Not by STEM alone

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STEM education in the US got a boost on August 9 when President Bush signed the America Competes Act. The act could provide up to $43.3 billion through 2010 for research and education programs in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects.

Would that be money well spent? Maybe not. The act has its share of skeptics, including the President himself, who expressed concern that the bill creates duplicative or counterproductive new programs while providing excessive funding for existing programs.

Writing recently in the Wall Street Journal, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Diane Ravitch in “Not by Geeks Alone” go beyond criticism of specific programs to take issue with the current obsession with STEM education. They don’t explicitly call for cuts in STEM spending, but they caution against letting STEM subjects overshadow literature, art, history, civics, and geography.

Americans with high-tech skills, they say, will always risk losing jobs to equally skilled people around the world willing to work for one fifth the salary. Further, they say, those who would de-emphasize the humanities are “misconstruing the true nature of American competitiveness and the challenges we face in the 21st century.”

They suggest that the liberal arts are important even for those in high-tech fields: “Apple’s iPod was not just an engineering improvement on Sony’s Walkman. It emerged from Steve Jobs’ American-style understanding of people’s lifestyles, needs, tastes, and capacities.” They go on to note that while Jobs dropped out of college, he went on to study philosophy and foreign cultures.

They warn against “turning US schools into test-prepping skill factories where nothing matters except exam scores on basic subjects,” adding, “We need schools that prepare our children to excel and compete not only in the global workforce but also as full participants in our society, our culture, our polity, and our economy.”

Apart from over-funding concerns on the one hand and the short-changing of equally important humanities subjects on the other, I’m concerned that the student power simply won’t be there to take advantage of whatever STEM programs become available. According to a recent Princeton Review survey, engineering doesn’t rank among the top 10 most popular majors in the US.

To improve that figure, it’s important that some America Competes funding go into middle- and high-school programs—such as FIRST—designed to get American students interested in STEM subjects, and into college programs—such as EPICS—that will encourage university students to persevere.