STEM - Censorship by Omission

The Art of Culture War by Other Means



-Albert Einstein


Everyone is fired up for STEM education, but I smell burning sulphur.

Have we gone mad and abandoned the Three R's?

Are Americans to be denied the right to read?
Correct Answer: Forget literacy. To write is to spellcheck. (control V)


I join the common sense coalition known as STEAM that's pushing for people to learn to read. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math)
STEAM powered a century of innovation, railroaded the countryside and the native lands, plowed the buffalo with progress. STEAM is what runs our nuclear plants and politics.

Let us leave the STEMs. The STEMs can power Brazil, the entire country that runs on alcohol. STEMs can only bring trouble, all the charges of ruin without the beauty and creativity of progress.

STEAM has brought the Chinese over to learn our ways and mimic our creativity, as they seek to discard standardization for creativity and synthesis.

Where would engineering live without architecture? Where could tourists experience inspiration without museums? What would Italy be without their monuments of Art? Can you imagine Rome without a Coliseum, Florence without Michaelangelo, Venice without the beach?

Envision any country and try not to think of art or an artist.

France: Mona Lisa.

Spain: Picasso.

Norway: The Scream.

Texas: Cadillac Ranch.

In the 1950s America was the land of Individualism against the stark Communism of the USSR. How did we prove this point beyond any doubt?
Abstract Expressionism became the headline, the American export, and the battle cry against a Supremacist collectivism of posters and ad campaigns wailing a glum banner of Social Realism and Party Loyalty.

Jackson Pollock exemplified the American Dream as he was extolled for his Action Painting. Evidence of ultimate freedom and a unique form of optimism, Pollock's success declared one super power had the balls to let its people do whatever they wanted and could reward them for such pursuits.

Art is the synthesis of all the pursuits.


Art is the mark of civilization.


So how can you fully defund the arts without a public outcry?

Let's set education on the track of Corporate lay-offs and prioritize/sanctify a short range of educational fields that don't rely entirely on critical thinking.

It's got to be catchy and Orwellian - STEM? Mission accomplished.

Now if we gut public education a bit more, shutdown some schools that would have government oversight. Bingo, we are now well on our way to a new market with all the makings of a bubble crisis.

Can you think of any time where the STEMs are the only part you would want? Besides rhubarb?

Is it right for Lubbock's teachers to have to look for outside grants to teach outside the curriculum? Above and beyond is somehow forbidden, not explicitly mind you, but only in practice. And we wonder why our underpaid teachers can't work miracles in a classroom of 35 kids.


Could Leonardo da Vinci have innovated without drawing?

Can you imagine the culture of our nation without its arts and letters?


Where is this nonsensical push coming from?

I know if I sold textbooks and teaching aides, I would demand more standardized tests, more practice tests and more technology in the classroom. Software licenses would be my mantra as I shilled the glory of rote memorization and edited the facts in each new version of the virtual textbooks.

Prepackaged online courses, one-stop-shopping for every credit hour!

Hurry and lay off teachers to pay for all of these gadgets and so much "innocuous" corporate schlock. Close schools for every family that can't get loans for their child's elementary education.


To give them a fair shake, I took a gander at the journal dedicated to STEM education and the censorship of omission.

A few things struck my eye. It appears to dedicate the entirety of its efforts at building the Company Man, a widget-style person to function solely "in an organization." When all that is valued are the "employer needs and expectations," should we be surprised that we would acquire an education by Corporate America for Corporate America?

Corporations are the most short-sighted non-persons you will come across. How else could we manufacture a banking crisis like the one from 2008? Short-term gain at the expense of long-term interests remains the rule-of-the-day and provides ample justification for the role of laws written by The People and for The People.

Corporate America (a.k.a. Unelected Government) seems to be expert at making one thing:

Manufactured Crises.


Reagan: Government is bad and doesn't work, let's deregulate to avoid catching fraud and help these companies grow by any means necessary. Ponzi schemes and "creative accounting" goes unchecked.

S&L crisis? Check.


Perot: Let's systematically close down power plants to spike prices.

Enron's energy trade bubble? Check.


Anderson: Check this out: we get paid more to consult on their taxes than when we audit their accounting.

Largest bankruptcies in history? Check.


Mozilo: New York needs paper to play with. Let's give loans to anyone who fogs a mirror. "Fund 'em."

Housing bubble? Check.


IMF/World Bank: We can loan these countries as much as we want and force them to invest in Wall Street? Greece crumbles into the hands of the white supremacists and government unions can be gutted by budget cuts across the EU.

European austerity crisis? Check.


Balanced: Banking 2.0 meets direct bank account transfers. It's a lower cost because there's a three day float when you shift funds. Credit card company strife and a virtual banker bubble rises? Check?


Waiting for Superman: You mean the government can pay us to charge parents for unregulated education, and our buddies can get the juicy edu-tainment contracts? Education becomes consumer training.

Education sinkhole filled with generations of potential innovators wasted? Check.


Welcome to Lex Luthor's School for Petroleum Engineering. I'm sorry we don't offer an ethics class, employer's weren't interested.



The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.




-Albert Einstein

  • Comment
Comments (4) Add comment
Carol Morgan 03/08/13 - 01:50 pm
What wonderful and

What wonderful and thought-provoking article, Sean! Excellent!

How can one cultivate a preference for an academic discipline if he/she is ignorant of all the choices available?

Efficiency experts always enjoy stuffing people into convenient little boxes, reducing living breathing individuals to a project completion or a to-do task crossed off a list. Perhaps it's because of the lack of color in their own lives.

There will always be those who believe that business and industry should fuel people's choices in both jobs and leisure with money and consumption as the guiding light. We are moving closer and closer to that philosophy. It's as if life itself is a business and marketing model, from cradle to grave, like a caricature of reality. Life imitates art and if we eliminate that, what do we have as a model?

Sean Scully 03/08/13 - 10:10 pm
Swill tastes great

Thanks Carol. The assembly-line mechanized man and ignorant machines are much easier to herd to the next blockbuster remake.

@james999 Thanks for your response. Swill is exactly what the arts are receiving, which is why they are dying.

300 billion spread over 25,000 non-profits in 60 countries, that include scientific causes like Cancer and Alzheimer's, clean water and mosquito netting in developing countries, agricultural training, and awareness programs. I didn't see any American or otherwise artist or art programs on their happy customer page.

People are too busy clothing and sheltering the homeless, feeding and caring for the sick, doing what the government has failed to do to preserve The People's Right to Pursue Happiness. Nevermind, the myriad non-profits that preach the Word (Mormons might be winning on that front), preserve historic landmarks or in the case of The Collectors Foundation secure their hobby of boat and car restoration. What I do wonder is if all that giving factors in what think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the AEI rake in to convince everyone that War is Peace, the working poor homeless are lazy, and Art is a Waste of Money (in tyranny creative types are the first to go). Think tanks are non-profits and rely on the "kindness of strangers" too.

Compared to the stagnant paltry funds (125 billion) supplied by a crippled NEA, you would be correct if any significant percentage of that 300 billion in worldwide charitable donations went to actual artists or art education programs.

It's a lot like saying that we are all better off now that we've laid off all those astronauts who took us to the Moon and gave us everything from Velcro to fuel cells. They certainly don't need job stability as they try to innovate. They will find much better jobs and better success rates doing things according to marketability, isolated research, and cutting every possible corner to please the stockholders. NASA tried that model and got Columbia and Challenger. I know I don't believe in a benevolent aristocracy. Instead, I believe We The People can afford to invest in what makes a nation great.

Top Cat
Top Cat 03/10/13 - 04:03 pm

Your writing style is like a 60 year old Ford in need of a very serious front end alignment. It's all over the road, handling like a squirrel that's been fed crack cocaine and moving to the left.

I actually get confused everytime I look at your blog. No wonder this country is in such a deep mess.

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