Project 2: Argument Map: What is Education for? by Chris Asham

The effects of STEM on the economy:

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

Prioritizing STEM is a priority for any economy to flourish in the 21st century. Having STEM at the forefront of education allows America to prepare and specialize future workers to contribute to the country's industrial aspect. However, this sets a limit when creating well-rounded individuals in society.

What civic education does for the youth of America:

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

Putting more priority into civic education helps ensure that students are more than just job-ready; they are ready to engage with others in meaningful and intellectual interactions. A few of the requisites required to be a well-functioning member of society include understanding history, social structures, and critical thinking---all of which would be neglected without a satisfactory civic education.

STEM is Essential for Global Competitiveness

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

Countries such as the U.S. and China are global superpowers due to their technological advantages over other countries. STEM fields primarily fuel the advancement of such technology, which has historically been observed to increase GDP due to further advancements in renewable fuels, information technologies, and artificial intelligence. However, while emphasizing STEM is beneficial on a country scale, the same does not necessarily apply on an individual scale.

Civic Participation Requires Advanced Skills

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

To become a functioning member of society, one must learn more than the basic literacy and mathematics required by the government. Students must know how to comprehend and deal with social, political, and economic concepts that typically aren't exposed in regular education.

Technological Skills Alone Do Not Reduce Inequality:

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

While it is true that STEM careers do contribute to reducing inequality to some degree, it does not fully address the issue. Many figures today argue and overemphasize the degree to which STEM can offer a solution to the inequality problem seen today. This problem must be addressed by social policies, civic empowerment, and structural changes.

Argument: Education should move its focus from vocation studies and put more focus onto civic education

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

We need more STEM workers though!

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

We need more civic education!

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

Reducing inequality!

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

Civic education helps level the playing field:

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

Civic education is a fundamental element in creating a democracy. Declaring a democracy requires more than having a democratic system. One must also teach the participants of such a community the skills and confidence required to be active participants and play meaningful roles. Emphasizing civic education allows all students from different backgrounds to have a voice and engage with their government to make change.

Systemic racism in America is real

csa81 — 2024-10-06 02:12:40 UTC

csa81 — 2024-10-08 03:44:15 UTC

"The dominant policy paradigm attends almost exclusively to education’s vocational purpose: the goal is to ensure that young people, and society generally, can compete in a global economy. This view is tightly connected to a technocratic economic policy that focuses on the dissemination of skills as a way to reduce inequality in a technology-dependent economy. The result has been massively increased investment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education—STEM—and correspondingly reduced outlays for the humanities."

csa81 — 2024-10-08 03:45:33 UTC

"The response was the National Defense Education Act, signed into law in 1958, which increased funding for science and math education, as well as vocational training. The 1983 Reagan administration report A Nation at Risk deepened the country’s anxiety: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war,” reads one provocative sentence."

csa81 — 2024-10-08 03:47:06 UTC

"Today, these technologically oriented, vocational approaches to education and the problem of inequality leave almost no room for the civic alternative. It is not that civic education is incompatible with professional training, but policymakers, education specialists, and many parents—including low-income parents, whose children are most likely to see their civic education shortchanged—have narrowed their focus exclusively to the economic field. In the process, they have lost sight of the full range of inequalities from which our society suffers and which well-rounded education could alleviate."

csa81 — 2024-10-08 03:50:22 UTC

"In an important 2006 paper, “Why Does Democracy Need Education?” economists Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto, and Andrei Shleifer argue that education is a causal force behind democracy. Specifically, they point to the relationship between education and participation, considering three hypotheses for why the former might be a source of the latter: through indoctrination, through the cultivation of skills that facilitate participation (reading and writing and “soft skills” of collaboration and interaction), and through the increased material benefits of participation."

csa81 — 2024-10-08 03:51:16 UTC

"An education that prepares every student for civic and political engagement not only supports political equality but may also lead to increased economic fairness. As Acemoğlu and Robinson argue, the expansion of political participation drove egalitarian economic reforms in Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the early twentieth. We are currently seeing a resurgence of participation on both the right and left. These movements, dubbed populist by many commentators, are putting issues of distributive justice on the agenda once again."

csa81 — 2024-10-08 03:53:05 UTC

"To make judgments about the course of human events and our government’s role in them, we need history, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, political science, sociology, and psychology, not to mention math—especially the statistical reasoning necessary for probabilistic judgment—and science, as governmental policy naturally intersects with scientific questions. If we are to decide on the core principles that should orient our judgments about what will bring about safety and happiness, surely we need philosophy, literature, and religion or its history. Then, since the democratic citizen does not make or execute judgments alone, we need the arts of conversation, eloquence, and prophetic speech. Preparing ourselves to exercise these arts takes us again to literature and to the visual arts, film, and music."