I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again : eventually you just fucking end up with “be a complete person; here’s the entire dewey decimal system.”
STEM is meant to deal with logic based thinking and the problems unique to that industry, like for instance, a huge gender gap. Shoving arts and humanities in doesn’t fix the issue. Cross disciple collaboration is great, expanding your horizons and putting ethics into practices is great, but that’s not what STEM is.
There are already plans for these things in practice (hippocratic oath, iron[1] ring[2] ), which need to become more widespread. We don’t have to have STEAM toys and SHMEAT courses.
Yes. That stuff is necessary. I am agreeing with that, while maintaining that “STEM specific initiatives” need to be STEM specific. I’m talking about conferences and toys, not courses.
But seriously, while I do think STEAM sounds a little dumb compared to STEM (and I’m young enough where I saw the name changing happening in real time and despite being at the age where it’s easy to impress on kids, I never really cared for the name), I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to teach STEM kids and professionals more about the non-tech side of hard sciences and subjects.
SHTEAM sounds and looks stupid as shit, but we should absolutely take steps to properly educated up-and-coming STEM majors that they need to understand how their work and inventions affect humanity, along with actually having an appreciation for the work that they will do. Not teaching these things is how we create idiots that are proudly declaring “Mecha hitler” and “AI will kill us all, and that’s good!”
People complain about electives and gen ed classes in college like, “why do I, a science major, have to take an ethics class?” and then go on to become Sam Altman. As a STEM major, I fucking hate those people. I understand you want to get your money’s worth in college, but having to learn history and take one ethics or culture class should always be mandatory. I have learned so much about people and become more knowledgeable about humans and empathy through arts and ethics classes, and have gained an appreciation for them. It also affects how you do tech in general too. So often do I hear about coders, security analysts, data scientists, etc who make music, art, literature etc, and feel like it affects and improves how they work.
but having to learn history and take one ethics or culture class should always be mandatory.
Fuck it, one of each. Programmers had the opportunity to show they could handle not getting a humanities education with their diploma and they blew it.
I’ve been thinkin:
We went from STEM to STEAM. But I think we really need SHTEAM. (The H is for Humanities.)
Philosophy, psychology, history, basically anything that would get nerds to think about the social consequences of the stuff they like to tinker with.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again : eventually you just fucking end up with “be a complete person; here’s the entire dewey decimal system.”
STEM is meant to deal with logic based thinking and the problems unique to that industry, like for instance, a huge gender gap. Shoving arts and humanities in doesn’t fix the issue. Cross disciple collaboration is great, expanding your horizons and putting ethics into practices is great, but that’s not what STEM is.
There are already plans for these things in practice (hippocratic oath, iron[1] ring[2] ), which need to become more widespread. We don’t have to have STEAM toys and SHMEAT courses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calling_of_an_Engineer ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring ↩︎
There’s many good reasons why even Bachelor of Science degrees have such a load of core courses across the academic spectrum.
Yes. That stuff is necessary. I am agreeing with that, while maintaining that “STEM specific initiatives” need to be STEM specific. I’m talking about conferences and toys, not courses.
Warning! very unpopular opinion
Title
I hate STEAM, preferred when it was just STEM.
True! I think your opinion sucks lemming! 😎 /s
But seriously, while I do think STEAM sounds a little dumb compared to STEM (and I’m young enough where I saw the name changing happening in real time and despite being at the age where it’s easy to impress on kids, I never really cared for the name), I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to teach STEM kids and professionals more about the non-tech side of hard sciences and subjects.
SHTEAM sounds and looks stupid as shit, but we should absolutely take steps to properly educated up-and-coming STEM majors that they need to understand how their work and inventions affect humanity, along with actually having an appreciation for the work that they will do. Not teaching these things is how we create idiots that are proudly declaring “Mecha hitler” and “AI will kill us all, and that’s good!”
People complain about electives and gen ed classes in college like, “why do I, a science major, have to take an ethics class?” and then go on to become Sam Altman. As a STEM major, I fucking hate those people. I understand you want to get your money’s worth in college, but having to learn history and take one ethics or culture class should always be mandatory. I have learned so much about people and become more knowledgeable about humans and empathy through arts and ethics classes, and have gained an appreciation for them. It also affects how you do tech in general too. So often do I hear about coders, security analysts, data scientists, etc who make music, art, literature etc, and feel like it affects and improves how they work.
Fuck it, one of each. Programmers had the opportunity to show they could handle not getting a humanities education with their diploma and they blew it.
So SHTEM?
That looks like it’s the name for an STD