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I don't think it's so much AI that is screwing up the education system as it is the "STEM über alles" crowd doing so. They've spent decades effectively telling

I don't think it's so much AI that is screwing up the education system as it is the "STEM über alles" crowd doing so. They've spent decades effectively telling people that it's the STEM fields that matter most, and any investment in education outside of that is frowned upon because it might detract from learning the important stuff. But the truth is that all of the non-STEM stuff is also important, and in many ways more so than the STEM stuff. I work in a STEM field, and I spend a significant fraction of my time trying to write essays and make coherent arguments; a good class on writing would probably be more useful than any other class actually required for my degree. But now we have AI, which means that these people, who lack appreciation for the value of these classes and consequently don't even really understand what it is they lack, are better able to foist their beliefs in the unimportance of a well-rounded education on the rest of us.

al_borland 1y ago
Soft skills in general are vastly under appreciated. It’s the biggest difference I see between those who excel and those who spend their whole career struggling for even a modest promotion. I will say, it was CIS classes in college which got me to expand on my writing, not English classes. In high school, even with English class every year, I tried to do the bare minimum. It wasn’t until the papers were required to be 25-30 pages long that I was forced to really flesh things out into a narrative, rather that what amounted to a bulleted list shoved into a paragraph. This was a doubled edged sword, as I now find it much more difficult to be concise in my writing, so that takes a focused effort. There is also a lot to be said for finding the intersection between technology and X. Having a well rounded education can provide more opportunities for people to discover where these intersections can foster new growth or innovation. I often wish I went into a non-computer field, so I could have applied technology to the job, rather than technology feeling like the job itself.

al_borland 1y ago

Soft skills in general are vastly under appreciated. It’s the biggest difference I see between those who excel and those who spend their whole career struggling for even a modest promotion. I will say, it was CIS classes in college which got me to expand on my writing, not English classes. In high school, even with English class every year, I tried to do the bare minimum. It wasn’t until the papers were required to be 25-30 pages long that I was forced to really flesh things out into a narrative, rather that what amounted to a bulleted list shoved into a paragraph. This was a doubled edged sword, as I now find it much more difficult to be concise in my writing, so that takes a focused effort. There is also a lot to be said for finding the intersection between technology and X. Having a well rounded education can provide more opportunities for people to discover where these intersections can foster new growth or innovation. I often wish I went into a non-computer field, so I could have applied technology to the job, rather than technology feeling like the job itself.