Putting the STEAM into STEM

Putting the STEAM into STEM

Have you noticed that when community leaders and the media talk about 21st century workforce skills they almost always mention innovation?  This should be a good thing for us, right? But I have noticed another unsettling trend that even appeared in President Obama’s State of the Union address when he linked innovation to education in science, technology engineering and math (now known as the STEM movement) with nary a mention of the arts.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman often writes about the need to develop American innovation.  He gets that the arts are part of the mix.

“The secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, music, and literature with the hard sciences.”—Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for all students.  Members include leading American businesses. They have created a framework for 21st century learning that should make everyone understand how important arts education is to our future.  Look carefully at this graphic from their Web site and follow this link to learn more:

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org

 21st century student outcomes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Under Learning and Innovation skills the Partnership lists creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration. Under Media and Technology skills they list information literacy, media literacy, and ICT literacy.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine achieving these goals without the arts playing a central role.

We need to get STEAMed about this!

Our most pressing challenge today is to help policy makers and school leaders understand the critical link between arts learning and 21st century skills.  The future of our kids and our nation depend upon our success.

-BJ Adler