10 Benefits of Stem Education You Didn't Know About

The benefits of STEM education reach well beyond the ability to combine numbers in your head, or chemicals in a flask. They’re improvements in awareness, intelligence, and social skills; the ability to break down large and complex issues into manageable problems to solve.

STEM education opens up a world of possibilities for those with an understanding of basic universal principles, and provides students with applicable skills and knowledge to almost every problem that exists.

The concerning rise of a scientifically-unfamiliar population must necessarily lead to a more anxious and reactionary populace, and in a time when these reactions are the most potent and transmissible. Conversely, a robust set of STEM fundamentals serves to counter this threat to our societies and keep us on track to a healthier and more prosperous world.

But what do these fundamentals bring? Here we’ve put together ten of the most applicable benefits of STEM programs, many of which you may not have considered.

What is STEM Education Good For?

Before we look at the ten additional skills that people gain from STEM programs, it’s a good idea to put things into perspective. It’s well recognized that a STEM education gives the best opportunity for higher-paying jobs, and even when taught at the elementary level, boosts the chances of success in any field.

This is possible because of the way that STEM requires the application of fundamental life skills such as teamwork and analysis; skills that translate easily and readily over to any field of work.

It’s the transferable nature of these skills that make STEM such a powerful tool for enabling young people and adults to live their best lives, be more successful, and become the next generation of innovators.

The alternative, sadly, may well be the relegation to an illiterate class of consumers, with no agency or direction, lost in a technological future to which they can contribute very little. The nature of our world is changing rapidly, for better or for worse, and without STEM education, we will have very little say over the direction of these changes.

On the other hand, by incorporating STEM into elementary classes and beyond, the world suddenly opens up for children around the globe to take control of their destinies and accomplish more with less.

Here, we have listed ten of the most significant perks of a STEM education that apply to far more than the disciplines in which they are taught. These are skills that come in handy at home, at work, and when alone. These are skills that show just why STEM for kids is so important.

Ten Benefits of STEM Education

Calculus is as much about teaching how to solve problems as it is about learning to use the numbers involved, meaning that the methodological manner of breaking things down and solving them translates well beyond the use of figures to do so.

There is usually more than one way to solve a problem, and STEM teaches this flexibility in its approach. Allowing people to come up with solutions on their own, and to ask the ‘why’ questions stimulates this creative thinking.

Many of the benefits of STEM programs come from the boost to critical thinking skills that students carry with them through life.

STEM programs teach people not to simply take things at face value, and -more importantly – not to rely on what seems intuitive. This results in more informed decisions and counters the spread of misinformation.

This form of reasoning allows people to identify not just patterns, but the real cause of these patterns, and therefore the appropriate action to be taken in response to them. This applies to both qualitative and quantitative information, and thus translates into a daily life skill.

Understanding how systems work, and how to solve problems like bottlenecks by breaking them down naturally translates into innovative thinking and is stimulated heavily in STEM programs.

With solid STEM fundamentals, people are able to change with the times and are less likely to be left behind.  

Conclusion

There’s no question that individuals and societies are safer and more advanced, both socially and economically, with a STEM-educated population. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics underpin everything we do in modern life and represent everything we can accomplish in the future. Without them, we have no vehicles, no computers, no medicine, and no TVs.

A scientifically illiterate population can only become a servant to those with the power to design, create, maintain and fix advanced technologies of the modern world, and it’s therefore critically important to have as many minds working on these problems as we can get.