"With a little effort, I'm pretty convinced you could find ties to non-STEM classes too, but everybody is focused on their own silo."
In middle school in Italy, all the classes were coordinated so you were learning similar material. Therefore, if in tech class we were learning about the steam engine, in History class we were learning about the Industrial Revolution, in Literature class (Anthology) we read chapters from 19th books, in Art class we studied 19th century art.
The end of middle school exam was in front of the whole body of teachers, and you had to present what you'd learned in 8th grade. You had to cover every subject, but you had to transition to each subject seamlessly.
It was a lot of work, but I haven't forgotten any of it 20 years later.
Then I moved to N. America. There were positives, but school wasn't one them.
In middle school in Italy, all the classes were coordinated so you were learning similar material. Therefore, if in tech class we were learning about the steam engine, in History class we were learning about the Industrial Revolution, in Literature class (Anthology) we read chapters from 19th books, in Art class we studied 19th century art.
The end of middle school exam was in front of the whole body of teachers, and you had to present what you'd learned in 8th grade. You had to cover every subject, but you had to transition to each subject seamlessly.
It was a lot of work, but I haven't forgotten any of it 20 years later.
Then I moved to N. America. There were positives, but school wasn't one them.