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I've seen this attitude in engineering majors who have been required to take humanities and liberal arts classes. Maybe such a requirement helps some people, bu

by wl 8y ago

I've seen this attitude in engineering majors who have been required to take humanities and liberal arts classes. Maybe such a requirement helps some people, but I suspect resentment is a more common outcome amongst people already predisposed to devalue the humanities.

minikites 8y ago
I've seen that happen personally, but I think that's a failure of the instructor or the system (or both), not of the subject matter itself. The liberal arts should be fascinating if taught in a compelling way. It's the story about what it means to be a person, which is the only universal activity of humans both present and past.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  Unfortunately, many don't seem to see the point of things as learning "what it means to be a person". They want everything to boil down to a nice engineering problem that, while complex, is solvable with one solution being better/easier. I remember reading an HN post about "Not everything is an engineering problem" and, if I'm not mistaken, the top comment was basically "Like hell it isn't." That's the bigger issue, imo, the mindset we've pushed into people about STEM being the end-all-be-all, and how it's the One True Way, or whatnot. We have, as a group, completely devalued the liberal arts and now are seeing the effects of that and wondering why people don't see the need for them (and I say that as a former STEM-Lord convert).
dorchadas 8y ago
As a physics major who the requirements helped, especially my philosophy courses (an intro one and a Philosophy of Science course), I think a lot of it comes down to teachers, and how the material is presented. It was never presented to me as boring, and the teachers never tried to claim it was more important than science or the end-all-be-all of the future. And all of that eventually led me down the road where I'd rather do more work in the humanities than anything science related, and would love to do humanities/liberal arts research professionally. That said, I think some of the problem is the mindset STEM people are kinda forced into -- one solution, and it has to be a scientific one. It makes the whole world boil down into an engineering problem, and anyone who doesn't like it/doesn't agree can be damned because "look at what science has done"/

by wl 8y ago

minikites 8y ago

I've seen that happen personally, but I think that's a failure of the instructor or the system (or both), not of the subject matter itself. The liberal arts should be fascinating if taught in a compelling way. It's the story about what it means to be a person, which is the only universal activity of humans both present and past.

dorchadas 8y ago
Unfortunately, many don't seem to see the point of things as learning "what it means to be a person". They want everything to boil down to a nice engineering problem that, while complex, is solvable with one solution being better/easier. I remember reading an HN post about "Not everything is an engineering problem" and, if I'm not mistaken, the top comment was basically "Like hell it isn't." That's the bigger issue, imo, the mindset we've pushed into people about STEM being the end-all-be-all, and how it's the One True Way, or whatnot. We have, as a group, completely devalued the liberal arts and now are seeing the effects of that and wondering why people don't see the need for them (and I say that as a former STEM-Lord convert).

dorchadas 8y ago

As a physics major who the requirements helped, especially my philosophy courses (an intro one and a Philosophy of Science course), I think a lot of it comes down to teachers, and how the material is presented. It was never presented to me as boring, and the teachers never tried to claim it was more important than science or the end-all-be-all of the future. And all of that eventually led me down the road where I'd rather do more work in the humanities than anything science related, and would love to do humanities/liberal arts research professionally. That said, I think some of the problem is the mindset STEM people are kinda forced into -- one solution, and it has to be a scientific one. It makes the whole world boil down into an engineering problem, and anyone who doesn't like it/doesn't agree can be damned because "look at what science has done"/