Why STEAM Education Must Start from Primary School

Perhaps there is no field of human endeavor where the popular phrase "catch them young" is more True than in STEAM education. Of course, most people will usually think about high school and late middle school when they think about STEAM but as educators and teachers, we know that the building blocks of a child's educational journey are usually arranged right from elementary school.

This is why exposing a child to STEAM concepts early is vital. This ensures that the child not only becomes passionate about these subjects but also lays the groundwork for future academic and professional pursuits.It doesn't take much observation to notice that practical Science skills are slowly being eroded from our primary schools. It has become so bad that now many schools only offer science for just 1 hour a week. Down from 2 hours a week which used to be the case. To make matters worse, in most cases, science equipment is often dated.

It has become the norm that with each succeeding academic year, science assessments made by teachers show that pupils are churning out worse and worse results. Young learners are not only less proficient in using scientific terminology, their understanding of scientific testing, recording, evaluation, and problem-solving has also tanked. All of these combined with the many hours children spend on screens show that unless something drastic is done, there is a huge danger that the potential of an entire generation may be wasted.

STEAM subjects create the "WOW" factor in children

It was Dan Brown who once wrote: “Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.”

The moment a child discovers that they can affect the world in amazing ways the word 'Wonderment' springs to mind. Encouraging wonderment and a desire to be curious to know more is so important.

As educators and teachers, at the top of our priority list is to inspire wonderment in our wards. When we cultivate curiosity from a young age through hands-on experiments and creative art projects, students light up with wonder and excitement while exploring the wonders of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.

Think about the innovators of today, people like Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and Tesla. Role models like that, regardless of how controversial some may find him, embody the visionary ideas that STEAM brings to the world.

STEAM teaches young people to solve problems

The curiosity of children at a young age knows no bounds. But this curiosity needs to be molded and guided. STEAM subjects help to do this.

STEAM subjects help children develop the cognitive ability to solve problems by putting them into situations where if they don't problem solve nothing will happen. You can basically see this in action when children build something that doesn't do as it is supposed to do. They are then forced to solve the problem as otherwise that particular device will not be very interesting.
As teachers, of course, we will be tempted to step in, but perseverance is a key skill for children to learn and STEAM subjects are vital to helping children develop this.

We need to prioritize STEAM Education for technical advancement

In our world today, we are surrounded by gadgets. Our lives and society are highly technical. Yet, too little of us really understand these gadgets.

It is crucial that if children must grow up in this world, then we must prepare them for it. It is time to include the tech we see in the world in our young classrooms. We must take advantage of tech companies that are focused on STEAM education and invite them to develop solutions that encourage our young learners to develop their technical skills.

There is no group of subjects that is more relevant and vital to today's elementary education than STEAM, and we must give it a prime place in our primary and secondary schools. In order to do that, we must begin to see more integration of STEAM programs like the one offered by STREE Education to adds an exciting dimension to our young classrooms. These courses include coding, robotics, virtual reality, and creative arts, will definitely engage students and prepare them for the future.

Conclusion

It is not enough for schools to invest in computers, but we must show our young learners how computer programs interact with the real world. Integrating curriculums like STREE Education’s STEAM programs, would be a fantastic way of encouraging our young learners to get hands on and invested in the subject. 

We must rethink how we educate our children and promoting STEAM learning right from Primary school is the way to go.