Civics and STEM

Discovery Education on importance of STEM EDUCATION

Civics is a funny subject. Like, what is it exactly?  US Government comes to mind, as does US History and the electorial process...

American Heritage Dictionary says that Civics is  "The branch of political science that deals with civic affairs and the rights and duties of citizens."  Collins Dictionary says that Civics is " (Government, Politics & Diplomacy)  "a branch of learning that treats of the relationship between citizens and their society and state, originally called civil government. With the large immigration into the United States in the latter half of the 19th cent., civics became a subject in the secondary schools and colleges through the influence of the National Education Association and other organizations."

Why Civics then? I guess the NEA feels that we, as citizens, need to know our rights and duties because we all live in our society.  In our democracy, we have a unique responsibility because what we invest ourselves in can determine what happens, contrary to some other kinds of governments.

So how do Civics link with STEM- Science, Technology, Engineering, Math? I think the overlap falls in the area of our rights vis-à-vis advances in these domains.  The following are 5 topics where Civics and STEM overlap.
1) Genetic engineering in our food
2) Extraction of natural gas from Marcellus Shale vs rights of landowners
3) Development of alternative energy sources, profitability, efficiency, trade-offs
4) Uses of Social Networking & Technology by Wikileaks

5) Political or economic choices leading to damage to natural resources.
6) World political efforts to deal with global warming.

There are many ways these two subjects are linked.   There's a lot to understand.  We all ask more questions than we do.

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