All over the world, teenagers can see the problems they’re inheriting, but they’re too young to vote. Here in the US, teachers are being chewed up by an education system where they’re overworked and underpaid.  Some scientists and educators have been working for decades to improve public education.  Ideas are a lot easier to learn and remember when they fit together into a coherent, fact-based story of who we are, what’s happening to us, and what we can do.  

The information that’s needed to tell that story and transform the education system is easily accessible to students and teachers, if they know what they’re looking for.   

I work in professional theatre.  Musical theatre is my favorite.  

I also have three technology degrees, and I’m Certified Flight Instructor.  

Using all that Technology depends on understanding how Math, Science, and Engineering made it possible.  Teaching it to other people is Education.  Art is closely related to Education, because they’re both forms of communication.  

Fitting ideas together in your mind, and helping other people fit them together in their minds, is Philosophy.  If all those ideas fitting together in your mind tell you there’s something wrong in the world that we need to change, that leads to Activism.   

What would happen if teenage activists joined what Greta Thunberg started and had school strikes every Friday?  What would happen if every week they held a dance party in front of their school, where the lyrics of the music spelled out a better education than they were getting in school?  

Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics, Activism, Philosophy, and Education spells STEAM APE.  This isn’t just education for the 21st century.  This is education with a beat.