees.
· Women have made significant gains in life science and physical science jobs, but other areas have seen few increases.
· Women earn a large share of degrees in health-related and life science fields, far fewer in other STEM areas.
· STEM workers typically earn more than those in other jobs, with the highest median pay for Asian men and the lowest for Black and Hispanic women.
Once again, economic and career disparities for people of color. The reasons for this cover a broad array of issues, something that’s not the focus of this article. Instead, let’s look at what’s missing from STEM that could hopefully reverse our educational downward spiral.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the perspective about people in the workforce was that we’re simply worker bees whose job is to complete tasks assigned by the powers that be. Our feelings about our jobs, their deleterious effects on our entire wellbeing, the people we work with, and our career track dreams were immaterial. That’s all changed.
People, human beings with feelings and lives other than work, want the best things out of life, including work they find fulfilling. They want to be inspired, supported, and encouraged to be what they desire most for themselves. Looking at STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math — the primary brain activity is all about the intellect, organization, and analysis. It’s unemotional, focused on facts and data.
What’s been left out of the equation is what drives us in the first place: our humanness, our need to create, our desire to be expressive. In short, to not be automatons but living beings full of … well … life!
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” That isn’t just applicable to the world around us, it applies to the person we are within, who we aspire to be, to know ourselves.
When STEM was first touted as the mechanism to once again put America in the lead, many people immediately saw its flaw. It left out the most intrinsic facet of who we are, what gives us hope, what shapes the world around us and encourages us adapt, what helps us to evolve and innovate, what drives us to expand the boundaries of comprehension and expression, what inspires us to “start high, and then go higher” — the arts.
What researchers are discovering is that for human beings to truly thrive, they need to know what it means to fully breathe life, something that can’t be done via just left-brain activities. To ignore the arts is to experience life in black & white, to miss the nuanced shadings of human endeavors, of the connectivity of heart and soul.
Human beings are not computer-generated algorithms or app. We think we feel, we act. To reduce us to simply being a cog in a machine is to make us expendable and of value only in terms of productivity. That is the worst kind of dystopian future imaginable.
To quote Einstein again, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. … Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
We are inherently multi-dimensional, equipped with the capacity to explore the depths of our vast universe — to hear, see, smell, taste, touch, perceive, and intuit the unknown in all its multi-faceted wonder. Art takes us out of the Petrie dish of a strictly scientific, observational approach to life and expands our possibilities to imagine and create, to transport us out of mundane existence to grander visions of human potential.
Art connects us heart to heart, in our aspirations to know ourselves individually and collectively ever more deeply. Art is the golden thread that connects all the dots of existence and, in the process, allows us to see our souls.
And so it is with STEM as we look to gather educational STEAM to transform ourselves and our world through an integrated amalgamation of science, technology, engineering, the ARTS, and math. Let’s breathe in life to the fullest!
“Art washes away from the soul
the dust of everyday life.”
Pablo Picasso
