STEM needs the A

STEM Education has been exploding since perhaps the invention of the computers and maybe even before that. As the importance of math and science grows in our technologically accelerating society, it is impossible to survive without learning at the least even the fundamentals of these two fields. Even if you were to be a recluse and live as a hermit, some understanding of the science of the clouds and weather would be essential. However, it is important to note that the emphasis of stem education does in fact neglect pushing for the arts. Depending on whether a child’s parents have the funds and the determination and drive to educate their children in the arts, the artistic creativity is increasingly becoming something lacking in the youth of society. 

Of course, this seems like an unsupported claim, but this is what I feel especially since I am pursuing an STEM field as my career path. It is hard to integrate the STEM field with the arts because of just how demanding the workload is. In order to think of new technologies to invent, learning about the arts is crucial as well. The arts allows creativity to run freely. Not just the creativity to make things sound and look pretty, but creativity to break conventions set by society. And this is a creativity that it inherently not ingrained in the teachings of the STEM field. For people like me, who are so devoted in her aspiration to become a hard-core engineer, I think this skill is one I do not have because of my lack of a creativity-encouraging arts education. When I think of what invention I can create in the future, I feel afraid and stressed, because I do not have the courage and enough creativity to think of the next solution to our world’s problems. As art is a medium where you define how you want to express yourself and a medium where you push your creativity to the limits, I think there is still a need to encourage arts education for the sake of our kids to still feel passionate and inspired to think outside normal social conventions to push technology, math, and sciences to their limits.