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Education is what has declined. The humanities merely show it more, because they aren't particularly useful for the non-education function of university, namel

Education is what has declined. The humanities merely show it more, because they aren't particularly useful for the non-education function of university, namely, serving as a hoop which when jumped permits your resume to survive the first and most impersonal culling.

gruseom 13y ago
I agree. Education means bringing out that which is within. Training means to pull something along. The one has no particular end state in view, the other is about ensuring specific behaviors or, if you want to be cynical, producing followers. What we call education is really training. The question people typically ask a student about what he/she is studying: "What are you going to do with that?" is more meaningful than it seems.
bane 13y ago
And it's interesting because when I look back at my career, the things that really boosted my position, gave me career flexibility and got me into some very well paying jobs were all skills I learned in the humanities. But I must admit, what made me effective once I was in those positions was what I learned in my technical and science education. I've bounced back and forth from highly technical positions and non-technical positions. Humanities education taught me how to do more than just close out bug reports as a developer, but to see and anticipate the goals the software I was making had. That kind of education helped me see outside of my cube and drive many projects forward and deliver a better piece of software in the end beyond just "accepted because it works as described in the requirements document". In many ways, leading an orchestra with 150 performers in it, synchronized like clockwork, is not much different than leading a team of software developers. You take a complex problem, a score, you break it down into manageable chunks, different groups go off to work on their chunks and you slowly and painstakingly assemble those pieces until you hold a performance/release your software. But technical education allowed me to see how complex systems work, how to think about them and how to optimize them when I've worked in "softer" fields. I found I could often apply a complex and deep rational thinking to non-technical subjects by simply applying the same kind of thinking process to a problem that you'd have to apply to say, writing code to handle a complex data structure on a constrained system. Science training allowed me to weigh evidence, make hypotheses and rationally test and evaluate them...and to deal with high levels of uncertainty, things that my non-technical peers often struggled with. I'm of the opinion that education should be highly well-rounded, without excuses. Technical fields should expose people to great survey's of humanities, and humanities students should spend time studying at least the kinds of theoretical logic technical people need to get around.

gruseom 13y ago

I agree. Education means bringing out that which is within. Training means to pull something along. The one has no particular end state in view, the other is about ensuring specific behaviors or, if you want to be cynical, producing followers. What we call education is really training. The question people typically ask a student about what he/she is studying: "What are you going to do with that?" is more meaningful than it seems.

bane 13y ago

And it's interesting because when I look back at my career, the things that really boosted my position, gave me career flexibility and got me into some very well paying jobs were all skills I learned in the humanities. But I must admit, what made me effective once I was in those positions was what I learned in my technical and science education. I've bounced back and forth from highly technical positions and non-technical positions. Humanities education taught me how to do more than just close out bug reports as a developer, but to see and anticipate the goals the software I was making had. That kind of education helped me see outside of my cube and drive many projects forward and deliver a better piece of software in the end beyond just "accepted because it works as described in the requirements document". In many ways, leading an orchestra with 150 performers in it, synchronized like clockwork, is not much different than leading a team of software developers. You take a complex problem, a score, you break it down into manageable chunks, different groups go off to work on their chunks and you slowly and painstakingly assemble those pieces until you hold a performance/release your software. But technical education allowed me to see how complex systems work, how to think about them and how to optimize them when I've worked in "softer" fields. I found I could often apply a complex and deep rational thinking to non-technical subjects by simply applying the same kind of thinking process to a problem that you'd have to apply to say, writing code to handle a complex data structure on a constrained system. Science training allowed me to weigh evidence, make hypotheses and rationally test and evaluate them...and to deal with high levels of uncertainty, things that my non-technical peers often struggled with. I'm of the opinion that education should be highly well-rounded, without excuses. Technical fields should expose people to great survey's of humanities, and humanities students should spend time studying at least the kinds of theoretical logic technical people need to get around.