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It’s possible that the sample set of anecdotes I base this on is a bit skewed, as I teach undergraduate maths. In my limited experience I had to put a lot more

It’s possible that the sample set of anecdotes I base this on is a bit skewed, as I teach undergraduate maths. In my limited experience I had to put a lot more effort into keeping basic differential calculus in the required freshman curriculum than my colleagues from the English department had to keep the %#^* five-paragraph essay. (Full disclosure, I’ve also taught our “Communications” course because of a misspent youth in an Arts program and work as a technical writer, and my colleagues from the English department supported me in killing the Essay Writing part of the course—-the fight was with government and industry reps who’d swallowed the “soft-skills” pill.)

JadeNB 6y ago
I am also an undergraduate math professor. In our faculty governing body, I had an argument with colleagues in English who, while urging the importance of the written-communication core requirement, since everyone needs to be able to communicate clearly (a claim with which I agree!), also urged removing the quantitative-reasoning core requirement, since that skill is not important to people in the humanities. I can see being defensive about the importance of one's discipline in a society that sometimes seems to deemphasise it, but you'd think that struggle would make one more, not less, sympathetic to the need to keep basic literacy in other disciplines.
- ajarmst 6y ago
  Exactly. Or, for that matter, might make one think that those basic literacies might enhance each other. I clearly remember participating in an Honours Philosophy seminar where we did close studies of works by Russell and Leibniz, and I was literally the only person in the room who had any formal training in Set Theory or Calculus, and one of perhaps three (including the professor) with Symbolic Logic beyond the freshman intro. The idea that such exposure would be valuable in studying “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” or “The Monadology” wasn’t one we were equipped to contemplate, much less address. I also recall that my jokes about imaginary numbers during lectures on Descartes fell pretty flat, but that was probably for the best.

JadeNB 6y ago

I am also an undergraduate math professor. In our faculty governing body, I had an argument with colleagues in English who, while urging the importance of the written-communication core requirement, since everyone needs to be able to communicate clearly (a claim with which I agree!), also urged removing the quantitative-reasoning core requirement, since that skill is not important to people in the humanities. I can see being defensive about the importance of one's discipline in a society that sometimes seems to deemphasise it, but you'd think that struggle would make one more, not less, sympathetic to the need to keep basic literacy in other disciplines.

ajarmst 6y ago
Exactly. Or, for that matter, might make one think that those basic literacies might enhance each other. I clearly remember participating in an Honours Philosophy seminar where we did close studies of works by Russell and Leibniz, and I was literally the only person in the room who had any formal training in Set Theory or Calculus, and one of perhaps three (including the professor) with Symbolic Logic beyond the freshman intro. The idea that such exposure would be valuable in studying “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” or “The Monadology” wasn’t one we were equipped to contemplate, much less address. I also recall that my jokes about imaginary numbers during lectures on Descartes fell pretty flat, but that was probably for the best.