STEM and Play: What the Old Geeks’ Network Doesn’t Want You to Know

“There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.” - Maria, from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927)

“Do what you love and success will follow.”  That is standard advice in any number of self-help books.  But too few students are inspired to love science, technology, engineering and math (“STEM”).  These students end up pursuing liberal arts credentials that many employers scoff at if they are not combined with real-world experience.  

In both STEM and non-STEM fields, the best jobs are going to the grads who are most prepared, whether through college level work alone or internships.  Unpaid internships are a backstop for liberal arts graduates unable to find work in a job market that demands STEM skills.  Under this arrangement, employers get free labor and, in exchange, they offer college graduates training in additional skills newbies would otherwise not be able to acquire working at the local mall.  But unpaid internships are fine for college graduates with families who can sustain them.  For liberal arts graduates from poorer families, unpaid internships are much less of an option. 

On the other hand, college preparation alone has provided STEM grads with a sufficient foundation for entry-level work.  Some peg entry level earnings for top-flight STEM grads at close to or above six-figures.  Glassdoor, a site that crowdsources data on different companies’ working conditions, reports that the average starting salary for software engineers in Silicon Valley is $98,000.  For Google, the starting rate for software engineers can be upwards of $151,000.  

The Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Commerce reported earlier this week that America’s poverty rate is increasing at an alarming rate.  The overall poverty rate jumped from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent in 2010.  But a whopping 27.4 percent of Blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics are now living below the poverty line, compared to just 9.9 percent of Whites.

But many African-Americans and Hispanics are choosing not to go to college at all or, if they do decide to attend college, do not major in STEM fields.  Another report released by the Department of Commerce this week shows that, in 2009, just 22 percent of non-Hispanic Blacks and 14 percent of Hispanics have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 54 percent of Asians and 35 percent of non-Hispanic Whites.  Of these, just 17 percent of Black, non-Hispanic and 21 percent of Hispanic college graduates majored in STEM disciplines, compared to 22 percent of White, non-Hispanic graduates and 43 percent of Asian, non-Hispanic graduates.

These facts underscore the need to improve STEM education in low-income school districts, which are disproportionately comprised of African-Americans and Latinos.  But improving STEM, to the exclusion of liberal arts education, evokes the classic dystopian scenario in which some people are relegated to performing manual labor, while those at the top do comparatively little, enjoying what Clay Shirkey famously described as the “cognitive surplus”— the amount of time freed up by the Internet which allows the most fortunate among us to spend less time working and more time playing.

In his book “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives,” Steven Levy describes a corporate culture that celebrates practiced quantitative geniuses, while at the same time pushes employees to be creative and inventive.  Levy depicts Google co-founder Sergey Brin as quantitatively brilliant, but as being more interested in taking courses in swimming and gymnastics, than in earning a Ph.D. in computer science.  Levy also describes Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Location and Local Services, who, before entering Stanford, in addition to being a computer whiz, was also an accomplished ballerina.  Even today, Mayer says that, although she is a technologist, she did not want to lose herself in her profession.  That is why she remains interested in art, dance, clothes and travel.  The Los Angeles Times reports that Mayer once paid $60,000 at a charity auction to have lunch with Oscar de la Renta and, despite her busy schedule, has found time to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and go snorkeling in Iceland.

Daniel Pink pointed to this trend in his book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.”  Pink asserts that no longer will modern workers be able to rely on purely mechanical skills.  Pink says that, in order to become innovators, workers will need to master the “right-brained” skills of design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.  Pink is careful to point out that this does not mean that technical skills are no longer important.  What it does mean, however, is that modern workers must master both technical, “left-brained” skills and conceptual, “right-brained” skills in order to thrive in the modern workplace.

But many public schools in America are pursuing the exact opposite agenda.   By simultaneously “teaching to the test,” so that teachers and students will conform to the rigorous testing benchmarks mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and drastically reducing arts education, these schools are effectively teaching students to fill purely utilitarian roles.  The jobs these students are being prepared for are precisely those that are most easily commoditized and most susceptible to outsourcing. 

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported earlier this year that it is minority students who have been hit hardest by cuts to arts education.   The NEA report revealed that only 26 percent of African-Americans between 18 and 24 reported receiving any arts education during childhood.  This reflects an extremely sharp decline from 51 percent seen in 1982.  For Hispanics, the percentage of respondents who received any arts education during childhood plummeted from 47 percent in 1982 to 28 percent in 2008.  On the other hand, the number of Whites reporting that they received arts education dropped only slightly from 59.2 percent in 1982 to 57.9 percent in 2008.

To prepare African-American and Hispanic students for the jobs of the future, it is simply not acceptable for policy makers to focus solely on improving STEM education.  Students not interested in STEM fields by default should be encouraged to actualize their creative interests through science and technology.  Visual artists can be taught to design video games and modeling applications.  Students interested in education can be taught how to create and produce technologies to facilitate collaboration in the classroom.  Business majors who are highly skilled in mathematics are incredibly valuable in an extremely volatile world economy that needs as much certainty as possible.  At the same time, students who are only interested in STEM should not be considered low-risk.  To permit these students to become deficient in the liberal arts would do them a tremendous disservice. 

Students of color can also be mountain climbers, but that is not the message we are sending.  What we are doing is making life even easier for the students at the top of the pecking order.