The other day at the country’s airport, a reckless driver crashed into a crowd sending off loved ones, killing two and injuring scores. Photos from the tragic scene indicate bollards meant to keep motorized traffic away from pedestrians failed to protect people from the wayward vehicle.

Like the bridge in Isabela that collapsed last March, the failure of the airport’s protective barriers does not seem to be about flaws in design. Images suggest the vertical posts were installed at ridiculously shallow depths. Similar questions are thus posed: Who approved the plans? How did the installation pass muster, and why?

It’s hard not to think once more of the government’s fixation over STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics). The tragedy at the airport is a reminder of the vacuousness behind the elevation of STEM far above everything else in the nation’s education system. Such ignorant obsession will only push the nation into deeper peril, even as the ignorance will subject so many to more needless harm and suffering.

STEM will not teach integrity, empathy, and transparency. STEM will not teach students to ask who we must build public infrastructure for and why.

STEM will not dwell on the past that can show people today the links between their wretched state and decade after decade after centuries of elite rule.

STEM will not reveal to students today the relentless struggle of generation after generation of unsung, and many times villified—often red-tagged—groups who fought to bring and secure ginhawa for the people: Ginhawa as the goal nameless heroes of our nation fought for to dismantle the yoke of colonialists, imperialists, fascists, and oligarchs. STEM will not inform young people about efforts that continue thanks to selfless communities today lined with workers, farmers, caregivers, vendors, writers, teachers, and artists—and hundreds of thousands of STEM graduates who understand the gifts and talents they've been given are so limited in application when deployed without the humanities and the arts.

STEM will not provide stories of accountability and solidarity, and sorrow and joy, that can remind our people much of the pain—and the small and big triumphs—they encounter is fixable or replicable because of human agency, official indifference, greed, grit, and love.

STEM alone will not encourage young people to look at history to see great acts of care and courage by people who came before them: Individuals who may have been as scared or as hesitant and anxious as they are today but who stood up nonetheless to support their neighbor, to prevent thievery, to stop bullying, to hold and protect the fragile, to look out for the vulnerable and to embrace the defenseless in order to shield them them from brutes and the violence of indifference.

Is STEM enough to learn why and how we can value and protect the bees, beetles, butterflies, birds, and bats that pollinate our forests and gardens, alongside native trees that heal the senses and human ailments?

What has STEM done to stem the tide of coastal plunder? The fixation on STEM can lead to horrible eyesight--our people get angry as they witness foreign companies dredge and cart away thousands of tons of black sand in a province like Zambales, yet they do not seem to see the very officials who have allowed the nation’s resources to be ransacked.

STEM alone might show intricate methods and fine materials used to build the grand mansions of Negros Occidental, perhaps even encouraging touristic dollars and the return to a glory of riches past. But STEM will not reveal concealed heritage--that much of what glitters today in hacendero-land is built on the sweat, blood, and slavery of sacadas and entire communities indentured to the whims of sugarcane barons.

STEM might teach us why the very ecosystems we rely on are under grave threat because of the climate crisis. But it won't teach us why it is NOT humanity as a whole that is at fault, and that the danger we face today is because of wholesale dispossession—that an increasingly tiny few own and consume more and more of the global commons, leaving largely dire impacts for the public to bear.

STEM alone might teach us how to build and harness our renewable energy wealth, but it will not teach us why and how working families can and should benefit most from what we have in abundance. And STEM alone certainly won't teach us why we need to keep hydrocarbons in the ground and under the sea untouched.

STEM on its own won't show why the humongous portion of transport infrastructure should be built for and enjoyed most by the great majority of our people instead of the (scientifically) determined gross minority of private car owners.

The narrow-mindedness that recognizes only STEM leaves in neglect branches of learning required to harness science, technology, engineering, and math for the greater good, through the mycelial network of knowledge and wisdom offered by the humanities and communities of practice rooted in our barrios and neighborhoods, civic groups, indigenous peoples, and communities of faith, song, and care.

STEM is essential to our lives; to claim otherwise is stupid. But STEM is also unequivocally insufficient.

It’s high time we realize one of life’s basic truths: The more STEM we say we need in our education system, the greater should be our demand for more philosophy, more arts, and more poetry.