When Scientific American Warns Against Ignoring the Humanities, the FLBOE Should Listen
In the upcoming October issue of Scientific American, an editorial warns that, while STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education is vital, “politicians trying to dump humanities education will hobble our economy.” Sadly, this report comes too late for Florida where, on September 23, 2016, the Florida State Board of Education (FLBOE) approved a new 5 year Strategic Plan with a specific STEM focus.
Florida’s new Strategic Plan for Florida was first discussed by the FLBOE last August (You can watch the meeting here). During that meeting, FLBOE member, Gary Chartrand presented his ideas about STEM (at 57:10): “I think we all know that STEM jobs have grown three times faster than all other jobs and they are projected to grow 20% a year for the next 10 years.” This, and the Board’s continued obsession with mandated Computer Science classes and STEM degrees, has resulted in a Strategic Plan with a STEM focused metric across all goals and all grade levels.
First, there is plenty of evidence suggesting the STEM “crisis”, at a minimum, may be exaggerated (articles here, here and here). Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows: “There are both shortages and surpluses of STEM workers, depending on the particular job market segment.” Robert Charette, in a piece called “The Stem Crisis Is a Myth,” points out that, for many, having a STEM degree is not necessary to have a successful STEM career AND many of those who DO have STEM degrees do not work in STEM careers. “Of the 7.6 million STEM workers counted by the Commerce Department, only 3.3 million possess STEM degrees. Viewed another way, about 15 million U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline, but three-fourths of them—11.4 million—work outside of STEM.” Charette points out the powerful forces that may perpetuate the STEM Crisis myth, including the effect that an oversupply of STEM trained workers would have on keeping wages low in STEM related industries. He warns “Emphasizing STEM at the expense of other disciplines carries other risks. Without a good grounding in the arts, literature, and history, STEM students narrow their worldview—and their career options” and suggests that “rather than spending our scarce resources on ending a mythical STEM shortage, we should figure out how to make all children literate in the sciences, technology, and the arts to give them the best foundation to pursue a career and then transition to new ones.”
No Child Left Behind and Florida’s A-F School Grade system has resulted in an over-emphasis of grade level reading and math skills. This new Strategic Plan adds increased focus to STEM education, leaving humanities out in the cold. The editorial staff at Scientific American warns of the dangers of ignoring the Humanities. We believe their editorial is important enough to attach in its entirety below. We strongly feel that the “high quality education”, as required by Article IX of the Florida Constitution, should include the humanities as more than an afterthought and we hope local districts will do their best to provide a well rounded education for Florida’s public school children, with a robust liberal arts focus, rather than chasing the STEM focused metrics in the FLBOE’s new Strategic Plan.
STEM Education is Vital–But Not at the Expense of Humanities
Politicians trying to dump humanities education will hobble our economy
by THE EDITORS / Scientific American October 2016 Issue
Kentucky governor Matt Bevin wants students majoring in electrical engineering to receive state subsidies for their education but doesn’t want to support those who study subjects such as French literature. Bevin is not alone in trying to nudge higher education toward course work that promotes better future job prospects. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a former presidential candidate, put it bluntly last year by calling for more welders and fewer philosophers.
Promoting science and technology education to the exclusion of the humanities may seem like a good idea, but it is deeply misguided. Scientific American has always been an ardent supporter of teaching STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But studying the interaction of genes or engaging in a graduate-level project to develop software for self-driving cars should not edge out majoring in the classics or art history.
The need to teach both music theory and string theory is a necessity for the U.S. economy to continue as the preeminent leader in technological innovation. The unparalleled dynamism of Silicon Valley and Hollywood requires intimate ties that unite what scientist and novelist C. P. Snow called the “two cultures” of the arts and sciences.
Steve Jobs, who reigned for decades as a tech hero, was neither a coder nor a hardware engineer. He stood out among the tech elite because he brought an artistic sensibility to the redesign of clunky mobile phones and desktop computers. Jobs once declared: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—that it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”
A seeming link between innovation and the liberal arts now intrigues countries where broad-based education is less prevalent. In most of the world, university curricula still emphasize learning skills oriented toward a specific profession or trade. The ebullience of the U.S. economy, which boasted in 2014 the highest percentage of high-tech outfits among all its public companies—has spurred countries such as Singapore to create schools fashioned after the U.S. liberal arts model.
If Bevin and other advocates of a STEM-only curriculum look more closely, they will find that the student who graduates after four years of pursuing physics plus poetry may, in fact, be just the kind of job candidate sought out by employers. In 2013 the Association of American Colleges & Universities issued the results of a survey of 318 employers with 25 or more employees showing that nearly all of them thought that the ability to “think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems”—the precise objectives of any liberal arts education—was more important than a job candidate’s specific major.
Those same skills, moreover, are precisely the ones required for marrying artistic design with the engineering refinements needed to differentiate high-end cars, clothes or cell phones from legions of marketplace competitors—the type of expertise, in fact, that is least likely to be threatened by computers, robots and other job usurpers. “Consider America’s vast entertainment industry, built around stories, songs, design and creativity,” wrote commentator Fareed Zakaria, author of the book In Defense of a Liberal Education, in a Washington Post column. “All of this requires skills far beyond the offerings of a narrow STEM curriculum.”
The undergraduate able to cobble together a course schedule integrating STEM and the humanities may be able to reap rich rewards. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg became an avid student of Greek and Latin when he was only in high school, in addition to setting about learning programming languages. And the same government officials who call for a shift in educational priorities should know better than to trash the liberal arts. Take Bevin’s call to eschew French literature: Bevin is someone with his own debt to the humanities. He graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies.
The way to encourage high-tech industry to move to Kentucky—or any other state—is not to disparage Voltaire and Camus. Rather the goal should be to build a topflight state educational system and ease the way financially for students from even the most humble backgrounds to attend. The jobs will follow—whether they be in state government or in social media start-ups.