An over-emphasis on STEM is robbing students of the humanities-based skills they need to navigate the 'dark arts' of fake news, social media and online distortion, a world-leading expert in classroom technology has warned.
Subjects such as history and art taught students how to question the status quo and see different perspectives, Professor Punya Mishra from Arizona State University, told a conference in Sydney.
"We like to say we suspend disbelief," he told the Herald after the conference. "[But] as humans, we are predisposed to belief. So we need to educate ourselves and our children to learn to disbelieve, to question.
"You've got to start early. You can't protect people from it, because it's all around. The Harry Potter books talked about defence against the dark arts. I say [online manipulation, 'fake news'] are the dark arts of our time.
"We need to teach students to check it out for themselves – to evaluate resources, to develop their inner gyroscope, to learn to handle nuance, because nothing is black or white and what's happening in this media is black and white."
Banning phones from schools might be "the worst thing you can do", as it created a false barrier between school and the real world, in which they will encounter these forces in everything from Facebook posts to advertisements on television.
Education systems had over-emphasised STEM – science, technology, engineering and maths – at the expense of the humanities and altering that to STEAM by including arts in the acronym was not enough, said Professor Mishra.
The "humanistic" skills were the ones that would give students the tools to decide what was real, fair and right, he said. "They're the skills of the historian, the skills of the humanist, the skills of the artist – the ability to look at things from different perspectives."
Professor Mishra also said educators had "missed the boat" by focusing on things such as how tablets and smartphones could fit into the classroom, but "not thinking about how they were impacting the broader world," he said.
"Not that we were misguided but we were at some level naive."
He suggested parents talk to their children about the "dark arts" in the world around them.
For example, when Professor Mishar's children were younger, he explained that the programs they loved were just a technique to get them to watch commercials.
Now, parents could talk to older children about viral social media posts such as the recent controversial standoff between schoolboys and a Native American veteran in the United States, and point out the nuances of the debate.
But Associate Professor Matt Bower, an expert in classroom digital technology from Macquarie University, said there was no evidence to suggest an over-emphasis on STEM.
"In fact, many of the critical thinking skills students learn in STEM [for instance, logical deduction, disproof by contradiction] can be applied in humanities-based areas," he said.
"What we really need is for our students to develop strengths in STEM and the humanities. Our children will be most empowered by integrating their skills in sciences and humanities, rather than seeing them as separate silos."
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