STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and it’s an educational program that helps prepare its students for the future in these fields. Most commonly, this is used in the context of an education policy or curriculum in schools across the globe.
Due to all the advantages that STEM education brings, more and more parents are enlisting their children as early as possible in the STEM field. Here are four reasons why this is important and how STEM learners can benefit from it all.
1. Employability
Developing STEM skills will make you much more employable than you would otherwise be.
Still, what is STEM (other than just an acronym)?
The simplest explanation would be that STEM is a triumph of pragmatism over technical knowledge. Instead of learning textbook definitions by heart, STEM students are given real-world problems, and they’re expected to come up with solutions through critical thinking, trial and error, and similar means.
By this definition alone, it’s more than clear how STEM could be useful and applicable in the 21st-century workplace.
STEM jobs are in demand and better paid on average. Also, the nature of these jobs ensures that, if you’re serious enough, you have a career with a pretty high income ceiling.
Due to how hard it is to get a degree in a STEM field, there are always fewer people with suitable degrees than there are job openings. Combined, this makes people working in STEM more respected by their peers.
A lot of parents enroll their kids in STEM education institutions early on. This way, they set them out on a path that has a higher chance of success, providing them with a sizable edge over their peers who are still on traditional curriculums. Higher competitiveness makes all the difference.
2. It’s not just about jobs
The first thing you need to understand is that STEM is not just about the jobs. This is easy to lose sight of, mostly because it’s the main selling point of STEM.
A lot of people push their kids onto a STEM path to ensure that, later in life, they have well-paying jobs, great career prospects, and higher job security. While all of this is great and true, the reality is that STEM helps one develop skills essential to living and thriving in the 21st century.
First of all, stem-related skills are crucial skills for handling the majority of tasks in the 21st century. We’re talking about things like:
- Problem-solving
- Critical thinking
- Innovation
- Creativity
- Teamwork
- Collaboration
No matter what you choose to do in life, you’ll benefit from these skills.
Also, since the world is becoming increasingly tech-dependent, the ability to solve new puzzles and adapt to innovation could be handy. The biggest problem is not with learning the new rules; it’s about having the methodology to adapt to the rules that evolve so rapidly.
Overall, the world we live in is relying more and more on STEM principles, which is why learning STEM and developing stem-relevant skills can help you adapt a lot better.
3. Teaching teamwork
Early on, digital jobs were like early crafts – there were few people performing them, so they had to be specialists.
Today, everything is turning away from this approach and orienting toward specialists. First of all, menial and repetitive tasks can now be automated and entrusted to AI-based tools. Those few tasks that can’t are entrusted to creative human employees who are working together on massive projects.
While collaboration is as old as mankind, the truth is that it was never present in so many forms. Sure, people always had coworkers, but now, with modern businesses outsourcing so much and complex structures (like white labels), you may have people with a very complex business structure.
This is why the fact that STEM teaches students to work together makes such a difference. Traditional education values individual skill scores and prowess. This was what was scored and praised.
If they wanted to be team players, kids had to learn it through play or team sports. The problem is that education is supposed to prepare you for your subsequent work life, and this is where instructions on the relevance of team spirit are supposed to come from. In STEM, this oversight is no longer present.
4. Cultivating curiosity
Curiosity was always important, and one of the main reasons it was suppressed was the limited amount of information. Today, when we have access to the Internet, neglecting our curiosity should be treated as a capital offense.
Through STEM projects, you’re doing more than just cultivating curiosity. What you’re actually doing is encouraging them to look for the answers themselves. In the age of the internet, this is definitely the right way to go.
Other than this, you need to develop an urge to check and test everything. Critical thinking is especially important since we live in an age with so much misinformation and fake news. This is why teaching kids to think (the younger, the better) and to be skeptical about anything unverified they hear. Also, encouraging them to check the information on their own is so important.
In STEM, things are simple – they either work or they don’t. However, before the experiment, you can’t know for sure. This is a solid principle that you could follow throughout your entire life.
Even when it comes to plotting a future course, STEM education doesn’t pigeonhole you. It allows you to explore different ideas and potential paths, which increases the chance that you’ll pick something that’s really for you. At the very least, there’s an important lesson here, a lesson about the first offer not necessarily being the best one.
Wrap up
Overall, STEM is a more pragmatic approach to education, oriented on pragmatic, applicable skills and decision-making. As such, its benefits for the learners are monumental, and as the 21st century progresses, they’re getting harder and harder to ignore. Adapting to new trends, not taking anything for granted, and developing a knack for figuring things out are just some of the major advantages, but they’re not the whole list.
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