Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. STEM is becoming politicized too.
STEM is becoming STEAM.
A = Arts.
Which pretty much covers everything and renders the acronym moot.
All we have left now is the institutionalized grievance industry.
I’ve got my own opinions on the whole STEM push. It’s great if the student is bent toward the technical field, but the untoward push for girls in STEM is kind of dumb.
I used to coach a high school robotics team. The girls on the team seemed to gravitate away from the mechanical toward the promotion and media end of the team. Realistically, it’s just as if not more important to the teams success.
To the authors point about the difference between STEM and liberal arts, my son is an engineering major. At most schools, students dread Calculus. At his school the dreaded class is an Arts class. They have to go to some galleries and an opera. These kids who live in black and white have a hard time describing the “feelings” of an artist who lives in the gray middle. It’s actually kind of funny.
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All the Liberal Arts Majors took Geology or Biology as their Science elective when I was in College.
I took Geology as I was considering Petroleum Engineering and wanted to see if I liked it.
The Rocks were NOT the dumbest items in the class.
If colleges don’t collect $200,000 from students to get a Women’s Studies degree WHO will be serving my coffee?
Coffee tastes ever so sweet when sprinkled with the tears of an unemployable social justice warrior with a massive amount of debt and a master’s degree.
What is actually being argued here is not any innate superiority of the engineering/science curricula, but the dilution and loss of rigor within the humanities curricula. That doesn't actually touch on which is "more important to society".
That dilution is pretty easy to restore, but not in the face of furious resistance on the part of politically inspired culture warriors who mistake rigor and academic discipline for social oppression. These are folks who not only couldn't pass freshman calculus, they're folks who resent being asked to. They don't do very well with Aristotle and Tolstoy, either.
In short, the liberal arts aren't dead, they're as vibrant and vital as ever. The people studying them may be worthy of the topic or not. The difference is that when that happens in engineering, they flunk.
Well you’ve gotta have someone to tax to provide gubbermint jobs for all of those Liberal Arts grads, dontcha now...
There will once again be a place for the liberal arts when they become less “liberal” and more “arts.”
Ignores schools like hillsdale, christendom, etc...
While I have no issue with my students expressing points of view which are 180 degrees out of alignment with my own, I do not allow anyone to spout off a merely ignorant or uninformed opinion, as such an action will result in someone having his or her ideas exposed as both logic and fact-challenged. Some can take this little bit of "real world" analysis well, and some don't; regardless, I firmly believe that everyone learns something from this process, and the process of learning is not a purely pleasant one, especially in its initial, or beginning stages.
Oh, no. Another engineer putting down liberal arts education? Even excellent liberal arts education?
I must read on...
I disagree. As an undergraduate, I majored in physics, and had a strong math minor. However, I was required to take quite a few liberal arts courses. At the time I didn't see the need for them, but since then I've been glad I took them.
Yes, I've done a lot of reading in history, government, economics, etc. since graduating. However, there's a big difference between simply reading something and having an instructor who knows the topic guide you through it. A good instructor already knows what the alternative views are, and can make sure you see all the important ones. Some things are obscure (just as they are in physics or math), and an instructor can help you through those. As an example, about 20 years ago I was dating an English professor. In an effort to please her, I drew out from the library a book by her favorite poet. I had a terrible time with it. She led me through some of the poems line by line, explaining the obscure references and how the poems related to other poems by other writers. I'd never have gotten that without her help.
I would argue that students in STEM majors need the arts -- history, economics, literature, etc. -- in order to understand the culture we live in. Moreover, they can't "get it" by just reading, any more than they can get through a calculus textbook without the aid of an instructor. After they've been properly introduced to the arts, yes, they can continue on their own, just as STEM graduates are expected to continue their development by reading the technical literature of their field. But they need the basic understanding that only an instructor can provide.
Time to stop feeding the socialist, racist beast. College should be of real value to graduates.
There is a certain amount of exaggeration and hyperbole to this.
What I learned of liberal arts in my engineering college can pretty much be summed up in the following entries from an etymological dictionary:If you go around claiming to be wise - if you go around bragging that you are objective - you are an arrogant propagandist. IOW, a Democrat.
- sophist
- 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments.
- philosopher
- O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage."
"Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]