5 ms·

In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth

8 points by robg 17y ago

gaius 17y ago
There’s a lot more to a liberal education than improving the economy. I think that is one of the worst mistakes that policy makers often make not being able to see beyond that If all you have to offer is intangible benefits, then you are welcome to all the intangible support from the taxpayer you want!
- MikeMacMan 17y ago
  How about fluency in a foreign language? Is that an intangible? How about the ability to write a lengthy, well-cited, well-reasoned paper in English? Is that an intangible skill?
  - gaius 17y ago
    You speak as if no engineering graduates possess these skills.
  - Kadin 17y ago
    Those are fine and exceptionally useful skills in combination with others, but on their own do not offer many opportunities. Someone whose only skill is fluency in a foreign language is limited to working as a translator; someone whose only skill is writing is pretty much limited to working as, unsurprisingly, a writer. I'm not saying that either field is unimportant but they're extremely competitive fields with a high ratio of qualified candidates to good-paying jobs. In contrast, someone with a scientific or engineering degree and fluency in a foreign language or the ability to write well, has a very good chance of never being out of demand. The problem isn't with liberal arts skills, it's with students who pursue them to the exclusion of -- rather than in addition to -- more practical curricula that are actually desired by employers.
    - davidw 17y ago
      Someone who only knows how to code is a lot less valuable than someone who can program and also has knowledge of the big, wide real world.
      - Retric 17y ago
        There is a lot of evidence that this is not the case. People that only know how to program Video Card Drivers can make a fair amount of money. So, people who know how to program and also know about the big, wide real world don't make that much more on average. It can probably marginaly increase their income, but once you make 90k there is not much room for meaningful improvement on average.
    - pookleblinky 17y ago
      One of my VLSI friends lamented about his Gen Ed requirements: "They want me to be a "well-rounded" engineer. Well, I know vector calculus, finite algebra, compiler theory, and enough quantum mechanics to know a little about what's going on under the silicon. Is that not well-rounded enough?"
    - patio11 17y ago
      Someone whose only skill is fluency in a foreign language is limited to working as a translator Foreign language + Generic Office Worker = Extraordinarily Valuable Generic Office Worker as long as you have the right language pair for your employer. One of my best friends sells water meters. You don't have to be particularly expert to start selling water meters on the ground floor, and he wasn't, but after a few decades of it he is fairly good at selling water meters. He is also the only person in metropolitan Nagoya who can explain what a magnetic flowometer is in English, Japanese, and Spanish, and has a career of being flown out to various big customers abroad and explaining how good their flowometers are and why you want to go for magnetic or acoustic instead of the competition's inferior mechanical models.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    Writing lengthy and well cited papers is a bad habit I developed in humanities classes. Your paper must be at least $N pages long, and must cite at least $P primary sources and $S secondary sources. Writing papers which are as concise as possible (without being unreadable) and minimize external dependencies is a skill I learned in math graduate school: Your paper has been automatically rejected due to a length greater than 4 pages. While interesting, your paper will only be accepted if you clarify the following unclear points. I learned more about good english writing (as opposed to writing content-free puffery) from coding than I did from humanities classes.
tjic 17y ago
Speaking as someone who double-majored in computer science and a humanity (history) at a top-tier university, I think that the humanity degree should be firmly classified as entertainment, or enrichment. If you're rich, and have $40 (or $140k) and four years of your life to devote to it, then, by all means, go get a humanities degree. I think that it's just as useful and enriching as spending $140k and four years learning to become an expert windsurfer, or skateboarder, or glass blower. However, for anyone who doesn't consider $140k and 4 years "discretionary entertainment budget", then a humanities degree is a huge waste. People justify humanities degrees as teaching you "how to think" or "how to write". Hogwash. Most engineers that I know think far, far, far better than most humanities majors. The humanities only rarely require critical thinking. Further, they don't even train you, in any real sense, how to reason by analogy or how to write well. At most, they filter the folks who already know how to do these things. Having attended an Ivy League school and seen both types of education, I would not recommend the humanities to anyone other than idle children with trust funds.
- jaytee_clone 17y ago
  So true. I'd been happy if the education system pick a side and either focus on career preparation or humanity enrichment. But nowadays it pretends to do both and failed at them miserably. Thus I can't help but think that the system is just a giant marketing scheme to make $140 off a hardworking family.
  - patio11 17y ago
    I read a very disturbing argument once which comes back to me when discussing what higher ed does and does not do. Paraphrased: "The higher educational system is the only authority in America which is socially permitted to discriminate based on IQ, via entrance requirements. This is pretty useful, and accordingly everyone else pays them astounding amounts of money to do it. Given that they have a monopoly on discriminating based on IQ, they don't need to do anything else well."
    - ekanes 17y ago
philwelch 17y ago
"The humanities" are really something of a grab bag when it comes to categorizing fields of study. When it comes to categorizing the different departments of a university into colleges or whatnot, things like "engineering" and "science" clearly share some type of methodology or otherwise easily fit together. But "humanities" ranges from downright useful stuff like foreign language and history to things like philosophy and English (which can be studied fruitfully but most universities fall short due to some bad fundamental approach like postmodernism) to crap like "ethnic studies" and "women's studies" (identity politics: the department).
- smhinsey 17y ago
  i was debating with myself whether or not history was being included under the humanities umbrella. there is definitely some irony in well educated scientists/engineers loudly proclaiming the futility of the study of history. (as is being done elsewhere in this thread, not necessarily the article)
- ionfish 17y ago
  Do you really think that the study of philosophy in "most universities fall[s] short due to some bad fundamental approach like postmodernism"? I am dubious about this, especially if we drop the 'like'. A couple of (hopefully) enlightening links: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/the_myth_of_the.html http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/the_myth_of_th... http://el-prod.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=453 http://el-prod.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=453
  - philwelch 17y ago
    I used the "like" because most folks only know postmodernism. I actually did my first degree in philosophy and while postmodernism was nowhere to be found, there's enough continental philosophy around to waste everyone's time. My school was very analytic, but from talking to other philosophy students online, analytic philosophy isn't all that popular or well-known among undergrads. I think analytic philosophy is great, though of somewhat more limited interest since it's less amenable to bullshit, grand abstractions, and other bad philosophy. It's also a bit arcane and technical at times. DeRose is a good analytic philosopher and I always enjoy reading him, so thanks for the link. Not that all continental philosophy is crap (existentialism seems interesting and worthwhile) but a lot of it is, and in many circles, a low opinion of Hegel gets you a lot of credit.
ahoyhere 17y ago
A "liberal" education was meant to teach you the tools you needed to grant yourself a free existence... including rhetoric (to both identify and fight against, and use for yourself), critical thinking, analysis, history (things to do and not to do), persuasion, philosophy (self-understanding), and so on. EDIT: These are incredibly valuable, far more than any kind of job-training education. BUT, that's assuming that's what you actually get. Based on my knowledge of universities... that's not what you get.
- biohacker42 17y ago
  My computer science degree required I get a passing grade in a public speaking class.
biohacker42 17y ago
...a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning... It strikes me as obvious that critical thinking ability is best trained with math. Civic and historical knowledge can be learned much like any specific skill can. So it wood seem the humanities are a very round about way of teaching critical thinking. But I think the last paragraph strikes at a core truth rarely spoken out loud: That may be unfortunate but inevitable, Mr. Kronman said. The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.” Within the above paragraph is the hard truth that a humanities education is most often a way to show off class and breeding. Class and breeding are highly correlated with wealth.
- evgen 17y ago
  > It strikes me as obvious that critical thinking ability is best trained with math. Writing a cogent and convincing argument is not a problem that can be solved with linear algebra. Ethics is not the differential equations of competing interests. That you would consider a good math education to be a core component of critical thinking appears to serve as an example proof of why engineers are poorly trained in critical thinking skills.
  - biohacker42 17y ago
    Proving a mathematical theorem is the kind of absolute proof no amount of cogent and convincing arguing will ever touch. Ethics is a set of rules, critically occupied with filtering out simple egoistic urges from greater human goals. I think you're confusing critical thinking with empathy and emotional insight. To understand humans, you have to understand our emotions and that requires empathy. Combine empathy with critical thinking and you can have insights about our emotional lives. Engineers are not poorly trained in critical thinking skills, quite the opposite. Some engineers are very empathic people. A few seem to posses a distinct lack of empathy and little intuition as to how other feel. But those individuals are rare and not confined to engineering. Convincing arguments depend on who you're trying to convince, know your audience. The same argument won't convince engineers and astrologists. Any good engineer has excellent communication skills, they wouldn't be a good engineer otherwise. And cogent convincing arguments are an intimate part of every engineer's life. The study of math, physics, logic, will greatly improve your ability to come up with convincing arguments.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
From the article: The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.” Good Will Hunting rebuts this quite well: You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library. A humanities education is not a luxury that no one can afford. A humanities degree is.

8 points by robg 17y ago

gaius 17y ago

There’s a lot more to a liberal education than improving the economy. I think that is one of the worst mistakes that policy makers often make not being able to see beyond that If all you have to offer is intangible benefits, then you are welcome to all the intangible support from the taxpayer you want!

MikeMacMan 17y ago
How about fluency in a foreign language? Is that an intangible? How about the ability to write a lengthy, well-cited, well-reasoned paper in English? Is that an intangible skill?
- gaius 17y ago
  You speak as if no engineering graduates possess these skills.
- Kadin 17y ago
  Those are fine and exceptionally useful skills in combination with others, but on their own do not offer many opportunities. Someone whose only skill is fluency in a foreign language is limited to working as a translator; someone whose only skill is writing is pretty much limited to working as, unsurprisingly, a writer. I'm not saying that either field is unimportant but they're extremely competitive fields with a high ratio of qualified candidates to good-paying jobs. In contrast, someone with a scientific or engineering degree and fluency in a foreign language or the ability to write well, has a very good chance of never being out of demand. The problem isn't with liberal arts skills, it's with students who pursue them to the exclusion of -- rather than in addition to -- more practical curricula that are actually desired by employers.
  - davidw 17y ago
    Someone who only knows how to code is a lot less valuable than someone who can program and also has knowledge of the big, wide real world.
    - Retric 17y ago
      There is a lot of evidence that this is not the case. People that only know how to program Video Card Drivers can make a fair amount of money. So, people who know how to program and also know about the big, wide real world don't make that much more on average. It can probably marginaly increase their income, but once you make 90k there is not much room for meaningful improvement on average.
  - pookleblinky 17y ago
    One of my VLSI friends lamented about his Gen Ed requirements: "They want me to be a "well-rounded" engineer. Well, I know vector calculus, finite algebra, compiler theory, and enough quantum mechanics to know a little about what's going on under the silicon. Is that not well-rounded enough?"
  - patio11 17y ago
    Someone whose only skill is fluency in a foreign language is limited to working as a translator Foreign language + Generic Office Worker = Extraordinarily Valuable Generic Office Worker as long as you have the right language pair for your employer. One of my best friends sells water meters. You don't have to be particularly expert to start selling water meters on the ground floor, and he wasn't, but after a few decades of it he is fairly good at selling water meters. He is also the only person in metropolitan Nagoya who can explain what a magnetic flowometer is in English, Japanese, and Spanish, and has a career of being flown out to various big customers abroad and explaining how good their flowometers are and why you want to go for magnetic or acoustic instead of the competition's inferior mechanical models.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Writing lengthy and well cited papers is a bad habit I developed in humanities classes. Your paper must be at least $N pages long, and must cite at least $P primary sources and $S secondary sources. Writing papers which are as concise as possible (without being unreadable) and minimize external dependencies is a skill I learned in math graduate school: Your paper has been automatically rejected due to a length greater than 4 pages. While interesting, your paper will only be accepted if you clarify the following unclear points. I learned more about good english writing (as opposed to writing content-free puffery) from coding than I did from humanities classes.

tjic 17y ago

Speaking as someone who double-majored in computer science and a humanity (history) at a top-tier university, I think that the humanity degree should be firmly classified as entertainment, or enrichment. If you're rich, and have $40 (or $140k) and four years of your life to devote to it, then, by all means, go get a humanities degree. I think that it's just as useful and enriching as spending $140k and four years learning to become an expert windsurfer, or skateboarder, or glass blower. However, for anyone who doesn't consider $140k and 4 years "discretionary entertainment budget", then a humanities degree is a huge waste. People justify humanities degrees as teaching you "how to think" or "how to write". Hogwash. Most engineers that I know think far, far, far better than most humanities majors. The humanities only rarely require critical thinking. Further, they don't even train you, in any real sense, how to reason by analogy or how to write well. At most, they filter the folks who already know how to do these things. Having attended an Ivy League school and seen both types of education, I would not recommend the humanities to anyone other than idle children with trust funds.

jaytee_clone 17y ago
So true. I'd been happy if the education system pick a side and either focus on career preparation or humanity enrichment. But nowadays it pretends to do both and failed at them miserably. Thus I can't help but think that the system is just a giant marketing scheme to make $140 off a hardworking family.
- patio11 17y ago
  I read a very disturbing argument once which comes back to me when discussing what higher ed does and does not do. Paraphrased: "The higher educational system is the only authority in America which is socially permitted to discriminate based on IQ, via entrance requirements. This is pretty useful, and accordingly everyone else pays them astounding amounts of money to do it. Given that they have a monopoly on discriminating based on IQ, they don't need to do anything else well."
  - ekanes 17y ago

philwelch 17y ago

"The humanities" are really something of a grab bag when it comes to categorizing fields of study. When it comes to categorizing the different departments of a university into colleges or whatnot, things like "engineering" and "science" clearly share some type of methodology or otherwise easily fit together. But "humanities" ranges from downright useful stuff like foreign language and history to things like philosophy and English (which can be studied fruitfully but most universities fall short due to some bad fundamental approach like postmodernism) to crap like "ethnic studies" and "women's studies" (identity politics: the department).

smhinsey 17y ago
i was debating with myself whether or not history was being included under the humanities umbrella. there is definitely some irony in well educated scientists/engineers loudly proclaiming the futility of the study of history. (as is being done elsewhere in this thread, not necessarily the article)
ionfish 17y ago
Do you really think that the study of philosophy in "most universities fall[s] short due to some bad fundamental approach like postmodernism"? I am dubious about this, especially if we drop the 'like'. A couple of (hopefully) enlightening links: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/the_myth_of_the.html http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/the_myth_of_th... http://el-prod.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=453 http://el-prod.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=453
- philwelch 17y ago
  I used the "like" because most folks only know postmodernism. I actually did my first degree in philosophy and while postmodernism was nowhere to be found, there's enough continental philosophy around to waste everyone's time. My school was very analytic, but from talking to other philosophy students online, analytic philosophy isn't all that popular or well-known among undergrads. I think analytic philosophy is great, though of somewhat more limited interest since it's less amenable to bullshit, grand abstractions, and other bad philosophy. It's also a bit arcane and technical at times. DeRose is a good analytic philosopher and I always enjoy reading him, so thanks for the link. Not that all continental philosophy is crap (existentialism seems interesting and worthwhile) but a lot of it is, and in many circles, a low opinion of Hegel gets you a lot of credit.

ahoyhere 17y ago

A "liberal" education was meant to teach you the tools you needed to grant yourself a free existence... including rhetoric (to both identify and fight against, and use for yourself), critical thinking, analysis, history (things to do and not to do), persuasion, philosophy (self-understanding), and so on. EDIT: These are incredibly valuable, far more than any kind of job-training education. BUT, that's assuming that's what you actually get. Based on my knowledge of universities... that's not what you get.

biohacker42 17y ago
My computer science degree required I get a passing grade in a public speaking class.

biohacker42 17y ago

...a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning... It strikes me as obvious that critical thinking ability is best trained with math. Civic and historical knowledge can be learned much like any specific skill can. So it wood seem the humanities are a very round about way of teaching critical thinking. But I think the last paragraph strikes at a core truth rarely spoken out loud: That may be unfortunate but inevitable, Mr. Kronman said. The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.” Within the above paragraph is the hard truth that a humanities education is most often a way to show off class and breeding. Class and breeding are highly correlated with wealth.

evgen 17y ago
> It strikes me as obvious that critical thinking ability is best trained with math. Writing a cogent and convincing argument is not a problem that can be solved with linear algebra. Ethics is not the differential equations of competing interests. That you would consider a good math education to be a core component of critical thinking appears to serve as an example proof of why engineers are poorly trained in critical thinking skills.
- biohacker42 17y ago
  Proving a mathematical theorem is the kind of absolute proof no amount of cogent and convincing arguing will ever touch. Ethics is a set of rules, critically occupied with filtering out simple egoistic urges from greater human goals. I think you're confusing critical thinking with empathy and emotional insight. To understand humans, you have to understand our emotions and that requires empathy. Combine empathy with critical thinking and you can have insights about our emotional lives. Engineers are not poorly trained in critical thinking skills, quite the opposite. Some engineers are very empathic people. A few seem to posses a distinct lack of empathy and little intuition as to how other feel. But those individuals are rare and not confined to engineering. Convincing arguments depend on who you're trying to convince, know your audience. The same argument won't convince engineers and astrologists. Any good engineer has excellent communication skills, they wouldn't be a good engineer otherwise. And cogent convincing arguments are an intimate part of every engineer's life. The study of math, physics, logic, will greatly improve your ability to come up with convincing arguments.

yummyfajitas 17y ago

From the article: The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.” Good Will Hunting rebuts this quite well: You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library. A humanities education is not a luxury that no one can afford. A humanities degree is.