Why Is STEM Important In Early Childhood?

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Considering the rapid rise in technological development, it’s highly beneficial for your child to go through stem education to prepare them for a tech-focused future. While all education systems have their flaws, STEM focuses on improving it daily to ensure that your child is ready for future endeavors. It allows your children to develop skills to analyze things and become more creative critically. This form of education is better than any other education system in terms of technology-based subjects and the remaining science, engineering, and maths subjects.

Most of us have always been worried and curious about our children’s growth and education. So you’ve probably got on Google and looked for the best possible things to provide to your children to help them grow healthy and smart.

It can be pretty stressful and confusing trying to help them grow as best as possible in this day and age. One key feature in a child’s upbringing that we’ll go over now is the type of education he gets.

Since the start of this century, this new learning way has established itself known as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

It claims to cover all the aspects of child education. Is this true? Is it worth it? Does it put your child in high competitiveness? Is it vital? What are the harms and benefits of STEM? Is it essential to get your child in a STEM program in early childhood?

8 benefits of getting into STEM education

1. Innovation and creativity – It gives your child/you to be innovative, and it fosters creativity. Most of the recent developments in artificial intelligence and the creation of many new technologies result from young minds fostered by good STEM education and good teachers through to graduation. That has induced ingenuity in them and allowed them to achieve all of it by following the STEM education principles. They created things that the other world can’t think of.
2. We are creating new solutions – The freedom to develop new solutions to both old and new problems. STEM education provides a student with room for enough improvisation to calculate the gravity of the situation, find a way out of it, and eventually result in the whole world benefitting from it.
3. Increased tech-usage – It allows students and children to adapt to technologies and become familiar with them, and it builds the potential to make it even better and more efficient. One of the critical issues in the modern era is the generational gap caused by rapid changes in technologies and eventually creating social issues; this allows students and children to pace up with the rapidly changing tech industries. Because the world is moving towards an all-time high tech dependency, it will be highly beneficial for these students.
4. Application of knowledge – It helps students/children to apply the knowledge that they have gained in the real world. Do you remember the time in a boring math lecture that what is the reason for determining the value of ‘x’ and it seemed to be not only just boring but useless as well? These particular education systems give the knowledge and give practical examples and teach you to apply all of the concepts studied in school in the real world.
5. Allows experimentation – It gives out the space to experiment. It gives the students the freedom to explore new ways of the world that eventually results in new ideas being formed. The basic principles of STEM education believe that if the human mind can think of a statement or a scheme, it can very well achieve it.
6. Encourages teamwork – One key feature in professional life is your ability to work in a group and adapt to different people and eventually work together to promote ideas. What STEM education does is that it allows students to work in teams and groups and record data, give presentations or think of solutions to a given problem.
7. Promotes gender equality – About 24% of STEM career workers are female. It prepares girls from a very young age to develop an interest in it. This thus reduces the gap.
8. Better job opportunities – STEM education provides students with endless job opportunities. it expertise in fields such as doctors, engineers, or tech workers, which are always in demand. These workers earn an above-average salary.

Note: Not only have studies been conducted for all of these qualities mentioned above to be a result of STEM education, but it’s also living proof. Since creating this modern system in 2001, many of its students have achieved and created amazing things.

It’s essential to get into STEM education in early childhood as this is when a child’s mind is growing and can be shaped in any direction.

As the human mind is very vulnerable and receptive, it absorbs most of its basic principles at this age, and a child needs to get a healthy basis. Getting into STEM education can shape your future and how you go about in your life.

7 disadvantages of STEM education

With many of the benefits that this education system provides, it also has some cons.

1. Increased competitiveness – It may be argued that competitiveness is a good thing rather than bad; however, excess of competition also has its harms such as unnecessary burden on the student that can reduce their productivity. Similarly, where some type of match is necessary, excess of it is very harmful.
2. Non-uniform curriculum – Stem education programs differ from its curriculum. It does not follow anyone’s curriculum. It’s hard for a student to compare with their competitors. Similarly, it can also hamper your job opportunities because the employer will also get confused when choosing which employee. In some of our universities, this is a significant problem.
3. Elitist culture – It’s very restricted to a specific type of people in society; it belongs to the elitists. The gap that it creates between regular students is enormous. They don’t help below-average students and is restricted to the very naturally able students.
4. Late start – In most schools, stem education is started in middle school, so the effect of STEM is very late. The basic principle of STEM education shapes a child’s brain from the very start when it is the most receptive.
5. Can be expensive – Stem education can be expensive as well; hence it is not available to many children. This results in the widening of the social gap. Also, most families wouldn’t want to give so much money to education.
6. No national standards or certification – Because of this, it means you might not get many reorganizations in the market.
7. Inaccessible to many – Most students might not be available with this type of education. As limited schools worldwide are qualified to give such instruction, it will be available at a higher cost, making it accessible for fewer kids, further increasing the social gap. Not all students can benefit from this.

STEM in schools

For teachers to introduce the stem program in classrooms, they need to pass a sample test. After that, they need a particular type of arrangement in the classrooms.

These arrangements include the following:

• Desks and other furniture should be arranged as it allows flexibility to maximize the education. This involves creating workstations for children for projects.
• Design of the classroom. As STEM education focuses on collaboration and teamwork, they will need a classroom where students can sit and solve multiple problems in a team.  
• Visual charts and printing options. These help students in understanding key ideas and concepts. As visual representation in early childhood is very receptive.

In middle school, teachers can give students projects such as making a volcano or building a bridge. In High school stem education, students will be provided with much more challenging problem-solving tasks.

Conclusion

STEM education is the future in the education field.

A student with stem education will have a much more likelihood of getting a job and success in professional life than any other student. Non-uniform curriculum and accessibility is a significant hindrance in stem education.

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