Recently, I was discussing the STEM education
initiative (Science, Technology, Education and Math) and I brought
the idea that perhaps we should call it STEAM (Science,
Technology, Education, ARTS, Math) with an emphasis on
the ARTS. I feel that too often the arts are left out of
any educational plan and that the arts are looked upon
as a secondary or minor component of education). This bothers
me because it is the arts that infuse meaning into a hard
science. There is beauty in the sciences and math, but
not everybody thinks in such terms and the arts infuse
the hard sciences and math with beauty, with meaning and
with the human elements. For example- look at space. We
send up pilots and astronauts who can look out at the universe
and describe it in hard scientific terms. But what about
how they feel? What about the parts of being human that
cannot be qualified or quantified. What would happen if
an artist or poet was sent up on the next space mission.
How would we explain and interpret what is seen and what
is felt? Too often it is the arts that create meaning into
an experience. Imagine what a poet would say when standing
in the new cupola of the space station describing what
they see as well as what they feel. The technical, linear
and logical with the emotional, subjective and personal.
Take this idea back to the classroom and have students
of any age describe their experiments in terms of what
they feel and what happened. Perhaps we can begin to address
the human condition and shift it to a situation of thinking
to a situation of feeling. Perhaps we can make it shift
form hard analysis to the human feelings. This may also
provide us with answers to what we actually feel…
Publised on my blog on May 12, 2010 |
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