Here in Pakistan we had abandoned the liberal arts long ago. Everybody is going with science(STEM). Do you know what happen ??? We are all Masters, Doctors, Engineers and Science graduates without having any practical experience of real life world. Every one is high achievers in Maths, Science, Engineering and technology without producing and designing anything, doing the job of technicians and mechanics who are neither liberal artist nor science graduates. Even nobody knows what is Art??We can not develop in science without Art first.
A key problem now is that college education has now become career training. That's for vocational schools(we need more)/ Education should be more about expanding your mind and broadening your thoughts. Methods of thinking vs. rote learning.stream of facts. I'm a physics major math minor with a large amount of music coursework(old major). I see the value of both. Creativity actually helps stem majors.
I agree that STEM and Liberal Arts really shouldn't be disputed as much as they are. There shouldn't be this "war" between the two. Broad based education is key for a diverse and adaptable labor force, not to mention a vibrant and intellectually curious civil society. If you want to shun anyone, I wouldn't place a war between STEM and LA, but rather, think of all the Business majors. These majors are not intellectually curious at all, but rather, focus on how to extract the most money out of some entity. They are often the ones leaving without knowledge of the scientific method AND basic knowledge of the social sciences such as economics (and no, economics and business are not the same thing).
Absolutely right. I am currently studying for a postgraduate Physics Degree. I can see the enormous value of an education in History, English, Philosophy etc. I don't know how human civilisation could possibly make any progress without my friends on the other side of campus. Evidently I love Physics and see the enormous value of STEM, that's why I've put myself in many thousands of debt to get myself an education in it. But the idea that these things are the only things of value? The idea that our professional economy, culture, society and civilisation have nothing to learn from the past? Nothing to learn from thousands of years of rigorous, skeptical, doubting, probing western philosophy? Nothing to learn from Literature, or Music or Art? I mean; why does art even exist if not to educate us about the human condition? Of course the questions of "how does thermodynamics work" and "why do electric circuits work in the way they do" etc. are beautiful, profound and staggeringly important. But so are the questions of, what is good? What is right? What are our responsibilities to one another? Has a problem like this happened before in the history of humanity? How did we stumble through it then? What is true? What is noble? What is pure? What is beautiful? We can never, ever fall into the terrible trap of thinking that we've answered them decisively. That we should abandon the study of the furthering of human civilisation. No! The conversation around these questions must always go on. To say that STEM is the only fragment of this jigsaw of intellectual investigation worth pursuing? For God's sake! Of course not!
This is late but, did you find humanities classes difficult, if you took any? I'm majoring in mathematics and physics and, I'm also required to take humanities classes and honestly I'm struggling with those. Typically university-level mathematics and physics brings most to their knees but in my case, I can barely punch above a C in most humanities classes. The highest grade I got in one of those classes was an A-, in a history class and that was because I literally did nothing but study the material the whole night (I even skipped dinner and straight up went for breakfast as soon as morning time), and that was the only time I ever scratched an A in these classes. I find it strange because typically I can get As in my mathematics and physics classes with very little to no difficulty (except for lab reports which are tedious to write) yet I have to study the hardest out of everyone just to scratch A once in humanities
@@musaratjahan7954 I'm from the UK, so I haven't done any humanities work since I was 17, but I was pretty dreadful. I never really understood how to write like that. I have recently done a little bit of postgraduate social science work though which is much more like humanities writing, and I'll say I have majorly improved in terms of non natural science writing over the last decade or so, but I'm still a bit hit and miss.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” -Woodrow Wilson
American universities are little more than debtors' prisons nowadays. It's all about making a big investment and expecting to make a return on that investment. This is why liberal arts are shunned, because the U.S. is a country about climbing the economic food chain at the expense of everyone else, and there is no use for knowledge and growth, and you can't make any kind of return investment with the debts being handed out to students with liberal arts degrees. Hell since our corporate overlords took the economy and gave it a major railing from behind most majors are now inadequate for getting jobs, even some STEM ones, though they didn't get hit quite as hard. That STEM fields are looked highly upon more because they are more likely to get you a job more than because of the other benefits and skills they provide should tell you something. As long as Reaganites have their stranglehold on education and, well, everything else in this country we will continue to be the land of anti-intellectuals (no wonder we are falling so far behind the rest of the first world) and a college education is there purely for profit motive and little else.
jonjonmcjonjon I agree.... :) the higher we educate students to be more effective in an economic way, the further they are taught to destroy our wonderful world. instead of making the life more meaningfully and enjoy life as it is. (my hate words is, greed, power and money) I encourage you to read about Hypatia. :)
jonjonmcjonjon Those STEM fields are valued so much because the invented the ability for you to sit down now and diss them on a computer networked to other computers on a massive network of global information. We're a land of anti-intellectuals because people don't respect science like they should, which stems from a lack of STEM education. How many less "God dun it!" explanations would we hear if every bible thumping moron in the country had to sit through a course on Evolutionary Biology? How many morons would still believe in homeopathy if they actually took a course on Organic Chemistry? I'd like to remind you that Reagan majored in Economics and Sociology in school, both of which are liberal arts majors. Did it teach him to be an intellectual like you claim liberal arts will?
PinuyashaRPG Way to let the point fly over your head completely. Tell me at what point I was trashing STEM fields. You can't, because I wasn't. What I'm saying is, liberal arts education is being constantly trashed as though it provides no intellectual benefits, and that is due to an American anti-intellectual/economist viewpoint, who only value STEM fields because they are more profitable, and, perhaps, to make them seem more intelligent and above the philosophy-learning fray. It's a pissing contest, a wide mentality brought upon by increasing privatization of our education system. It's a sad state of affairs. And but of course Reagan would major in economics. He all but puppeteered it at the expense of working class types, and set in motion the kind of economic policies that still drive the country further into ruins today. That would not make him an intellectual but a masterful shyster definitely.
jonjonmcjonjon so if I have a doctorate in some STEM field I'm not an intellectual? Your argument ends there. Ill even give you the definition of an intellectual because it appears you are not one...... intellectual: possessing a highly developed intellect
James Lanza Funny to call me out on being unintelligent when you seem incapable of reading, since that was not what I was arguing, at all. And also missing the point completely. Two in a row, great job guys, keep them coming! Of course if you have a doctorate in a STEM field you are possessing great intelligence in that area. The problem is many seem to divide intelligence in black-and-white terms: If you have a degree in liberal arts, you're a moron, if it's a degree in science, then _zomg you cans does science!!1_ This usually comes from people who don't have degrees in anything, but it's a mentality largely in the U.S. because of the right-libertarian views on education instilled in society. Again, a pissing contest. Also, another thing, intelligence does not necessarily correlate with intellectualism. Going back to how intelligence isn't black-and-white, you can be highly intelligent in one fashion while being a retrograde imbecile if not a complete danger to the progress of society in another. Heart surgeons can be climate change deniers. A scholarly mathematician may believe that blacks and gays should be lynched and that abortion is an abomination to God (James Watson and his comments in most recent years is the closest real-life example I can think of - the half who fully uncovered DNA having reactionary views on race). Or look at someone like Scott Harrington, an oral surgeon whose clinic was found to be a cesspit of unhygienic tools and autoclaves that hadn't been touched in decades. That he got away with that for so long is probably the most amazing part. Or even people with scientific degrees who dismiss any kind of liberal arts in a knee-jerk fashion. Science to me is useless without ethical constraints, and what kind of ethical constraints those should be is what discussions should be had, questions of scientific philosophy and such. How far should scientists go in meddling with deadly strains of viruses by engineering them to be even deadlier and more resistant to treatments than before? This would depend on the benefits of what you would uncover by doing so but you've also opened up a Pandora's Box were you to publish the results or keep the strain alive for further testing. And on the extreme end of the scale we of course have Dr. Mengele, the quintessential example of science operating without any ethical base. This brings up another thing, that some think that STEM and liberal arts should be mutually exclusive, when really there are many benefits to merging ideas from fields of both together (e.g. science and philosophy as I have mentioned).
It's like liberal arts and humanities are best when you learn them on your own and not in college, at least that's what I take from experience. I took a semester of liberal arts at a community college and quit because, even though I didn't regret going to see what it was like, I felt that I could do better to study on my own. I decided that I would go to college only if it was for something very specific and could only be learned there as well as having enough money not to go into debt and having enough skill writing essays while going in.
False. Humanities (in my case social science) is best to learn in academic settings. Maybe the reason of your discontent is because you only scratched the surface and lack understanding of the subject. Liberal arts are really complex just like in STEM, you can't digest any idea from heavy text of Sarte, Bordieu or Nietzsche from just reading their works.
I disagree. There are professor's lectures analyzing Nietzche. I just subscribed to a philosophy professor's RUclips channel. It is very good to listen to or read from someone who is already very knowledgeable about these things. Knowledge isn't confined to brick and mortar schools.
Years ago I was at Fairfield. The Jesuit educational tradition was well established. We had many requirements in philosophy, theology, in addition to other areas. I will always value what I learned, but decades later in a very different world some of the courses seem naive. Still, the discipline and the methodology of how to think remain. The liberal arts education's value transcends content and is best realized in how it is applied in a changing world.
Confucius was not Aristotle's contemporary, That honour goes to Diogenes, who's greater understanding of the simple things gave Aristotle a frame to work from, they studied together. And it was Alexander the great who on hearing about Diogenes greatness traveled back across his expanding kingdom to meet Diogenes. When he met Diogenes who was sat in the street, he asked "what can do for you Diogenes" , Diogenes replied "you can stand out of my sunlight"..
It’s not about whether or not the liberal arts are important to humanity, it’s about whether they’re necessary to do the job you went to school to do. These classes are thousands of dollars and they’re absolutely not about free thinking, they’re about learning to parrot the narrative of social justice and shit your mouth and nod in the required diversity and inclusion seminars when you get to the corporate world.
The problem with a liberal education is it has became a little too liberal. I got 3 BS in physics math and astronomy, but i still had two writting components, 6 hours of upper division liberal art classes, plus symbolic logic from the philosophy department, as well as the same history ,government, engish lit and composition that every liberal art student needs. But most liberal art students can get away with college algebra(in fact they offered basic math class as a substitute for this) maybe only one remedial science class, like intro astronomy for non major or science ideas. I feel the problem for the average liberal art major today is when they get out college, they don't understand basic sciences or scientific method, or basic math like statistics. Most of them complain they don't need to know these things, and yet anti vaxers and climate deniers with liberal art backgrounds go out into the world getting jobs like lawyers/politicians journalist entertainers, and wonder why our country is falling behind.
mage davee Well, society certainly still needs lawyers, politicians, journalists, entertainers, etc. We cannot all be STEM majors and be engineers and scientists. And on the flip side, the other threat is that STEM majors leave without any basic government, economic, or political knowledge necessary for a functioning civil society and democracy. But I think you do hit the nail on the head, Liberal Arts should be multifaceted and diverse by definition. They should include, well, everything: natural sciences, social sciences, mathematics, linguistics, humanities, etc. Often, however, a Liberal Arts education does focus heavily on the last two, while all sections should be equally stressed.
acp778 Not sure if you noticed, but lawyers, politicians, journalists and entertainers are some of the dumbest and/or scummiest people in society today. I'm just saying, there's no one in Congress with STEM major who's denying climate change.
***** No, but understanding how statistics works, and how we use statistics to make scientific argument is important. And if people lack this understanding it's really easy twist the facts to further your agenda.
The internet makes available a practically endless supply of information, yet many people think in sound bites provided by agenda-driven media sources...without any contemplation beyond initial, emotional reaction. I love the idea of an education that places specific emphasis on analytical thought, so people can start weeding out, rather than embracing, the exploitation and promotion of ignorance and laziness. P.S. To his earlier point, in ancient Greece, Music (one of the fundamental aspects of a Liberal Arts education) was actually taught as a Science and highly regarded for its mathematical aspects.
The difference between STEM and Liberal Arts is the fact that one has intrinsic, immutable, undeniable truths that can be found through testing and reason. If you think that's the latter, then I've got some bad news for you.
In today's world we have the internet and libraries to provide an infinite source of liberal arts education. Liberal arts education sure made sense back in the old days because book were expensive, and we didn't have a huge database of files where you can get every literary work for free. It makes far less sense now to study most liberal arts majors because you can read up on anything you want related to it now for free. Anyone can learn English, History, Literature, etc. on their own, but how many people can learn Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering without being taught by a professional? Middle school mathematics eludes most U.S. students. How would they ever move to Precalculus with that poor level of understanding? Is it really that important that someone know all the works of Shakespeare instead of knowing something as simple as calculating compund interest to know how terrible of a loan you signed up for to pay for your crappy degree? Meanwhile, the biggest problems of our time are the fact that scientifically illiterate morons are ruining the world for people with their phony religions and pseudoscience. I think a STEM education is far more useful now just to curb this trend of people using feelings and rhetoric to argue a point rather than bothering to provide any evidence. The less liberal arts majors running around trying to tell me homeopathy works, GMOs are "Frankenfoods" and that the U.S. has "rape culture" the better I say.
***** Want to tell me what formula to memorize to build your own operating system? I don't know where non-STEM people get the idea that STEM is memorizing formulas and information only. You memorize formulas and information because they are your tools to do everything else. Trying to do Physics without knowing the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is like being a carpenter who can't use a hammer. I don't know where this idea of liberal arts is critical thinking came from. Are you trying to tell me inventing Linux didn't require critical thinking? How about discovering the atom? Building the atomic bomb? Finding the equation for mass-energy equivalence? Creating the Turning Machine? Do you know how hard it is to try to represent the real world using only 1s and 0s? What is this "critical thinking" liberal arts majors brag about so much? The ability to reinterpret Shakespeare's work for the 1 millionth time? The ability to derive meanings from works that potentially had none intended? What was the last great problem to humans that liberal arts solved? Why don't we sit these liberal arts majors in a class on Artificial Intelligence for a semester and see if they keep saying their major teaches "critical thinking". I guarantee you that any useful problems that liberal arts solves is based on a STEM principle. For example, Neuroscience and Biology has done more for Psychology than actual Psychology majors coming up with stupid ideas like "Dream Analysis" and "Penis Envy". Why did people consider Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" significant to food safety? Because we understood Germ Theory of Disease and realized the shit the meat industry was doing is disgusting. Hell, the only reason why most liberal arts fields can draw conclusions to anything is because a STEM field is providing them the useful data while they just cook up half-baked ideas until the STEM fields drop useful science on their desk.
PinuyashaRPG When I read highschoolish comments on liberal arts (despite being myself an math major doing a ph.d) I cannot do but being ashamed of how pretentious can ignorants, and with their comments making all of us look bad. Name-dropping aside, you obviously have not a single clue of liberal arts, not of stem subject for what matters. I'm afraid that the way you think about liberal arts is pretty much the equivalent to stem subjects being just memorizing formulas. I'd write a longer comment, but that would exceed the fucks I give about internet comments that show no knowledge at all. You'll grow up out of it eventually, it's probably a matter of age (since that's very similar to what I used to write when I was fifteen).
Dante Løan Oh, ok, so you want to shit talk my comment with your horrible grammar and English. And you're trying to tell me that I don't have a clue about liberal arts? Right... Why don't you practice what you preach? I may shit on liberal arts, but at least I can write a coherent sentence. Hope you don't write your thesis paper with those shitty English skills.
***** I know that liberal arts also includes history, languages, psychology and more, but generally when this argument comes up it tends to be focused on the art, music, literature, English, psychology and philosophy majors, as well as those silly "____" Studies majors. I just don't feel like typing out every single major each time. I know there's definitely a distinction of usefulness between History and Women's Studies. However, I still stand by the fact that these fields aren't worth spending $40,000+ on for 4 years to study. It's also stupid that people can major in liberal arts fields only taking "Baby's First Algebra" and "MS Office for Dummies", while every STEM major usually requires an entire year of English, a year of Humanities, a year of History, etc. Maybe you can argue for political science and economics, but then again let's not forget that a lot of our politicians are usually those majors and it clearly didn't do any good for their critical thinking skills. Hell, Bush graduated from Yale with a degree in History and that sure didn't stop him from starting a war on false pretenses. Guess all that history went in one ear and out the other. Old Cheney graduated with Political Science and he still turned out to be a war mongering asshole too. I've just read on the news recently that a sixth mass extinction is coming soon, and humans are the direct cause of it thanks to climate change. Please tell me how reading more books from the Classic World, reading Jung, Pascal, Emerson, understanding literary elements, knowing the history of minorities, understanding Impressionism art, knowing the origins of the madrigal, or knowing the primary beliefs of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism is going to address the fact that a world of scientific illiterate idiots are ruining the planet because they want to deny science. Sure, the brain is for more than data gathering and information processing, but a lot of humans haven't even gotten those two aspects down at a point in time where it's vital to our future.
Onlinerocker You think somebody programming a B-Tree or writing a new algorithm to store data on an SSD needs Liberal Arts? How about someone programming a Nuclear reactor, or the program in a missile system? What a fucking stupid comment you made. There is a lot more to technology than "muh shitty new apple product", in fact, most of the technology you experience is not the Facebook app on your smartphone or the text messenger on it. Stop trying to justify your liberal arts degree.
PENDANTturnips Absolutely not. But there is a certain beauty to any finished product similar to that of a sculpture or a painting. Not saying you need liberal arts to accomplish these things, just saying they have similarities.
Liberal arts degrees are worthless now a days, and should be. I go to a liberal arts school where 90% of the kids are some type of liberal arts degree. However I am part of the other program that fits the other 10% (Professional Accounting CPA major, includes your BS and graduate courses needed to take the CPA exam in NY state). Anyways, these liberal arts kids, for the most part, will not be working in their chosen field once they graduate because there is a smaller demand for their jobs than there is a supply by a large margin. The reason for this is that liberal arts classes are extremely easy when compared to something like my accounting/auditing classes. This is from my own personal experience, having to take some electives in liberal arts in my first years of college. THE POINT: Liberal arts are 90% useless. We need more specializations that are math/science based. The free market related to career acquisition in America shows us this. I don't really have a solution for this problem because most people are inherently lazy/average and do not want to put the hard work it takes to specialize into math/science majors. So I guess there really is no solution unless you guys can think of one
Ahahahahaha, no. Liberal education is useless. Its a hobby. Stop treating it as a science, or as a job. Economy does not work on rainbows and happy feelings. It works on STEM. The world doesnt work on hobbies, economies and societies dont work on hobbies. We all have hobbies, but its really sheltered and stupid of you to think you can skip the job part you need to do before you can get to your hobby part. Studying anything but STEM (and a few other economically viable things) is useless, unless you were born as a billionaire or something.
Here in Pakistan we had abandoned the liberal arts long ago. Everybody is going with science(STEM). Do you know what happen ??? We are all Masters, Doctors, Engineers and Science graduates without having any practical experience of real life world. Every one is high achievers in Maths, Science, Engineering and technology without producing and designing anything, doing the job of technicians and mechanics who are neither liberal artist nor science graduates. Even nobody knows what is Art??We can not develop in science without Art first.
A key problem now is that college education has now become career training. That's for vocational schools(we need more)/ Education should be more about expanding your mind and broadening your thoughts. Methods of thinking vs. rote learning.stream of facts. I'm a physics major math minor with a large amount of music coursework(old major). I see the value of both. Creativity actually helps stem majors.
I agree that STEM and Liberal Arts really shouldn't be disputed as much as they are. There shouldn't be this "war" between the two. Broad based education is key for a diverse and adaptable labor force, not to mention a vibrant and intellectually curious civil society.
If you want to shun anyone, I wouldn't place a war between STEM and LA, but rather, think of all the Business majors. These majors are not intellectually curious at all, but rather, focus on how to extract the most money out of some entity. They are often the ones leaving without knowledge of the scientific method AND basic knowledge of the social sciences such as economics (and no, economics and business are not the same thing).
Absolutely right.
I am currently studying for a postgraduate Physics Degree.
I can see the enormous value of an education in History, English, Philosophy etc.
I don't know how human civilisation could possibly make any progress without my friends on the other side of campus.
Evidently I love Physics and see the enormous value of STEM, that's why I've put myself in many thousands of debt to get myself an education in it.
But the idea that these things are the only things of value?
The idea that our professional economy, culture, society and civilisation have nothing to learn from the past?
Nothing to learn from thousands of years of rigorous, skeptical, doubting, probing western philosophy?
Nothing to learn from Literature, or Music or Art? I mean; why does art even exist if not to educate us about the human condition?
Of course the questions of "how does thermodynamics work" and "why do electric circuits work in the way they do" etc. are beautiful, profound and staggeringly important.
But so are the questions of, what is good?
What is right?
What are our responsibilities to one another?
Has a problem like this happened before in the history of humanity?
How did we stumble through it then?
What is true?
What is noble?
What is pure?
What is beautiful?
We can never, ever fall into the terrible trap of thinking that we've answered them decisively.
That we should abandon the study of the furthering of human civilisation.
No!
The conversation around these questions must always go on.
To say that STEM is the only fragment of this jigsaw of intellectual investigation worth pursuing?
For God's sake!
Of course not!
This is late but, did you find humanities classes difficult, if you took any? I'm majoring in mathematics and physics and, I'm also required to take humanities classes and honestly I'm struggling with those. Typically university-level mathematics and physics brings most to their knees but in my case, I can barely punch above a C in most humanities classes. The highest grade I got in one of those classes was an A-, in a history class and that was because I literally did nothing but study the material the whole night (I even skipped dinner and straight up went for breakfast as soon as morning time), and that was the only time I ever scratched an A in these classes. I find it strange because typically I can get As in my mathematics and physics classes with very little to no difficulty (except for lab reports which are tedious to write) yet I have to study the hardest out of everyone just to scratch A once in humanities
@@musaratjahan7954 I'm from the UK, so I haven't done any humanities work since I was 17, but I was pretty dreadful. I never really understood how to write like that.
I have recently done a little bit of postgraduate social science work though which is much more like humanities writing, and I'll say I have majorly improved in terms of non natural science writing over the last decade or so, but I'm still a bit hit and miss.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
-Woodrow Wilson
American universities are little more than debtors' prisons nowadays. It's all about making a big investment and expecting to make a return on that investment. This is why liberal arts are shunned, because the U.S. is a country about climbing the economic food chain at the expense of everyone else, and there is no use for knowledge and growth, and you can't make any kind of return investment with the debts being handed out to students with liberal arts degrees. Hell since our corporate overlords took the economy and gave it a major railing from behind most majors are now inadequate for getting jobs, even some STEM ones, though they didn't get hit quite as hard. That STEM fields are looked highly upon more because they are more likely to get you a job more than because of the other benefits and skills they provide should tell you something.
As long as Reaganites have their stranglehold on education and, well, everything else in this country we will continue to be the land of anti-intellectuals (no wonder we are falling so far behind the rest of the first world) and a college education is there purely for profit motive and little else.
jonjonmcjonjon I agree.... :) the higher we educate students to be more effective in an economic way, the further they are taught to destroy our wonderful world. instead of making the life more meaningfully and enjoy life as it is. (my hate words is, greed, power and money) I encourage you to read about Hypatia. :)
jonjonmcjonjon Those STEM fields are valued so much because the invented the ability for you to sit down now and diss them on a computer networked to other computers on a massive network of global information.
We're a land of anti-intellectuals because people don't respect science like they should, which stems from a lack of STEM education. How many less "God dun it!" explanations would we hear if every bible thumping moron in the country had to sit through a course on Evolutionary Biology? How many morons would still believe in homeopathy if they actually took a course on Organic Chemistry?
I'd like to remind you that Reagan majored in Economics and Sociology in school, both of which are liberal arts majors. Did it teach him to be an intellectual like you claim liberal arts will?
PinuyashaRPG Way to let the point fly over your head completely. Tell me at what point I was trashing STEM fields. You can't, because I wasn't. What I'm saying is, liberal arts education is being constantly trashed as though it provides no intellectual benefits, and that is due to an American anti-intellectual/economist viewpoint, who only value STEM fields because they are more profitable, and, perhaps, to make them seem more intelligent and above the philosophy-learning fray. It's a pissing contest, a wide mentality brought upon by increasing privatization of our education system. It's a sad state of affairs.
And but of course Reagan would major in economics. He all but puppeteered it at the expense of working class types, and set in motion the kind of economic policies that still drive the country further into ruins today. That would not make him an intellectual but a masterful shyster definitely.
jonjonmcjonjon so if I have a doctorate in some STEM field I'm not an intellectual? Your argument ends there.
Ill even give you the definition of an intellectual because it appears you are not one...... intellectual: possessing a highly developed intellect
James Lanza Funny to call me out on being unintelligent when you seem incapable of reading, since that was not what I was arguing, at all. And also missing the point completely. Two in a row, great job guys, keep them coming!
Of course if you have a doctorate in a STEM field you are possessing great intelligence in that area. The problem is many seem to divide intelligence in black-and-white terms: If you have a degree in liberal arts, you're a moron, if it's a degree in science, then _zomg you cans does science!!1_ This usually comes from people who don't have degrees in anything, but it's a mentality largely in the U.S. because of the right-libertarian views on education instilled in society. Again, a pissing contest.
Also, another thing, intelligence does not necessarily correlate with intellectualism. Going back to how intelligence isn't black-and-white, you can be highly intelligent in one fashion while being a retrograde imbecile if not a complete danger to the progress of society in another. Heart surgeons can be climate change deniers. A scholarly mathematician may believe that blacks and gays should be lynched and that abortion is an abomination to God (James Watson and his comments in most recent years is the closest real-life example I can think of - the half who fully uncovered DNA having reactionary views on race). Or look at someone like Scott Harrington, an oral surgeon whose clinic was found to be a cesspit of unhygienic tools and autoclaves that hadn't been touched in decades. That he got away with that for so long is probably the most amazing part. Or even people with scientific degrees who dismiss any kind of liberal arts in a knee-jerk fashion.
Science to me is useless without ethical constraints, and what kind of ethical constraints those should be is what discussions should be had, questions of scientific philosophy and such. How far should scientists go in meddling with deadly strains of viruses by engineering them to be even deadlier and more resistant to treatments than before? This would depend on the benefits of what you would uncover by doing so but you've also opened up a Pandora's Box were you to publish the results or keep the strain alive for further testing. And on the extreme end of the scale we of course have Dr. Mengele, the quintessential example of science operating without any ethical base.
This brings up another thing, that some think that STEM and liberal arts should be mutually exclusive, when really there are many benefits to merging ideas from fields of both together (e.g. science and philosophy as I have mentioned).
It's like liberal arts and humanities are best when you learn them on your own and not in college, at least that's what I take from experience. I took a semester of liberal arts at a community college and quit because, even though I didn't regret going to see what it was like, I felt that I could do better to study on my own. I decided that I would go to college only if it was for something very specific and could only be learned there as well as having enough money not to go into debt and having enough skill writing essays while going in.
False. Humanities (in my case social science) is best to learn in academic settings. Maybe the reason of your discontent is because you only scratched the surface and lack understanding of the subject. Liberal arts are really complex just like in STEM, you can't digest any idea from heavy text of Sarte, Bordieu or Nietzsche from just reading their works.
I disagree. There are professor's lectures analyzing Nietzche. I just subscribed to a philosophy professor's RUclips channel. It is very good to listen to or read from someone who is already very knowledgeable about these things. Knowledge isn't confined to brick and mortar schools.
Years ago I was at Fairfield. The Jesuit educational tradition was well established. We had many requirements in philosophy, theology, in addition to other areas. I will always value what I learned, but decades later in a very different world some of the courses seem naive. Still, the discipline and the methodology of how to think remain. The liberal arts education's value transcends content and is best realized in how it is applied in a changing world.
Confucius was not Aristotle's contemporary, That honour goes to Diogenes, who's greater understanding of the simple things gave Aristotle a frame to work from, they studied together. And it was Alexander the great who on hearing about Diogenes greatness traveled back across his expanding kingdom to meet Diogenes. When he met Diogenes who was sat in the street, he asked "what can do for you Diogenes" , Diogenes replied "you can stand out of my sunlight"..
It’s not about whether or not the liberal arts are important to humanity, it’s about whether they’re necessary to do the job you went to school to do. These classes are thousands of dollars and they’re absolutely not about free thinking, they’re about learning to parrot the narrative of social justice and shit your mouth and nod in the required diversity and inclusion seminars when you get to the corporate world.
The problem with a liberal education is it has became a little too liberal. I got 3 BS in physics math and astronomy, but i still had two writting components, 6 hours of upper division liberal art classes, plus symbolic logic from the philosophy department, as well as the same history ,government, engish lit and composition that every liberal art student needs. But most liberal art students can get away with college algebra(in fact they offered basic math class as a substitute for this) maybe only one remedial science class, like intro astronomy for non major or science ideas. I feel the problem for the average liberal art major today is when they get out college, they don't understand basic sciences or scientific method, or basic math like statistics. Most of them complain they don't need to know these things, and yet anti vaxers and climate deniers with liberal art backgrounds go out into the world getting jobs like lawyers/politicians journalist entertainers, and wonder why our country is falling behind.
mage davee Well, society certainly still needs lawyers, politicians, journalists, entertainers, etc. We cannot all be STEM majors and be engineers and scientists. And on the flip side, the other threat is that STEM majors leave without any basic government, economic, or political knowledge necessary for a functioning civil society and democracy. But I think you do hit the nail on the head, Liberal Arts should be multifaceted and diverse by definition. They should include, well, everything: natural sciences, social sciences, mathematics, linguistics, humanities, etc. Often, however, a Liberal Arts education does focus heavily on the last two, while all sections should be equally stressed.
acp778 Not sure if you noticed, but lawyers, politicians, journalists and entertainers are some of the dumbest and/or scummiest people in society today. I'm just saying, there's no one in Congress with STEM major who's denying climate change.
***** No, but understanding how statistics works, and how we use statistics to make scientific argument is important. And if people lack this understanding it's really easy twist the facts to further your agenda.
***** Actually I just the notification today.
The internet makes available a practically endless supply of information, yet many people think in sound bites provided by agenda-driven media sources...without any contemplation beyond initial, emotional reaction. I love the idea of an education that places specific emphasis on analytical thought, so people can start weeding out, rather than embracing, the exploitation and promotion of ignorance and laziness.
P.S. To his earlier point, in ancient Greece, Music (one of the fundamental aspects of a Liberal Arts education) was actually taught as a Science and highly regarded for its mathematical aspects.
The difference between STEM and Liberal Arts is the fact that one has intrinsic, immutable, undeniable truths that can be found through testing and reason.
If you think that's the latter, then I've got some bad news for you.
Great guy! Like a lot of his work. Obviously very intelligent.
I do have to disagree with some of his stances on Islam. Watch him on bill maher.
MoreAmerican lol.. smh
In today's world we have the internet and libraries to provide an infinite source of liberal arts education. Liberal arts education sure made sense back in the old days because book were expensive, and we didn't have a huge database of files where you can get every literary work for free. It makes far less sense now to study most liberal arts majors because you can read up on anything you want related to it now for free. Anyone can learn English, History, Literature, etc. on their own, but how many people can learn Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering without being taught by a professional?
Middle school mathematics eludes most U.S. students. How would they ever move to Precalculus with that poor level of understanding? Is it really that important that someone know all the works of Shakespeare instead of knowing something as simple as calculating compund interest to know how terrible of a loan you signed up for to pay for your crappy degree?
Meanwhile, the biggest problems of our time are the fact that scientifically illiterate morons are ruining the world for people with their phony religions and pseudoscience. I think a STEM education is far more useful now just to curb this trend of people using feelings and rhetoric to argue a point rather than bothering to provide any evidence. The less liberal arts majors running around trying to tell me homeopathy works, GMOs are "Frankenfoods" and that the U.S. has "rape culture" the better I say.
Here, here!
*****
Want to tell me what formula to memorize to build your own operating system? I don't know where non-STEM people get the idea that STEM is memorizing formulas and information only. You memorize formulas and information because they are your tools to do everything else. Trying to do Physics without knowing the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is like being a carpenter who can't use a hammer.
I don't know where this idea of liberal arts is critical thinking came from. Are you trying to tell me inventing Linux didn't require critical thinking? How about discovering the atom? Building the atomic bomb? Finding the equation for mass-energy equivalence? Creating the Turning Machine? Do you know how hard it is to try to represent the real world using only 1s and 0s?
What is this "critical thinking" liberal arts majors brag about so much? The ability to reinterpret Shakespeare's work for the 1 millionth time? The ability to derive meanings from works that potentially had none intended? What was the last great problem to humans that liberal arts solved? Why don't we sit these liberal arts majors in a class on Artificial Intelligence for a semester and see if they keep saying their major teaches "critical thinking".
I guarantee you that any useful problems that liberal arts solves is based on a STEM principle. For example, Neuroscience and Biology has done more for Psychology than actual Psychology majors coming up with stupid ideas like "Dream Analysis" and "Penis Envy". Why did people consider Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" significant to food safety? Because we understood Germ Theory of Disease and realized the shit the meat industry was doing is disgusting.
Hell, the only reason why most liberal arts fields can draw conclusions to anything is because a STEM field is providing them the useful data while they just cook up half-baked ideas until the STEM fields drop useful science on their desk.
PinuyashaRPG When I read highschoolish comments on liberal arts (despite being myself an math major doing a ph.d) I cannot do but being ashamed of how pretentious can ignorants, and with their comments making all of us look bad.
Name-dropping aside, you obviously have not a single clue of liberal arts, not of stem subject for what matters. I'm afraid that the way you think about liberal arts is pretty much the equivalent to stem subjects being just memorizing formulas.
I'd write a longer comment, but that would exceed the fucks I give about internet comments that show no knowledge at all. You'll grow up out of it eventually, it's probably a matter of age (since that's very similar to what I used to write when I was fifteen).
Dante Løan
Oh, ok, so you want to shit talk my comment with your horrible grammar and English. And you're trying to tell me that I don't have a clue about liberal arts? Right... Why don't you practice what you preach? I may shit on liberal arts, but at least I can write a coherent sentence. Hope you don't write your thesis paper with those shitty English skills.
*****
I know that liberal arts also includes history, languages, psychology and more, but generally when this argument comes up it tends to be focused on the art, music, literature, English, psychology and philosophy majors, as well as those silly "____" Studies majors. I just don't feel like typing out every single major each time.
I know there's definitely a distinction of usefulness between History and Women's Studies. However, I still stand by the fact that these fields aren't worth spending $40,000+ on for 4 years to study. It's also stupid that people can major in liberal arts fields only taking "Baby's First Algebra" and "MS Office for Dummies", while every STEM major usually requires an entire year of English, a year of Humanities, a year of History, etc.
Maybe you can argue for political science and economics, but then again let's not forget that a lot of our politicians are usually those majors and it clearly didn't do any good for their critical thinking skills. Hell, Bush graduated from Yale with a degree in History and that sure didn't stop him from starting a war on false pretenses. Guess all that history went in one ear and out the other. Old Cheney graduated with Political Science and he still turned out to be a war mongering asshole too.
I've just read on the news recently that a sixth mass extinction is coming soon, and humans are the direct cause of it thanks to climate change. Please tell me how reading more books from the Classic World, reading Jung, Pascal, Emerson, understanding literary elements, knowing the history of minorities, understanding Impressionism art, knowing the origins of the madrigal, or knowing the primary beliefs of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism is going to address the fact that a world of scientific illiterate idiots are ruining the planet because they want to deny science.
Sure, the brain is for more than data gathering and information processing, but a lot of humans haven't even gotten those two aspects down at a point in time where it's vital to our future.
Liberal arts and technology go hand in hand. I think Steve Jobs of all people really understood this.
Onlinerocker You think somebody programming a B-Tree or writing a new algorithm to store data on an SSD needs Liberal Arts? How about someone programming a Nuclear reactor, or the program in a missile system?
What a fucking stupid comment you made. There is a lot more to technology than "muh shitty new apple product", in fact, most of the technology you experience is not the Facebook app on your smartphone or the text messenger on it.
Stop trying to justify your liberal arts degree.
PENDANTturnips Absolutely not. But there is a certain beauty to any finished product similar to that of a sculpture or a painting. Not saying you need liberal arts to accomplish these things, just saying they have similarities.
Onlinerocker Sorry for being such an ass in my previous comment, but I understand your original comment now.
PENDANTturnips Lmao dude. I figured you misunderstood me or were just trolling. No worries!
"Come on guys liberal arts is still super duper important. I am super cereal."
In a nut shell
I agree going into debt for the liberal arts is financial suicide.
Liberal arts degrees are worthless now a days, and should be. I go to a liberal arts school where 90% of the kids are some type of liberal arts degree. However I am part of the other program that fits the other 10% (Professional Accounting CPA major, includes your BS and graduate courses needed to take the CPA exam in NY state).
Anyways, these liberal arts kids, for the most part, will not be working in their chosen field once they graduate because there is a smaller demand for their jobs than there is a supply by a large margin. The reason for this is that liberal arts classes are extremely easy when compared to something like my accounting/auditing classes. This is from my own personal experience, having to take some electives in liberal arts in my first years of college.
THE POINT:
Liberal arts are 90% useless. We need more specializations that are math/science based. The free market related to career acquisition in America shows us this. I don't really have a solution for this problem because most people are inherently lazy/average and do not want to put the hard work it takes to specialize into math/science majors. So I guess there really is no solution unless you guys can think of one
***** Glad someone agrees! Thank you for not being an idiot
Ahahahahaha, no. Liberal education is useless. Its a hobby. Stop treating it as a science, or as a job.
Economy does not work on rainbows and happy feelings. It works on STEM. The world doesnt work on hobbies, economies and societies dont work on hobbies. We all have hobbies, but its really sheltered and stupid of you to think you can skip the job part you need to do before you can get to your hobby part. Studying anything but STEM (and a few other economically viable things) is useless, unless you were born as a billionaire or something.
I would love to see Jim Carrey giving life advise.
Very loose interpretation of 'liberal'. And wasn't use in the 'extra cheese' way we do today.
science was useless (practically) in Ancient Greece? lol gtfo son
***** yes it was, often ridiculed as a fools endevour almost always ending in a tragedy, except for when it worked for warfare..
PSEUDO