S.T.E.M. is dead. Long live Stem.

For the past 24 years we have lived under the reign of S.T.E.M. as defined by Judith Ramaley when she coined it for the National Science Foundation (NSF). A decade ago I met an older gentleman who described it as the latest fad, and I found that perspective curious. I thought everyone had bought into the idea that we needed more S.T.E.M. in education, but I was wrong, and his statement was the first crack in a crumbling facade.

Though we always agreed that reading, writing and arithmetic were essential in the primary years and that critical thinking skills would be needed to produce future problem solvers and leaders, the path forward has always been hotly debated. S.T.E.M. was a reaction to the previous fad where humanities owned the mantle of critical thinking but failed to deliver the solutions to a quickly changing and innovating world. Though the solution might have intended to say "don't forget math and science", the baton was passed, and the message became that somehow math and science were more important than humanities.

The last 25 years has been everyone jumping on the S.T.E.M. bandwagon to sell their shiny toys with no indication of how to measure whether critical thinking was actually learned. If I can take a picture of a kid with a robot, does that mean I have prepared them to be a future innovator or leader? If you agree with me that the answer is "No!" Please join me in mourning the death of S.T.E.M. Let the reign of Stem begin.

The Stem of all learning is critical thinking. Critical thinking can be better assessed by the levels of attainment in Bloomberg's taxonomy which now has a new steward to carry us forward with a more concise language that can be applied to all educational disciplines without excluding any. That new steward is Computational Thinking. The pillars of Computational Thinking are:

• Pattern Recognition - Finding similarities and trends

• Decomposition - Breaking the problem down into smaller pieces

• Abstraction - Focusing on what is important, ignoring what is unnecessary

• Algorithm Design - Writing a step-by-step set of instructions to solve the problem.

Though the vocabulary appears to be an attempt to promote Computer Science, these 4 pillars can be applied to all subjects taught in secondary education. Though this revolution may still be led by what we traditionally view as Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, I challenge us all to invite our History, Language Arts, Fine Arts, Performing Arts, Physical Education and other Career & Technical Education teachers to join this new revolution, so we can stand side-by-side in training our future leaders, and not on opposite sides of a chasm thinking we can offer the same level of support from those distances using desperate languages. Otherwise we should accept our punishment for the tower that we built that dooms us to not be able to speak and collaborate with each other. We only have the future to lose.