There is a fledgeling movement for STEAM rather than STEM in some sectors and countries, less in the US, I have to say, but countries like Australia and New Zealand and to a lesser extent, Canada, have been promoting the wider focus, that is, including the arts. Interestingly, some of the support for STEAM is coming from the business world, because the introduction of the arts often transforms business opportunities to a whole new level.
I haven’t made it all the way through the Irwin clip, but I do plan on thinking through a bit more some of the science in preparation for next Tuesday’s meeting.
Regarding education, although I agree, the education model has remained frozen and largely unchanged despite massive changes in our scientific understanding of how learning takes place, there is need for deep, systemic change and it isn’t going to happen without some kind of global crisis. The current education system has too many vested interests to be susceptible to incremental change. It is like the qwerty keyboard, which was designed to slow typing down - our current education practices interfere with learning as often as they facilitate it. But change to our education practices requires challenging how our power structures are involved, radically changing our learning environments and abandoning the static classroom, reintroducing play at all levels of learning, and abandoning our current evaluation-centric approach, at the very least. A tall order.