STEM education has run its course

Away, away with STEM education. It is time to devalue STEM knowing. It has had its time, done its harm. Save the children. Looking back, some five hundred years, over its intellectual reign, what does STEM have to show for itself: modern warfare, overpopulation. Is there a type of pollution that STEM is not responsible for? Even noise. And please don’t counter with the internet or pharmaceuticals; on the former the jury is still out and the latter is debatable. Even space exploration has recently become a farce.

Much worse are the deeper, the existential effects of STEM thinking. Call it the STEM world view and notice what human beings become under its sway. We are material and mechanistic through and through. Organized and ordered, quantified and unitized in the STEM universe. Stripped of our humanity we become manipulatable like other brute resources.

STEM education contains the furthest thing from the hope of humanity. It lacks the ability to detect nor to infuse the compassion and empathy necessary in successfully navigating the modern world. It is time to listen to the arts and humanities. Kerwin Lanz

Stratford