Yes, I got the green stuff down
I feel like Alice when that deck of cards goes nuts and assaults her. My dining room table is covered with papers. Well, except that I don’t really have a dining room. I have a table in the area between the front entry and the chichen that serves as a dining area (yes, it is one of *those* houses.) Now that the Dillon house is sold, I think I can actually get rid of a few of these papers soon (some of the photocopies, I mean) but not quite yet.
Work? I sat between three sets of requirements, some reeeeaallly sketchy screenshots, and an Excel spreadsheet today. And lots of papers. I do most of my work on my loverly Windows laptop but sometimes it helps to have printouts sitting around to write on. Today it was three sets of requirements and a bunch of sketchy screenshots. And a lot of stuff that didn’t exactly match. Cube Nayber and I beat our heads against this stuff all afternoon and I left the building at the end of the day (oh, not like Elvis did) in a haze of confusion.
We are here debating education, responding to something on NPR. STEM vs. STEAM. STEM being Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. STEAM inserts Arts into the middle of STEM. The trend (supposedly) these days is to educate our next generation in STEM subjects. Without a doubt we need scientists and engineers and mathematicians, etc.
Guess what? We also need artistic folks in the mix. It’s not just that we need artists and musicians, etc., to create new works of art. We do need those people. They help lead our culture into the future (take that anyway you want [smirk]). But arts education also fosters the creativity that our scientists et al need to dream up new ideas…
I got off on a tangent there but this is my soapbox and I am going to use it again to remind people that if you graduate from college not knowing what you want to do when you grow up (aka liberal arts degree (or music, sheesh!)), it is OKAY! I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up but I get paid pretty damn well to do something that didn’t exist when I graduated from college. I can read, write, do math and critical thinking.
Not sure where I am at this point but I think I am done. Dun dun dun. G’night… KW
September 25th, 2013 at 9:54 pm
I think another thing that is important about the arts in school curriculums is that it can keep kids interested in school. LOTS of kids enjoy the arts, and taught right (with encouraging and supportive teachers), it’s great for the self-esteem, too, which is so hard to come by when you’re a kid. You don’t even have to really be an artist! It can provide healthy social outlets with like-minded kids, and open up avenues in the brain to handle the intensity of those STEM subjects. I shudder to think how the dropout rate would increase if schools cut the arts.
September 27th, 2013 at 9:12 pm
YES! We also need plumbers and construction people or we are in a world of trouble. Since my younger daughter is drifting right now, I’m comforted to read your words. I don’t think she really wants to use her BS in Math; she’s happy to have a degree, but the professions that it leads into aren’t really her.