Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous 397
HughPickens.com writes According to an op-ed by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post, if Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country's education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills, expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities. "It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher." But according to Zakaria the dismissal of broad-based learning, however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts — and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future.
As Steve Jobs once explained "it's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough — that it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing." Zakaria says that no matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write and cites Jeff Bezos' insistence that writing a memo that makes sense is an even more important skill to master. "Full sentences are harder to write," says Bezos. "They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking." "This doesn't in any way detract from the need for training in technology," concludes Zakaria, "but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out — yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all, study the human condition."
As Steve Jobs once explained "it's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough — that it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing." Zakaria says that no matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write and cites Jeff Bezos' insistence that writing a memo that makes sense is an even more important skill to master. "Full sentences are harder to write," says Bezos. "They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking." "This doesn't in any way detract from the need for training in technology," concludes Zakaria, "but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out — yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all, study the human condition."
Oh the humanity! (Score:3, Funny)
That's about it.
Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:5, Insightful)
All I know is that I tested out of all of my humanities credits when working towards a degree
My daughter is going to college to become an English teacher.
I think that it is to spite me, but I bet that she'll be working as a tech trainer before long
To be honest, the sheer mass of the US student body pretty much guarantees that even the hardest push towards STEM education will only result in a small percentage of students really moving in that direction.
I only wish that most of the HR and Sales types that I gather requirements from had some baseline exposure to logic :/
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Logic is taught in the philosophy department.
Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:4, Interesting)
Many colleges have a Philosophy degree in the Computer Science department
https://www.cis.ksu.edu/phd [ksu.edu]
I learned logic from NAND gates and RPN in my first year of an EE program, ymmv
Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:4, Insightful)
You learned predicate calculus.
NAND gates won't point out to you the fallacious thought traps to which the human brain is susceptible.
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Yes, that's true about a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science. However, you'd have to be daft to think of that as a true philosophy degree.
Just for the record, I taught the graduate level sequence in first order logic and recursion theory at a major university for two years. I'm very well aware of philosophy depts. and logic. Check out Stanford's program sometime.
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Re:Oh the humanity! (Score:4, Insightful)
I started programming at age 10 on a Vic-20. By high school (1987) I wanted nothing to do with literature classes, but I had it crammed down my throat that one needed to be well rounded, and science and mathematics just weren't enough (I didn't go to Catholic school, so that isn't a literal cramming down my throat). Then came the magnet schools, and their more targeted programs; but alas, it was too late for me.
My opinion: Kids need to be well rounded coming out of high school. Writing should be emphasized more, based on the writing quality of my peers and those younger than me. What we need to change is the idea that we must go to college, and that trade jobs are for blue collar people.
I fear we have created a chasm between the college and no-college crowd, and a strict division of college and no-college jobs. College people largely end up with high-level skills; no-college people end up with practical skills that used to be viewed as essential. We college people have divested ourselves of having to truly know that world. We consume at a level that allows us -- and sometimes even requires us -- to live in blissful ignorance.
In conclusion: Take your college degree and learn how to make your own sausage. Or bread (without a machine). Or soap. Or operating system.
Your illogical narrative does not compute (Score:5, Funny)
Every field must be rendered to it's logical axioms in order to allow computers to perform every task. Tasks that cannot be computerized are obsolete and are to be re-designed for computer processing. Your so-called "human" skills are an impediment to this future and are thus required to be eliminated.
Re:Your illogical narrative does not compute (Score:5, Funny)
My computer beat me at chess... but I beat it at kickboxing.
some twilight zone at you (Score:2)
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You don't think I am a computer program, do you ?
No. You are an erratic biochemical reaction.
You are being a bit negative.
Any useful action you might perform can be better done and more efficiently done by a machine.
Don't you think computers can help people ?
You have, therefore, no function.
What are your feelings now ?
You are OB...SO....LETE
Does it please you to believe I am OBSOLETE ?
Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Insightful)
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I thought this would be a similar economic argument: 74% of STEM majors don't work in STEM fields, but instead in services (fast food), retail, social services (trashmen) or as aids running papers back and forth. I've made such arguments to illustrate why we need to dismantle the government's activities in post-K-12 education and leave workforce building up to the market, using this STEM market glut as a prime example.
They made a more humanizing argument which I can't disagree with. Both arguments are
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Insightful)
... using this STEM market glut as a prime example.
People with STEM degrees have lower unemployment, and higher salaries. To say there is a "glut" relative to humanities is silly.
the ability to deal with people, to write well, to communicate, to create, these are also important job skills.
They are indeed important skills. But they are not "humanities". Sitting through a lecture on philosophy or sociology does not make one a better communicator, or better able to deal with people.
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People with STEM degrees have lower unemployment, and higher salaries. To say there is a "glut" relative to humanities is silly.
People with STEM degrees tend to be more affluent, thus more articulate, than poor, inner-city negroes who nobody likes anyway. They can pass an interview at Burger King better than a fourth-generation-welfare black kid. If we fixed our school systems--if we adjusted schools in our poorest cities to attend to the needs of the poverty-stricken minorities they service--such individuals would grow up poor and without a college education, but articulate, sociable, and on the same footing as middle-class engi
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In general, most people end up doing something that's fairly agreeable to them, which means they have an interest and somehow get the skills (thru classes and/or on the job training). Because we have a diversity of interests, we'll end up with a diversity of education/workers
Sure, there will always be bubbles as peop
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Interesting)
Which they all did not because they had any real interest in furthering art, philosophy, or the advancement of culture and ideas but because a they were propagandized in thinking that university education makes sense for 'everyone'.
I am on what might be considered the leading edge of the millennials (I was born in the early 80s). I got out of school mostly before everyone started shouting "STEM STEM STEM" in my day the mantra was "college prep, college prep.." if you were a kid and even suggested to anyone anywhere you had thoughts about your future that did not include a 4 year degree, they immediately would launch into this diatribe about how you'd never get beyond sweeping the floors anywhere if you did not do so. Plenty of people worked your parents over pretty good too, encase they entertained any while notions about letting you find your own path.
So we ended up with a ton of people in colleges who really had not business being there. They got humanities degrees because those are largely subjective; you can award a degree and not worry about things reflecting poorly on your institution as much. I am sure some will disagree but the fact is that it at least at the undergrad level it is easier to walk out with degree in religious studies or ethics, than mathematics. Lets not forget college is expensive and thanks to the student loan bubble and the need to chase those dollars; I believe, can't prove, that many institutions felt a lot of pressure to issue degrees one way or anything so their graduations rates looked decent. So likely we have tons of humanities and business degree holders out there that were probably never good college candidates in the first place.
Its no surprise these degrees are not valued highly in the market place now. So the solution is to repeat the problem by pushing people into degree programs that are still considered valuable. The result will if anything will be to devalue these degrees.
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for the focus on "get a degree, any degree" is that for some time, that was necessary not for the specific training it provided, but because it showed "I am educated, I can function on this level, I can learn what you need me to learn" to employers. These days, it's not enough, because everyone wants you to already have experience or training.
This is why the focus is shifting to STEM - because that's what businesses are clamoring for more of. But at the same time, a laser-like focus on STEM degrees, or even just specific non-college vocational training programs, are going to leave people worse off. There's a reason universities mandate a core curriculum, because they're supposed to be turning out well-rounded graduates (even if most people just view the mandatory classes as something to be suffered through, not a place to learn something). I see people all the time in my IT sector job that don't have that background, either because they never went to college, or they mostly ignored those classes, and never learned to write in the organized manner that Bezos refers to.
Myself, I earned my BA in History. I then promptly went to work for the one US employer that still takes people based solely on aptitude, and offers to train them (even at great expense) - the US Military. That's certainly not a path for everyone though, or for every field, but I find that it's one that's done very well for me.
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The reason for the focus on "get a degree, any degree" is that for some time, that was necessary not for the specific training it provided, but because it showed "I am educated, I can function on this level, I can learn what you need me to learn" to employers. These days, it's not enough, because everyone wants you to already have experience or training.
I know this absolutely correct, the number of HR droids that reject any resume that does not list a degree is proof of that. I suspect though one of the reasons every once people who already have experience is that the old method using a degree as evidence a person can learn, following instructions, and see a complex project requiring some independent thought through to completion stopped working. The overhead of hiring is around 20% most places, you can't afford to bring people on who don't have a pretty
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:4, Insightful)
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When I read this article this is what I saw. A traditionalist complaining that we don't teach kids arbitrary ancient skiils, like drawn up handwriting, or going to the library, finding a physical book, and lo
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Interesting)
You *can* teach someone to use a computer without having to teach them calculus. Or even pre-calculus for that matter. I know this because I see teenagers using computers every day. They didn't need STEM to teach them how to do it.
Hell, *I* learned to use a computer without any class and what STEM classes we had back then barely used computers as more than glorified graphing calculators. When I did take classes in college, it was because I was already coding, not because I needed the classes to show me how to use a computer.
Even programming is less science and math than simple logic. If you're going to be a coder, do you even need college calc? Sometimes you do, but nowhere I have worked has that been required for anyone except those who work on specific types of software.
I don't value humanities over learning math or science, but math and science isn't where the world is going all by itself. There is a word for people who ignore things like soft subjects, and those are called technocrats. Technocrats are often valuable additions to a society, but they cause unrest because they believe that there is nothing to the human condition other than the application of technology. This is often hilariously, and occasionally horrifically, wrong.
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Ridiculous concept.
Ambulance chasers are top of the heap, and as long as Ambulance chasers make the laws things are going to stay that way.
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Insightful)
The fundamental idea is right...that it is understanding of the human condition that will be the biggest growth area in the next few decades. But he is wrong that this is an argument for training more students in current curriculum in anthropology or classics. The future belongs to people who can take the serious critical thinking characteristic of math, science, and engineering curricula and apply it in complex situations where technical details and human behavior are both important.
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is a quote from the Zakaria article to think about:
'Critical thinking is, in the end, the only way to protect American jobs.'
His implication is that the humanities are a bastion of critical thinking. But when an introductory student is asked to do actual critical thinking where they might be wrong (i.e. introductory engineering, science, and math courses) they often conclude that they would rather go to the arts or humanities where the requirements of critical thinking are not as high.
I broadly agree, but I would like to offer a couple of additional points. Firstly, there are fact-based disciplines within the humanities. Secondly, STEM (especially the technology and engineering parts) can be (mis)taught in a 'how-to' style that is light on critical thinking and in-depth understanding.
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Interesting)
Solving equations and applying them to a requirement isn't "critical thinking". Critical thinking is knowing when and when not to apply those equations where there are no scientific theories to fall back on. The study of humanities can provide something called "perspective", which I find lacking in a lot of otherwise intelligent people who happen to be engineers.
You can be excellent at engineering and make a product that no one wants to use and have your job shipped off to someone who is equally good at logic and solving equations, but whose education is limited to rote learning of STEM with hilarious results when they are faced with a requirement that necessitates the least bit of critical thinking. Around the world, there is no lack of engineers, but you only need to look at the news to see that there is often a catastrophic lack of critical thinking.
Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college, but dropped in to take things like calligraphy courses. You needed good engineers at Apple to make a product, but you needed good designers and people willing to think... uh... differently about problems to make their product valuable to humans above and beyond their immediate technical capabilities. There are people who will buy an iPhone over a more modern and capable Android device because Apple is actually looking at more than pure engineering in making a device. This has generated actual monetary results for them.
I like solving problems that have clear answers and applying those answers. However, I derive a whole lot more satisfaction in what I do by being able to put it into the perspective of history and the human condition. It also helps me understand the people who I am trying to sell a solution to and what makes them tick. We need both people who take STEM seriously, and people who take humanities seriously. What we don't need are people who don't take either of them seriously enough to understand their individual value.
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The second order problem is that actually learning humanities is also hard, so the colleges, in a ploy to get more money, have watered down the humanities to the point where most of our students learn precious little about the humanities.
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:4, Interesting)
Having known people who have gone to art school, art isn't any easier than engineering. It just requires a lot less math, but a lot more skill in actual art.
Art professors are some of the more mercurial individuals you will have the misfortune of meeting in a university setting. Some are great teachers, and then some like to take your project and light it on fire on your easel to make their point. While petting their small dog who is brought to class every day and likes to nip at the students. I wish that was just an exaggeration.
This, so that he or she can go out into the world and go work for Hallmark or some corporation like and make no money while having to mass produce "art".
Personally, if he doesn't want to study something requiring a degree, and he isn't actually any good at art, send him to trade school so he can learn something that isn't "hard", but will allow him to actually make enough money to take art classes on his free time if he likes it.
Art is *not* a waste of a $100k college tuition, but it IS a waste of money if you just think it is an easy out to a college degree and you have no talent. You might as well get your 2.0 GPA in Engineering and have a piece of paper worth the ink used to print it.
Re:Way too many humanities majors (Score:5, Interesting)
I dropped Art in my junior year because it was TOO HARD.
Physics was way easier... read the book, take the test, done.
Art required creativity, research, brainstorming, craftsmanship, and a tough skin (because your work gets critiqued).
Today I'm a software engineer.
Everything useful I learned in college I learned in art class.
This is going to go over well. (Score:2)
I am eager to see the kind of responses this headline is going to generate here, where STEM is the bread and butter of most of the userbase.
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Wait, we can have bread AND butter?!
But I like toast and jam.
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illiterate application essay's
The irony.
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Yep, AC had me at, 'as important as have a good understanding'...
FWIW, I learned as much about economics from 'The System of the World' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_the_World_%28novel%29) as I did an MBA program
Interjecting knowledge transfer into entertainment, instead of foisting ridiculous misunderstandings and bullshit, would go a long way to bettering our society
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Instead, Mathematics and Engineering were the same until about the end of the 18th century, and then began to split because of the huge body of knowledge which made specialisation a necessity. But the greatest mathematicians of the 18th century were engineers and mechanics at the same time. Most of the french mathematicians of the time were soldiers studying such topics like artillery tr
Broken thinking... (Score:2)
If you can master technical skills and complex math, overwhelming data suggests that you have also learned to read and think, and on the path to proving your competence have also managed to write clearly. I really don't think that's the loss. The best argument is creative losses from lacking a broad background in other cultures, ideas and in some cases lack of historical reference. It's not clear to me to what degree this really helps 99% of the STEM workforce though.
The only career I know of where being ab
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Re:Broken thinking... (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience this is not the case. The ability to handle math does suggest the ability to think and analyse, however, it does not follow that you have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Much too often I run into co-workers who are technically very smart, but cannot even write an understandable email. Their emails are a series of long run-on sentences, often with little to no punctuation. At the end of reading them I'm often left wondering what they were trying to say.
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Music integrates math and advanced pattern recognition, skills that come in handy for a software developer.
Music as an art we know is open to interpretation but study music theory which incorporates strict mathematical structure and patterns.
Almost agree (Score:4, Insightful)
What we have today is a severe problem with our education system as a whole. Classical education has been completely dumped, and people are learning how to believe everything they are told by a person in authority. The fix is to revert to the classical system of education, but with the people holding all the power in Government it won't happen. Remember, they want workers.. not thinkers.. STEM requires the latter, not the former.
Where I mostly agree is that the mastery of things like Math is important. I'll argue that so is communication, critical thought, rational discourse and dialogue, and science that has math as the foundation. Read back 100 years and look at "how people learned" and you will see the difference. Also remember, the US Government moved us over about 40 years from a "Classical Education" system to the Prussian designed "Industrial Education" system. The selling point of the Prussian system was that it is good enough to make artillery guys smart enough to target enemies of the State, stupid enough to never question their orders.
The Classical system started with the fundamentals. Reading, Writing, Basic Math, and basic rhetoric (simple fallacy, simple debate). As math improved, physics was introduced. As rhetoric improved, so did the critical thought exercises (Philosophy). Trig was introduced with Music so that you can see how trig works with musical notes. Physics was introduced with Algebra, complex physics with Calculus. It was a continuous system of improvement. Private schools still use this system, go figure..
Compare that system to what we have currently, which is kids learning how to take tests and give predetermined answers. Kids spend almost half of every school year learning to test and taking tests on average. Poor results means more time testing. All of this means that they can't learn, and are under so much pressure that the few lessons they have are useless.
Selling "STEM" is a crock on just about every level. A EE grad that can only use Matlab/Simulink and can't design a circuit by hand really does not understand EE. But they sure did pass a test on Matlab.
Only need one Steve Jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
You only need only Steve Jobs to design the outside. You need thousands of engineers to build the hardware and write the code. The engineers don't need liberal arts background.
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Apple only counts for money made.
What a load of garbage.
I love OS/X but the latest round of Apple hardware shows what happens when the "designers" run the show.
New Mac Pro... Stuck with Ivy Bridge CPUs when Haswell-e CPUs are out. GPUs are good but not near the best you can get plus no Nividia option for Cuda.
Mac Book line. You can not upgrade the ram and can not upgrade the SSDs. Prices for SSDs are going down but if you need more you have to buy a new notebook.
Apple is making money hand over fist but RIM
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Actually according to the New Yorker's Jony Ive profile, Apple requires that all its employees, engineers included, have an eye for design. They won't hire you if you're borderline autistic. And when a designer (one of Ive's team) walks into a meeting it's like a high priest has graced the peons with his presence. Everything at Apple is done with deference to form and design. For example, this is probably why the original Macbook Air (and now the new Macbook) had only one USB port, until widespread crit
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Do you have a better plan ?
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Perhaps grads could be harvested for their meat
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All the engineers Steve Jobs uses are in the western world, mostly Cupertino. He uses Asia, primarily for manufacturing. Manufacturing being the primary consumer of unskilled labor with minimal education, which would otherwise help put the excess of humanities majors we produce in the US to work and help them pay off college loans.
Re:Only need one Steve Jobs FTFY (Score:2)
Those CHEAP engineers are all in Taiwan etc
Wild assertion (Score:2)
if Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country's education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills, expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities
I'm pretty sure that's far down on the list of convictions that people in the United States are united on. More like a fad that's popular in some circles.
Re:Wild assertion (Score:4, Insightful)
It's primarily popular amongst the circles that want to solve the "problem" of high wages in STEM by attempting to saturate the market, since they're getting push back on the H1-B and overseas design center angle.
Balance is the key (Score:5, Insightful)
Like everything else in this country, people seem to have this pathological need to take things to extremes. The neglecting of STEM subjects in schools was a problem that needed to be fixed. In the past, we have given far too much credence to the notion that you can just study focused subject to the exclusion of all else and you'll be a success. Trouble is, we have too many people who studied nothing but transgender religious environmental studies and now they wonder why they can't get a job.
So naturally, the knee jerk reaction is to swing the pendulum all the way to STEM at the expense of a broad education. And that's just as bad.
Yes, we do need to increase the amount of STEM training we provide to our students. But only insofar as we eliminate the neglect those topics have suffered. And we cannot justify neglecting the other subjects. Having students understand the basic concepts in STEM fields is just as important as understanding the significance of the major events in history and understanding the basic classical themes in literature, not to mention the need to know how to communicate effectively in speech as well as in writing. They are all pieces in a greater whole. Neglecting any of the pieces reduces the whole.
Re:Balance is the key (Score:4, Interesting)
Like everything else in this country, people seem to have this pathological need to take things to extremes.
I don't think it's about "going to extremes" per se, but people have the expectation and demand for a single solution and a single "right answer". They're looking for a "correct belief system" that can't be challenged and will never require revision. They're looking for "the correct thing to study in school" to the exclusion of all other topics, which should guarantee you a good, easy job that makes you rich. They're expecting there to be a "correct place to invest your money" which will return large profits every year with no risk whatsoever. They want a "correct diet" where they can eat some specific combination of foods that will make them always healthy and in-shape.
And those things don't really exist. They can't exist. But a bunch of people get convinced that they've the "correct" belief system, they run around trying to get rid of all of the other ones. Someone tells us the "correct" field to study is law, and then we end up with a glut of lawyers. We hear on the news that the "correct" place to invest your money is home ownership, and we get a housing boom followed by economic collapse.
"Going to extremes" is the result. "Wanting easy answers" is the problem.
Follow the money (Score:2)
The absolute destruction of unions (yes, they were never perfect, but...) and the 'Walmarting' of tech jobs all done to bring about Gilded Age 2.0.
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STEM *is* Humanities (Score:3)
Anyone who believes that STEM education is purely about learning equations and diagrams does not get it.
STEM is about organizing ones thoughts for clarity, something "humanities" strives to do, and in trying, often misses the mark by a wide berth.
Science is about creating a hypothesis, devising a sensible test, and understanding the results fully, in complete context.
Technology is about organizing complex systems, the attributes of each piece, their interrelations, and understanding how to modify and improve the overall system. Whether it is a mechanical machine, a computer network, or a community of people, studying technology is studying organization. This is the same goal as sociology, but done better.
Math is about taking a complex problem, reducing it into component pieces, addressing each one properly, and combining the individual results back into an overarching conclusion, just as a well written essay would do.
The best engineers are humanities students. Not because they also took liberal arts classes in college, but because they understand that Engineering is far more than solving math problems.
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Math can't be that logical if you can use imaginary and irrational numbers to solve a problem.
Two separate issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Liberal Arts education is valuable. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the real problem is not the number of people getting a generalized liberal arts degree vs the number of people getting a STEM degree.
Both of those degrees are expensive and worth it.
Nor is it the number of people getting what I will call the specialized non-stem degree.
Prime examples of this would be "Hotel Management", "Sociology", "Graphic Designer", "illustrator", "Teaching."
Note, this is not an insult to those fields. The world needs people with those skills. But if you want to be a teacher, get a BA in English or Mathematics, or Biology, not in teaching. My sister has a Masters in sociology - a well worth it. But as a College level degree, it is worthless. You can't get a job as a Sociology Major, nor does it help you get into a Masters Program more than a degree in Psychology. No on goes looking for a painter with an Illustrator degree, they look for a painter that paints WELL.
Some of these 4 year degrees would do much better as a 2 year program. Others should simply get a liberal arts 4 years BA and then get work or go into a post-grad study. Some should never go to college at all, better to get some real life experience.
The problem is that certain job fields have NO business getting a 4 year degree in that subject. There is reason to learn how to lift off an airplane if you don't also learn how to land it. Four year programs for certain things make no sense.
The problem is people have been caught up in the idea that a College education is the be all and end all. So we took a bunch of regular jobs that don't need or want a BA and created BA's for them. Some of them need Post-Grad work, others could get by on a couple of Community College courses, rather than spending the huge amount of money for a BA.
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That's if the point of an education is to get a job. The point of a liberal arts education is not to get a job, but to have a well-rounded background in many areas and capable of a depth of thought. Many things in the world are not as they appear on the surface. That you may find a job given that education would be a wonderful thing, but it isn't the point.
I would argue the point of a STEM education is also somewhat misguided. The point it to be proficient in a particular field or more than one field. The f
Re:Liberal Arts education is valuable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Side effect of propaganda. (Score:2)
Liberal Arts (Score:2)
We Need To Trust Students (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for maybe hardcore nerds, I've noticed most people in STEM actually are very interested in Liberal Arts ( Literature, Music, Anthropology, History, Graphical Arts, ...) and enjoy experiencing and learning about it on their own time. Of those people who were into STEM in high-school, most achieved higher grades in the Liberal Arts courses given in high school than the so called liberal arts students.
I am one of those people. I absolutely hated the required dumbed-down intro liberal arts classes, but on my own time, I find myself wanting to pick up history books or dabble further in languages more than the 101 level here and there. I found that many of my peers in the math and sciences had some similar part of the liberal arts they were interested in.
Many liberal arts students like to read up on science too. They unfortunately read the pop-sci books that are not always very good (I found myself fielding questions from friends regarding 11-dimensions and quantum theory that didn't make a whole lot of sense, for example), but I think they were interested too. Again, when they could dabble on their own, and not be forced to take a boring intro class.
We need to trust that people in college deserve to be there and are smart enough to make their own decisions (particularly when knowledgeable professors are around for guidance), and let them tool their own curricula based on interest rather than stupid requirements.
Personally... (Score:2)
Fails to really make its point (Score:2)
I started to read TFA, but it started to ramble and loose focus. Something, blah, blah, critical thinking, something, something, poor standing on international tests in the STEM fields – it seems to whiplash back and forth contradicting itself.
Teaching is hard. Sure education needs to be well rounded.
That said, STEM will be more and more important going forward for the majority wanting a good paying job. Guess that sucks for the humanities majors. Life’s not fair sometimes. I suspect we ca
Go to a Liberal Arts school... (Score:2)
This is why I think it's important for STEM majors to go to a liberal arts school. A school that forces you to do a number of credits from different faculties and will force you to take courses in the social 'sciences,' arts, literature, history philosophy, religion, anthropology, etc. I would also agree with the comments on writing. Too often these days I run into people who cannot compose a cogent email let alone a memo or document. While technical skills are very important, leadership and communications
No room in the curriculum (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I think it's important for STEM majors to go to a liberal arts school. A school that forces you to do a number of credits from different faculties and will force you to take courses in the social 'sciences,' arts, literature, history philosophy, religion, anthropology, etc.
I have an engineering degree and the college I went to had a general philosophy of trying to make "well rounded" engineers by forcing us to take various liberal arts courses. I don't have an issue with the general idea but I can tell you from first hand experience that colleges that try this almost invariably fail miserably at it. Mine certainly did. I got a great engineering education but humanities? Not so much.
I can assure you that the random smattering of non-STEM courses I took as college grad did not meaningfully expand my mind. I'm kind of a naturally curious person and I learned far more about humanities outside of classes than I ever did in a formal classroom. Forcing engineers to take a few randomly-chosen-whatever-fits-my-schedule courses really doesn't accomplish much. The problem isn't with the concept of learning about disparate subjects, the problem is with the execution of that plan. Learning about engineering by necessity takes up a HUGE amount of the credit hour budget for a degree. There simply isn't a lot of left over curriculum space for a meaningful humanities education to fit in. I do not really see how a school could deliver both a quality engineering AND humanities education in the same four years.
STEM + Critical Thinking is what's needed (Score:2)
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Best way to learn critical thinking is by studying science.
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I'd say that the best way to learn how to think critically is by studying math, which teaches your brain how to structure your critical thinking. That said, the data you are going feed into that structure needs to come from a broad and relevant set of data and some understanding of the structure of that data or at least the underlying relevant drivers. That input is going to come from a liberal-arts education, not a STEM education.
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I should have said 'the data you are going to create a structure or framework from' needs to come from a broad and relevant set of data....
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That said, the data you are going feed into that structure needs to come from a broad and relevant set of data and some understanding of the structure of that data or at least the underlying relevant drivers.
You're describing the scientific process.
Original author? (Score:2)
Was this a Fareed original, or yet another of his pieces of plagiarism?
STEM is well and good (Score:2)
But unless we stop trying to kill manufacturing in this country and make certain there is the framework to provide jobs, we might as well just throw the effort away.
Without the jobs that demand it, you might as well create a generation that has enhanced student debt.
Innotive frameworks (Score:2)
I find that a lot of the open-source software/frameworks that I use seem to be written in North America and Europe, where there still seems to be a focus on broader education than STEM-obsessed India and China. In my experience, the people with new and interesting ideas are often people who have a wide variety of knowledge that they can drawn on.
Specializing to the point of shunning other fields is the domain of technicians. There's nothing wrong with being a technician, but generally they are not the ones
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North America and Europe, where there still seems to be a focus on broader education than STEM-obsessed India and China
Seeing how the other day, there was a big news item about massive cheating in India, it's debatable whether they are obsessed with STEM, or just the diploma. Never once in my education did I ever have the desire to cheat, even if I could have gotten away with it.
I find author's "facts" dubious (Score:5, Informative)
From the linked piece...
And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.
When I travel especially in Asia, (read China, South Korea, Singapore etc), I find better employment of technology than in USA right from the airport! This technology isn't necessarily American at all!
What I find we Americans have, is the view that we are at the epitome of the best. You can't compare the subway system in NY to that in Shanghai in terms of deployed tech for example! NY is in the dark ages. I know because engineers from NY go to Shanghai to "learn" how things are done on such scale.
The Koreans have come to dominate ship building not using western tech, but their home grown solutions to enormous problems.
What I find is that we in America are really one confident lot, right from school kids. We also have a spirit of "self congratulation." But trust me, those Asian folks beat us in many ways.
Re:I find author's "facts" dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
From the linked piece...
And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.
When I travel especially in Asia, (read China, South Korea, Singapore etc), I find better employment of technology than in USA right from the airport! This technology isn't necessarily American at all!
What I find we Americans have, is the view that we are at the epitome of the best. You can't compare the subway system in NY to that in Shanghai in terms of deployed tech for example! NY is in the dark ages. I know because engineers from NY go to Shanghai to "learn" how things are done on such scale.
The Koreans have come to dominate ship building not using western tech, but their home grown solutions to enormous problems.
What I find is that we in America are really one confident lot, right from school kids. We also have a spirit of "self congratulation." But trust me, those Asian folks beat us in many ways.
"I find author's facts dubious" sums up your comment rather nicely. Other (asian) nations might appear to be technological leaders because their airports are new and shiny (at least, the one airport at the capitol that you visited) and that's all well and good but as soon as you get away from the metropolis you see where the actual differences lie: in the US you have technology accessible to nearly 100% of the population, in terms of cost and functionality. That shit ain't easy. In developing countries, the upper half (maybe) can afford it, but the lower half live without even reliable electricity, much less a computer to grant them access to rich information/education/entertainment/etc.
Re:I find author's "facts" dubious (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy is missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Also it tends to be the muddy thinking of the humanities that can drive horrible disasters of thinking. Things like trickle down economics had pretty much zero real math behind it. Plus many of the worst dictators in history had humanities and/or arts educations along with many of their worst henchmen. Things like the scientific method are critical to great political policy making, not law degrees where rhetoric and finding a misplaced comma in a written law lets your serial killer client skate on the charges.
Often when horrible things happen and science gets blamed it is actually an artistic interpretation of science at the source. Eugenics would be a perfect example of simpletons applying their interpretation of science.
A great example of this sort of crap would be how religious people are trying to drive intelligent design into the education system through a terrible interpretation of how science works.
I have zero problem with having someone with a hard core arts degree have some input on the building of a bridge in things like choosing he colours or picking from a group of equal designs, but I really really don't want them designing he whole thing and then having the engineers find a kludge that might keep it from falling down.
But where this guy really falls down along with many STEM pushing policy makers is that while it would be nice for the average school kid to have a better grasp of the physical world around them what is sorely lacking is a place for kids who can excel at science to thrive. A great example would be my daughter's high school. They have science requirements to graduate; fine. But in a 1,200 kid school there is no science fair this year; yet the school budgeted $50,000 for a football team that generates zero revenue.
What it boils down to are two things. Take all the art out of your life and see how you are living. Now take all the technology out of your life and see how that goes. One interesting factoid is that most people access their art through technology anyway and the art is often massively reliant upon technology for its generation.
STEM is not an either or with art. But art is largely a not without STEM. STEM is the difference between the third world and the first. I think that much of the anti STEM sentiment comes from those jealous that in most cases the arts alone leave you in the economic dust either as a person and especially as a country.
Irony (Score:2)
False dichotomy (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to take a double major, sure, go ahead and get that degree in Medieval French Lit - Just make sure your other major(s) actually makes you qualified to earn a living.
No argument, a humanities degree will go a long way toward making an engineer "well rounded" (I took the double major path myself); but far from having a glut of narrowly-focused STEM professionals on the market, we instead have a staggering preponderance of unemployable college graduates who had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives and saw a liberal arts degree as the path of least resistance. Nothing "noble" about that, and "well rounded" applies to both sides of the fence. All Nietzsche and no Newton makes you just as square as all Calculus and no Yanomami
Now, if you really do want to work as an anthropologist, hey, more power to ya! But don't complain that no one wants to hire you to smoke a lot of weed and ruminate about how much The Man has conspired to keep you down.
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Not a choice (Score:4, Interesting)
Art is expression, science is technology, and philosophy is intuition. The tools of an artist are made with technology. A scientists imagination is powered by expression. And without art or science, what would a philosopher spend their days thinking about?
These divides are mostly for the convenience of being able to hire a specialist and for splitting students into classrooms. At the end of the day, there are no downsides in being proficient in all three.
Here's one way to look at it. Hypothetically, given three candidates, if you need a philosopher, pick whoever scores highest in philosophy. But given all scores are equal, whoever has the highest combined score will be the better philosopher or scientist or artist. None of these takes away from any other, and more often than not, it's where they overlap that is the most interesting, relevant, and progressive.
Expression, technology, and intuition can be applied to anything, not just to one anther. Take an iPhone. It's built with technology, it's a piece of art, and it was made with a philosophy. Take Barack Obama. He is a master at expressing himself, his political decisions are guided by his intuitions, and technology was key in winning his elections. Take Michael Jordan. His style was all his own, he had awesome sneakers, and his intuitions helped him win his championships -- from when to shoot, when to pass, when to quit, and when to come back.
If you look at anyone who got far in life, it rarely matters where they start, but by the time they get anywhere, you'll see traces of all three.
It's all happened before... (Score:2)
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Unpopular opinion: we need less undergraduates (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people who are in college, shouldn't be attending. They aren't cut out for it (myself included). Once upon a time, most people didn't go to college and instead worked at a mill, factory, and the like when they graduated from high school. They were paid wages that helped keep them afloat as well as give them a good standard of living. This push towards a "service" economy has been nothing more than a cheap attempt to claim that manufacturing jobs aren't as good as white collar service ones. Service careers (including the almighty finance ones) should help service those who actually create things, IE industrialists and blue collar workers.
When you make everyone get a college degree for a dwindling supply of service jobs, you lower the quality of the degree program. STEM degrees are great because those who can't make it flunk. With humanities, so long as you parrot whatever talking point the professor is spouting you will get an A. If you offer a talking point that falls outside of the narrative the professor is pushing, good luck graduating. The humanities used to be the purveyor of rich boys and girls who weren't smart enough to cut it in the real sciences.
And finally, the quality of those liberal arts degrees has declined in a lot of colleges. Humanities degrees are nothing more than Marxist indoctrination diploma mills. The efficacy and not mention ROI on these humanity degree programs is questionable.
Why don't we clean up America's mediocre k-12 system first before we push kids into going to college to discover themselves to the tune of $20-30k per semester. Maybe promote American industry instead of allowing Wall Street to gut it?
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STEM Fosters Structured Thinking (Score:2)
As someone who double-majored in biochemistry and economics and now works as an attorney, I can say that math and science training encourages logical thinking. I am not saying, of course, that all STEM majors are logical dudes, but it definitely encourages consideration of evidence, logical reasoning, and critical thinking.
Who is saying STEM-ONLY? (Score:2)
To my knowledge, nobody is saying that we should teach STEM and STEM only. Of course a complete education is necessary, but a complete education is one that does not fail to teach STEM to students who are interested and proficient at it.
That is the main problem with our education system - there is little or no STEM before late in high school, and by then it is too late.
I was playing with batteries, motors, and a 200-in-one electronic project kit from Radio Shack when I was 5 years old. I got my amateur radi
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Wrong. (Score:2)
He's wrong. Its not that people shouldnt take an interest in humanities, they should. But the engineering student does not need to take thousands of dollars on expensive college courses to do it. You dont need to go to a college to read some books, watch some videos and so on that would give you every bit of information as a college course.
With the rising cost of college, we have to reduce the cost of it and make sure every dollar we are REQUIRED to spend on college is on the job critical information. There
information can be taken; insight must be courted (Score:2)
A degree does not guarantee success. (Score:3)
The problem with tech in numerous countries is that you are only hiring someone with a degree. Um, hello. A degree might be a somewhat safe predictor that the individual might have personal drive and ambition but that is about it. It does not predict whether they are creative or inspired but only that they can follow directions and regurgitate you teach them. They can certainly be a cog in the machine but there is no guarantee that they can lead and inspire others.
Companies need to stop relying solely on recruiting agencies and HR department matrices to weed out potential candidates. You should consider experience. Why would a company keep someone around for a long time and put them in areas of great importance and responsibility if they did not have confidence in their abilities?
Re:Would be nice if they taught Ingrish in schools (Score:4)
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Clearly your "school = fail" example illustrates the need for an intervention in learning and education.
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