A defense of STEAM:
With cuts to public education forever on the horizon, and what I perceive as a mistaken focus on hard and technical skills for the next generation of working New Yorkers, here's an impassioned defense for the oft-maligned "A" of STEAM: the wishy-washy, often economically unstable, feelings-driven, passion inspiring ART, buried within science, tech, engineering & math.
A month ago I had the pleasure to be an alumni judge for something called SING! at Stuyvesant High School. If you don't know what SING! is, google it, but the short version is that it's a student run, student created, student written, directed, produced, acted, designed and performed musical theater competition here in NYC and it's fun as hell.
My own producing career began (without my consciously knowing it) as a co-director of SING! during my Sophomore, Junior and Senior years of HS. The entire production our senior year had close to 300 people involved between cast, crew, dance teams, band and production staff... and given that Stuy is notoriously a math & science school, I can assure you that not every one of those people wanted to be an artist, or work in the arts & entertainment. And in fact, most of them don't.
I went on to be an actor and film producer (so I'm the outlier here), but of the co-directors, producers, performers and department heads, here are what just a few of them went on to do:
-- an interventional cardiologist
-- a litigation counsel focused on AI and digital security threats
-- an environmental engineer and educator
-- an SVP of a communications firm
-- a journalist turned law clerk
-- an asset manager and co-founder of a fintech company
-- a film editor
-- an English teacher
-- a leader in technology sales
And a million other things. I would genuinely expect that EVERY one of them would tell you that they learned something invaluable being part of SING! at 16 or 17 or 18. That the process of making a piece of artful (and sometimes not so artful) theatrical entertainment helped develop skills they would bring into the rest of their careers and lives.
The reason ART in schools is so important is not because every kid should grow up to be an artist, but because collectively working in a creative way to make something larger than yourself with a group of other people has both INHERENT and practical VALUE. It can make you a better business leader, it can make you a better employee, it will make you a better MAKER, whatever it is that you are making, and it will hopefully help strengthen your empathy, a trait that is perpetually in short supply. And selfishly, for those of us who are working in arts & entertainment, we need fans of the work; people willing to spend their hard-earned dollars to consume the work we make, and having non-artists be familiar with the creative process doesn't hurt in that area either.
So keep on steAming, NYC!