Modularity and interdisciplinarity: Confucian insight for STEM-related disciplines

Abstract

The modularity of the education system is generally geared toward a career-specific path for individual students. While varied subject choices and extracurricular activities can provide students with a rich range of experience, increased specialisation can create a sense of separateness between disciplines which may result in the neglect of engagement between fields which are otherwise mutually informative and insightful. A greater openness to interdisciplinarity would have the benefit of exposing specialists to fresh ways of viewing familiar subjects with a further potential to inform and inspire new and mutually beneficial pathways of education and learning. I illustrate the potential of an interdisciplinary approach in the context of the climate crisis. STEM-related disciplines can draw practical insight from compatible and well-founded philosophical principles e.g. Confucian leadership principles which warn against overconsumption, encouraging the kind of environmental awareness which could avert or mitigate the environmental and societal impact of climate change.