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Counterpoint: some of the weird classes I took in high school / college ended up being useful, or at least more useful than some of my core CS classes. I took

Counterpoint: some of the weird classes I took in high school / college ended up being useful, or at least more useful than some of my core CS classes. I took a Psychology class in high school, and now I understand why people feel and react certain ways, because I can connect back to the concepts I learned. I took a music theory class in college, which is helping me make my own music as a hobby, and also appreciate some songs. In contrast, I am researching programming languages in graduate school, I took an undergrad class on PL, and it barely taught me anything I didn't already know. Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful".

jschwartzi 6y ago
> Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful". I agree with you here, and mostly because we all exist and make decisions in a historical, experiential, and psychological context, and you have to have some knowledge of contexts that are different from yours if you are to have any hope of being an effective leader.
Balgair 6y ago
I'll add my own bit: Best class I ever took was Dinosaur Natural History. A fluff class if there ever was one, but very hard to get a seat in. I really loved the class, but thought it would never really add anything to my life. Because, well, Rexy has been dead a while. I was so wrong. What I learned in the class was mostly the applied basics of biology, geology, and evolution. And presented in such a fun way, I gobbled it all up. Those basics later lead me to a successful career in bioengineering and a dalliance in carbon geology. Like I said, best class I ever took.
- auto 6y ago
  I went to a small liberal arts school (Ursinus) outside of Philly, who I only mention because it was unique in that part of getting your degree required taking CIE, or "Common Intellectual Experience" classes. Freshmen were required to take CIE I and CIE II, and the classes were scheduled such that it not only tried to mix students up between different disciplines, but they were also taught by faculty from every department, just as much a requirement for them as for the students. The classes focused primarily on classic texts, literature, philosophy, all the big religious works, etc. The point, really, was to foster discussion and to get everyone on an even playing field their first two semesters in terms of intellectual discussion, and really picking apart what you're reading, preparing you for the world of research in academia. A key point here is that I don't know a single person, student or faculty, who didn't feel that CIE was extremely worthwhile set of classes, and a pivotal part of our time there. That said, after I & II, there were CIE III classes that would satisfy different electives. One of the best classes I took was CIE III - Capitalism and Democracy. It was taught by one of my math professors, a man I deeply respected and learned a ton from, and I was one of only four students in the class. The semester was basically split up into 5 or 6 chunks, where each chunk took two countries whose basis of government encompassed (even if it was stretch), capitalistic and democratic ideas. So, we'd read papers and book excerpts from economists and political theorists (think Adam Smith, Keynes, Friedman), along with summaries of the countries, and each chunk culminated in a report comparing the two countries implementations of capitalism and democracy, trying to find the intertwining of the axioms laid down by the theorists, and how those two systems of governance and economics evolved in different political spectrums. I was a math and comp sci double major, and am a firmware engineer today, and never dipped my toes anywhere near economics or anything politically related before or after that class, but it's really stuck with me after all these years.

jschwartzi 6y ago

> Bottom line is: we need a system to teach people more things that will probably end up useful and less obscure crap, but it isn't just "teach people whatever their job is and whatever they need to know as an adult, and ignore the social sciences and history because those will never be useful". I agree with you here, and mostly because we all exist and make decisions in a historical, experiential, and psychological context, and you have to have some knowledge of contexts that are different from yours if you are to have any hope of being an effective leader.

Balgair 6y ago

I'll add my own bit: Best class I ever took was Dinosaur Natural History. A fluff class if there ever was one, but very hard to get a seat in. I really loved the class, but thought it would never really add anything to my life. Because, well, Rexy has been dead a while. I was so wrong. What I learned in the class was mostly the applied basics of biology, geology, and evolution. And presented in such a fun way, I gobbled it all up. Those basics later lead me to a successful career in bioengineering and a dalliance in carbon geology. Like I said, best class I ever took.

auto 6y ago
I went to a small liberal arts school (Ursinus) outside of Philly, who I only mention because it was unique in that part of getting your degree required taking CIE, or "Common Intellectual Experience" classes. Freshmen were required to take CIE I and CIE II, and the classes were scheduled such that it not only tried to mix students up between different disciplines, but they were also taught by faculty from every department, just as much a requirement for them as for the students. The classes focused primarily on classic texts, literature, philosophy, all the big religious works, etc. The point, really, was to foster discussion and to get everyone on an even playing field their first two semesters in terms of intellectual discussion, and really picking apart what you're reading, preparing you for the world of research in academia. A key point here is that I don't know a single person, student or faculty, who didn't feel that CIE was extremely worthwhile set of classes, and a pivotal part of our time there. That said, after I & II, there were CIE III classes that would satisfy different electives. One of the best classes I took was CIE III - Capitalism and Democracy. It was taught by one of my math professors, a man I deeply respected and learned a ton from, and I was one of only four students in the class. The semester was basically split up into 5 or 6 chunks, where each chunk took two countries whose basis of government encompassed (even if it was stretch), capitalistic and democratic ideas. So, we'd read papers and book excerpts from economists and political theorists (think Adam Smith, Keynes, Friedman), along with summaries of the countries, and each chunk culminated in a report comparing the two countries implementations of capitalism and democracy, trying to find the intertwining of the axioms laid down by the theorists, and how those two systems of governance and economics evolved in different political spectrums. I was a math and comp sci double major, and am a firmware engineer today, and never dipped my toes anywhere near economics or anything politically related before or after that class, but it's really stuck with me after all these years.