The Liberal Arts Are Dead; Long Live STEM

The Federalist ^ | 6/2/15 | Thielman

[pabianice]

In recent months, Christopher Scalia in the Wall Street Journal and Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post have defended studying the liberal arts in college, primarily to confront advocates of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Zakaria’s article previewed his new book, “In Defense of a Liberal Education.”

From my perspective as a former engineer, two caveats arise regarding their pleas: first, “liberal” education that involves “critical thinking” disappeared decades ago, to be replaced by hyper-sensitive grievance mongering; second, the quantitative reasoning STEM occupations develops also facilitates the understanding of trade-offs people need to make rational decisions among myriad conflicting policy options. Liberals Have Killed the Liberal Arts

Political correctness has corroded the humanities and social studies, as recently noted by David Patten in The Federalist and last year by Harvey Silverglate in the Wall Street Journal. After rejecting their objective anchors in the academic canon of classical texts, these fields succumbed to passionate group thinking and sybaritic self-absorption. The arts have become a free-for-all, as witnessed by the plethora of departments categorized by identity politics and demands for “trigger warnings” for traumatized souls. (The offending list should include “eigenvectors” and “thermodynamics”—terms that strike engineering sophomores with utmost dread.)

[RFEngineer]

“That dilution is pretty easy to restore”

I think you are partly correct, and partly mistaken.

You are right that enforcing rigor is not that difficult in concept.

However, if you actually sought to restore rigor to humanities curricula, you’d have fewer (a lot fewer) students paying tuition.

“Institutions of Higher Learning” are first and foremost money-siphons - they want paying butts in seats and prioritize that much more than they do the rigor of their curricula.

The mission of Academia today is to fleece the stupid, and accidentally educate the able.

How does restoring rigor fit into this? It doesn’t.

[Billthedrill]

I can’t disagree. Not that the disease is universal. I have a good friend who has returned to school to get his degree in Psychology and is now (I mean, like five minutes ago) lamenting how difficult the research statistics courses are. He has named his professor “Ms Sympathy” and quoted her saying something like, “you can get the concepts without this but you can’t measure whether or not they’re true. What is truth? Truth is, you aren’t getting a degree without passing the course.” I’m guessing she’s used that line before...

[Trentamj]

I teach Philosophy at various colleges and universities located somewhere in the Midwest. Although at least one professor in one of my schools exemplifies everything people are concerned about, in terms of endlessly-obsessing over identity and grievance issues, that is not the way course matters are for every instructor or class. Instead, the student needs to choose their courses and instructors carefully, just as they need to carefully select all the other products or services used in their lives. I run my courses (Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics) on both an objective and logical basis with regard to a widely-recognized and firmly-established classical curriculum. My assessments of student work depends on how well my students understand the material, as well as their ability to coherently relate to it, whether they agree with all the points or not.

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.

[tbw2]

I actually got into that argument with one of my middle-school daughter’s friends.
She was arguing that art makes it beautiful, art is essential to life.
I said we needed STEM to build bridges, have electricity, safe running water. Cavemen had art on the cave walls but not much else, STEM is what got us to where you can sit on a computer doing graphics and blogging.

[miss marmelstein]

Oh, no. Another engineer putting down liberal arts education? Even excellent liberal arts education?

I must read on...

[miss marmelstein]

If your kid is being asked to describe the feelings of Leonardo, your kid is in a piss-poor arts class. But I disagree with the conclusions that the author reaches: that STEM kids can easily complete a liberal arts education program but a liberal arts student cannot do a STEM program. The latter MAY be true but certainly I’ve never met a science or computer or engineering student who had a strong interest in the arts or could speak knowledgeably about it. Just look around at FR and see the absolute lack of interest and knowledge in arts culture - and it’s the engineers generally bragging about that and/or the evangelicals. We don’t even have an intelligent book club here anymore. (We did in the first decade of FR.)

[miss marmelstein]

Philosophy is NOT an easy course. I had a tough time with it and admire people who not only take their degree in it (as Bill Bennett did) but teach it.

[IYAS9YAS]

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.

Careful, that coffee may be sprinkled with more than just those tears if it comes from a social justice warrior.

[cyclotic]

I think it goes to the mindset. In our case, I’ve got two daughters who can go on and on about the motivation of the authors or artists in certain pieces.

My son and me to a great extent just don’t work that way. I had a short story class in college. The professor was all aflutter about the sexual dynamics of the characters. My mind just didn’t work that way, in fact, try as I might, I could not get as perverted as the freak professor was toward the stories.

But, my son did just travel up to NYC to see The Lion King on Broadway last week and truly enjoyed it. He’s a low level geek geek.

My comment was mainly the humor in the “fear” of the arts class among the students.

[JoeFromSidney]

All who desire the knowledge and beauty of humanities past should pursue a broad education. But why should this require a formal education at tremendous cost in time and money that commensurately benefits neither society nor student? Unlike much empirically-based S&E information and mathematically-expressed theoretical instruction, literature, history, anthropology, and much more are amenable to off-sight lectures and written commentary.

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.

[3boysdad]

You forgot the sarc tag.

[JoeFromSidney]

You forgot the sarc tag.

I also forgot to note that he used "sight" when he meant "site."

[SaraJohnson]

Time to stop feeding the socialist, racist beast. College should be of real value to graduates.

[sitetest]

There is a certain amount of exaggeration and hyperbole to this.

[SunkenCiv]

Trigonometry Is Racist!
National Review | February 27, 2015 | KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
Posted on 02/27/2015 5:35:37 PM PST by Steelfish
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3262479/posts

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

What I learned of liberal arts in my engineering college can pretty much be summed up in the following entries from an etymological dictionary:

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]

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.