Written by Nethra Singhi
Educators, especially in India, have long considered arts to be less important than science subjects. Until a few years ago, the buzzword in education was STEM: A learning approach that combines Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to provide a rounded education focused on the above subjects complementing each other. It emphasises the application of information, and growing problem-solving, observational, and exploratory skills rather than rote learning the periodic table or the multiplication tables.
But there is now much discussion about integrating arts with scientific disciplines and the benefits of doing so. Let’s look at one such approach.
The progression from STEM to STEAM Education
Today, many people add the ‘A’ for Arts in STEM, making it STEAM Education. Georgette Yakman, a researcher and the founder of STEAM Education, divides arts into sub-categories, briefly summarised as follows:
Fine Arts — Fine Arts includes drawing, painting, sculpting and photography. It is concerned with aesthetics, and most schools teach it during the arts and crafts period.
Language Arts — Language Arts is concerned with grammar and communication, or simply put, the use of a language. It includes learning any language and using it in things like creative writing.
Physical Arts — Subjects like dance, sports etc., fall under the category of Physical Arts, or subjects based on physical activity.
Manual Arts — Arts that use physical skills or physically manipulating objects are categorised as Manual Arts. Examples include architecture and landscape design.
Liberal Arts — Another new education buzzword, at least for India, Liberal Arts covers academic disciplines rooted in humanities and social sciences. Subjects like philosophy, ethics, political science and sociology fall into this category.
How does STEAM Education help children?
Arts not only complements STEM Education, but it is also practically taught that way. Art and design play prominent roles in STEM, including but not limited to product design, communication (language arts), and history that sets the context for an engineering problem.
Moreover, studying arts teaches people the value of contemplation, creativity and innovation. It increases a person’s knowledge of culture, an edge that differentiates between good and great candidates in the workforce. It helps people find creative solutions to problems that require different perspectives.
For instance, Sheetal, the art director at Agastya, says studying art makes her students more open to critical observation, helping them approach a subject from different angles.
Arts can also make STEM topics more interesting, especially for kids who don’t like science or math. When they see math and science in nature and beauty, they think about the world differently, altering their approach to subjects in school.
Science has always depended on hands-on projects and experiments to teach theoretical concepts. These experiments rely largely on manual and physical arts. Hence, the knowledge of arts helps children understand subjects by seeing, touching, and doing.
In other words, the arts help a child relate STEM to the real world. Kindergarten and primary school students especially connect best with things they can touch, see, or use. Using art experiments help them connect these things with science concepts by allowing hands-on experiments.
It thus allows children to make mistakes and challenge themselves while creating or participating in such experiments. Since there isn’t a single correct answer in art, especially compared to science or math, it allows kids to find different solutions and not be disheartened by failure.
The most crucial benefit of arts education is that it helps raise well-informed children who empathise with problems worldwide because they are taught culture from around the world. They grow up to be well-rounded adults who understand that becoming a doctor or engineer is not the only way to help the world.
Does such categorisation actually help?
The farther you’ve come down in this article, the more you must be realising that all these fields are heavily interconnected. This begs the question: is such categorisation within educational subjects beneficial or detrimental?
Sheetal, from the Agastya Arts Lab, as mentioned above, believes that the inherent curiosity of a child leads them down a path where ultimately science and arts both play a role in sating their curiosity. For example, when they’re first asked to draw the sky, most of them paint it blue. But then, when they observe the sky during different times of the day, they start noticing the different shades it is, from purple to white, leading them to play with lighting and painting the sky in different colours. They then start questioning why it is so, which leads them to the science behind the sky being different colours during other times of the day. Thus, the learning curve is fully achieved only when they learn both the aesthetic and the scientific aspects of a specific phenomenon, leading Sheetal to believe that differentiating between the two subjects is futile if the aim is to provide a complete education.
What path leads us forward?
The road we’re pursuing today ends with the interconnectedness of various disciplines. Hence, it’s becoming more critical to stop defining subjects to the extent of completely removing them from the orbit of other topics that complement them.
This is where STEAM Education helps connect disciplines previously thought of as entirely separate from each other. But it is merely the first step towards holistic education that treats all subjects as branches of one common topic and treats each of its components as equally vital.
