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America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#21

Post by eropple »

kazinator wrote: post #16
eropple wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your preoccupation with paying bills that are already well and effectively paid and economies quite energized seems to obscure to you that a very large part of the purpose of a university is to turn out well-rounded human beings. While I have a CS degree (which in my school was a liberal arts degree), I credit my decision to take as few in-major classes as possible, and spend as much time in the humanities as I could…

Would your alma mater have graduated you with a CS degree if you had no humanities credits at all? Mine wouldn't have.

It would have graduated me with less than half of the ones I had, and significantly poorer ones--one learns very little in a 100-level but might open one's brain a bit better in the right 300-level and I pushed to be in the right courses. My university had a fantastic Honors College where I learned a ton I wouldn't have picked up elsewhere, too--I was the only CS student in my year of the program and the Honors College covered most of the gen-eds so quickly that I had enough time and credit space to take classes that were more interesting and more valuable. (None of them were in CS.) I didn't finish out at the Honors College, because the CS department wouldn't play ball as far as senior projects went and I didn't have the bandwidth to do two, but it's still my most treasured time at my university.

The courses that were considered part of the humanities, at least as far as STEM folks go, were pretty questionable in general, too. My university thought "technical writing" was a good course to be part of the English curriculum for STEM majors. But "good writing" wasn't, if you follow? Nor was any sort of philosophy, more than the barest rudiments of history (in a country where primary and secondary history education is little more than heroifying the names everyone knows)...it was a dire scene. (Of the liberal arts courses I found, and continue to find valuable, only microeconomics was a required course. Incredibly valuable, though--literally every person should be comfortable with the basics of microeconomics and macroeconomics, and if anybody posting here isn't, you should drop everything and get there. It's Understanding Humans 101.)

Even as I'm working with some people involved with the school to push for better technical literacy for non-STEM people--because that's important--I am pushing on the CS department to turn out functional humans as well. "We're tech people" cannot be an excuse for social, political, historical, and economical ignorance.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#22

Post by JoshTriplett »

Jimmy wrote: post #3
bediger4000 wrote: post #2

A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity. Indeed. But critical thinking and creativity are the things second least prized in US classrooms, right after outright disobedience. So it's no real wonder that broad, general education has fallen out of favor.

What countries do a better job of fostering creativity and critical thinking? Every culture has its sacred cows. The idea of an environment that's fully tolerant and welcoming towards any and all dissent is, as far as I can tell, a myth. Nonetheless, my experiences with US (university) classrooms have generally been positive. As long as it's relevant to the topic of discussion, students are free to pose a wide range…

> Nonetheless, my experiences with US (university) classrooms have generally been positive. As long as it's relevant to the topic of discussion, students are free to pose a wide range of ideas without fear of social or academic reprisal.

In university, yes, after 13 years of the exact opposite.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#23

Post by IgorPartola »

reasonish wrote: post #17
elviejo wrote: post #11

When: 43% of americans don't believe in evolution. (1) 53% don't believe in climate change (2) 15% don't think vaccination is safe. Then I don't think you don't hace a problem of obsession with STEM, bit with The lack of It. 1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolutio... (2) http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/26/poll-53-of-americans-dont-...

I can see the worry with vaccination, as it directly affects everyone, but does everyone necessarily have to agree on the other two issues? Is it a real issue if someone is doing really good things for society, being an excellent person, but happens to disagree with you about evolution or climate change? Science is getting to be its own fundamental religion for many IMHO, who prescribe 'science' as the answer to ever…

Yes. People who do not believe in evolution are holding back progress. They are making everyone's quality of life worse through their sheer ignorance.

People who do not believe in global warming are even worse. I will literally suffocate in my lifetime because of these imbicils.

I suppose in some philosophical sense, no we don't all need to agree, but in a practical sense if we want to survive and thrive as a species, we must.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#24

Post by kiba »

protomyth wrote: post #18
kiba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't really about scientific ignorance but as to what tribe(s) you belong to or what authorities you trust. To believe in evolution is to contradict their beliefs in God. Most people on HN didn't reasoned out the chain of evidence that lead to us to believe in evolution, yet they probably believe in the theory of evolution.

"To believe in evolution is to contradict their beliefs in God." Once again, no. Stop spreading this tripe. Catholic doctrine for example is quite clear a belief in evolution does not contradict church doctrine. This is the kind of statement that tries to create a conflict where one shouldn't be.

For people who believe that evolution is false, it's a contradiction of their beliefs in God.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#25

Post by jjaredsimpson »

reasonish wrote: post #17
elviejo wrote: post #11

When: 43% of americans don't believe in evolution. (1) 53% don't believe in climate change (2) 15% don't think vaccination is safe. Then I don't think you don't hace a problem of obsession with STEM, bit with The lack of It. 1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolutio... (2) http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/26/poll-53-of-americans-dont-...

I can see the worry with vaccination, as it directly affects everyone, but does everyone necessarily have to agree on the other two issues? Is it a real issue if someone is doing really good things for society, being an excellent person, but happens to disagree with you about evolution or climate change? Science is getting to be its own fundamental religion for many IMHO, who prescribe 'science' as the answer to ever…

denying any truth is a flaw in thinking. it matters less materially than vaccination in that I don't have to worry about the spread of a disease which may infect me or my children.

just because someones beliefs don't directly cause me harm, doesn't imply that those believes are immune from criticism. especially on correctness grounds.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#26

Post by graycat »

The article equates STEM education with technical "skills". This is comparison is absurd and is yet another attempt to set up a straw man in order to knock it down and to scream (borrowing from the movie The Music Man) "Oh we got trouble, right here in River City. Trouble starts with a T and that's rhymes with" an E, and that stands for education. So, in the movie the guy was trying to start a boy's band to sell musical instruments and band uniforms, and the OP is trying to sell courses in philosophy and art history?

To the OP, I would suggest that the STEM fields do better on deep and critical thinking than philosophy and art history.

For the US K-12 scores in math and science and the comparison of those scores with South Korea, Singapore, Finland, etc., I'd say: The claim of the OP on these scores is that US K-12 education needs to do better to catch up with the other countries.

Okay, let's consider that claim: Compare the scores of students in those other countries with the scores of students in the US with recent ancestors from those other countries. E.g., compare scores of students in Finland with the scores of students in the US with recent ancestors from Finland. Then are doing better comparing the schools and not just the cultures. So, in crude terms, will be controlling on country of origin.

Here the OP has yet another straw man erected just to be knocked down.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#27

Post by tashon »

reasonish wrote: post #17
elviejo wrote: post #11

When: 43% of americans don't believe in evolution. (1) 53% don't believe in climate change (2) 15% don't think vaccination is safe. Then I don't think you don't hace a problem of obsession with STEM, bit with The lack of It. 1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolutio... (2) http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/26/poll-53-of-americans-dont-...

I can see the worry with vaccination, as it directly affects everyone, but does everyone necessarily have to agree on the other two issues? Is it a real issue if someone is doing really good things for society, being an excellent person, but happens to disagree with you about evolution or climate change? Science is getting to be its own fundamental religion for many IMHO, who prescribe 'science' as the answer to ever…

Although it's only one case, here's an NPR interview (http://www.npr.org/2015/03/10/392142452/florida-gov-scott-de...) discussing the governor of Florida's policy to avoid the term 'climate change'. Not sure if denying usage of the term is equivalent to denying its existence, but hopefully it's something.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#28

Post by nhebb »

I don't think we need to worry about STEM being over-pushed. STEM degrees are self filtering. Math, engineering, and science are hard, and getting kids interested at science at a young age can motivate them only so far. Many will enroll, and when things get tough, a good portion will transfer to other majors.

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#29

Post by tedunangst »

IgorPartola wrote: post #23
reasonish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the worry with vaccination, as it directly affects everyone, but does everyone necessarily have to agree on the other two issues? Is it a real issue if someone is doing really good things for society, being an excellent person, but happens to disagree with you about evolution or climate change? Science is getting to be its own fundamental religion for many IMHO, who prescribe 'science' as the answer to ever…

Yes. People who do not believe in evolution are holding back progress. They are making everyone's quality of life worse through their sheer ignorance. People who do not believe in global warming are even worse. I will literally suffocate in my lifetime because of these imbicils. I suppose in some philosophical sense, no we don't all need to agree, but in a practical sense if we want to survive and thrive as a species…

It's extremely hard for me to imagine how my quality of life would improve if my neighbor started believing in evolution. Perhaps you can provide an example?

Re: America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

#30

Post by subsection1h »

pconner wrote: post #10

I resent the seemingly common belief that STEM and creativity are so disjoint. Every breakthrough in STEM required incredible amounts of creativity. Even average STEM workers (say, for example, a software developer) usually need to exercise creativity pretty regularly.

Similarly, I'm also bothered by the common argument that participation in sports is vital for learning to work as part of a team, as if STEM projects don't facilitate gaining such experience.
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