12.1 Readings 4 & 5 Takeaways

Blikstein's writing has made me think about the purpose of education in terms of gaining fluency or gaining skills. I'm curious about what the need is currently for education to provide. Should schools be preparing the average citizen to operate in modern society or should there be more specificity to the knowledge gained during K-12 schooling? I'm not entirely sure which view Blikstein fully supports and wonder how teachers might choose to extend learning in various areas beyond just fluency. I am concerned that fluency might become conflated with superficial knowledge in an area. I am interested in exploring what educators could do in order to encourage deeper learning in a particular technological subject matter, especially within the time constraints of the school day and year. I am curious as to how to integrate new medias into the art classroom in a way that honors the relevant experiences of each child instead of necessitating a more formulaic and didactic approach to teaching. I wonder where these media should be taught -- should it be a more interdisciplinary format and should they enter the art studio or should they remain in science? But then, shouldn't more traditional arts be represented in science in return? I wish to examine which teacher the burden rests on to facilitate learning in programming, circuitry, etc. This brings me to the idea of STEAM which is heavily advocated for in American schools. What is the intended outcome and on who does this work rest? Is it the classroom teacher or specialists who are supposed to advocate for STEAM? What has STEAM come to mean at this point and is the outcome what was initially intended? Is it just art in service of science, technology, engineering, and math in order to validate its existence in schools today? I feel this is deeply problematic.