My response to a recent debate, prompted by someone complaining that science/engineering students shouldn't be forced to take humanities courses
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Re: I have to clarifymoneysucksNovember 19 2004, 04:10:50 UTC
I don't think I disagree with you on most things. Humanities majors should be required to take science classes, and they are.
I don't believe I'm operating on any stereotype of techies. I don't think they're any more likely to do immoral or destructive things than fuzzies; poli sci majors on the whole certainly go on to do more harm to more people than CS majors. However, the discussion is whether natural science/engineering students should be required to study the humanities and social sciences. That's why I'm talking about techies.
I don't think it's a stereotype to say that there are a lot more techies who hold the humanities and social sciences in contempt than there are fuzzies who hold the natural sciences in contempt and think there's nothing valuable to be learned from it.
I think the fact is, fuzzy classes do deal more on the whole with knowledge that's useful to all people as far as functioning in society, and techie classes do deal more on the whole with knowledge useful only for specific career paths / very specialized skills.
I won't tell anyone what kind of values they should have. That's up to them. I do feel that a quality education is one that encourages people to think critically about what their values are, and also to think critically about their society and culture and their place in it. And I don't think a college curriculum encourages that without a strong background in the humanities and social sciences.
I also very much take the specific view that the Hum Bio program here is kinda based on, which is that it's impossible to understand human beings from the perspective of just biology/chemistry without a grounding in the social sciences, and vice versa. Discrete academic fields are just arbitrary bullshit divisions anyway. There should really only be one science: Science with a capital S.
Re: I have to clarifymoneysucksNovember 19 2004, 04:17:55 UTC
Oh, the one thing I do totally disagree with you on: =)
I don't think techie knowledge is nearly as valuable for everyday life (i.e. outside of any kind of specialized work) as fuzzy knowledge. Yes, it's probably a good thing to learn how to think logically and analytically - math and philosophy both help with that. I care a lot less about knowing linear algebra or how DNA is transcribed to produce proteins (which I just learned in Hum Bio, and which is actually pretty interesting, but still does me very little long-term good to know). I think it'll do me a lot more good to recognize situations in which I might be susceptible to groupthink, or be able to apply Marx's idea of analyzing society in terms of its economic relations to understand why certain ideologies and institutions persist even though they screw a lot of people over. Those things are relevant to me no matter what career I may wind up in, simply because I live in a society.
Re: I have to clarifyHumanities majors should be required to take science classes, and they aresorewaeienNovember 19 2004, 04:31:21 UTC
They are required to take one science class, one math class, and one applied science class. There are easier levels of math for liberal arts majors.
Techies are required to take 3 5-unit quarters of IHUM, three courses in the "Humanities and Social Sciences", and two out of three of "World Cultures", "American Cultures", and "Gender Studies".
Re: I have to clarifyHumanities majors should be required to take science classes, and they aremoneysucksNovember 19 2004, 05:15:27 UTC
No, for the reasons I gave and the reasons Alison gave. There's a wider variety of humanities departments than science departments. Also, humanities subjects provide more general-purpose knowledge. Most of what you learn in science/math/engineering classes is very specialized and only useful if you're going into select careers.
Re: I have to clarifyHumanities majors should be required to take science classes, and they areearthen_gemNovember 19 2004, 06:41:14 UTC
Do I see inequity in this? Sure, but I don't think it's the result of the college's requirements as much as it is a result of the knowledge which we are trying to learn. A universtiy is not a technical school and we shouldn't treat it as such -- the goals of a college education are as much about developing intellectual skill as they are about preparing for a career. To be intellectually strong we need to hear many different schools of thought and learn about them. This is where math and science's weakness is. The main skill taught by math and science is logical, critical thinking - which is important. However, no one needs to know differentiable calculus in order to understand these skills. In fact, Calculus is pretty useless to most english majors - I don't think they should have to take it. As math and science majors, the college understands that we need more classes worth of career preparation than most other majors and so we get to take a lot of math classes. This doesn't exempt us from other skills. Just like the English majors, we have to take history classes. In each field lies mental areas to be explored and we have to be realistic in that a lot of these areas will never show up in the field of mathematics.
Re: I have to clarifyHumanities majors should be required to take science classes, and they aremoneysucksNovember 21 2004, 14:09:46 UTC
just surfing over random journals, but to be entirely fair, you shouldn't lump humanities fuzzies with social science fuzzies - just because you like IR doesn't mean you like comp lit.
and i haven't met anyone who really likes the area 4 reqs, and very few people of any kind really enjoy pwr, and even less like ihum. there's more than enough pain to go around for everyone.
and there's definitely easy ways to get out of the area 3 and 4 reqs too. if you're a freshman you might not have heard of it, but french porn's a very easy way to clear your area 4, and you can always take soc 1, etc. for area 3. i would go so far as to guess that it's harder for the average fuzzy to get a b in physics 21 than it is for the average techie to get a b in soc 1.
at any rate, all of this is sorta beside the point. if you're looking for the easiest way out of things, there's many many relatively painless ways to finish those core reqs. i think the idea really should be to take classes that you feel are interesting /and/ important. if anything, i think as a techie you have an advantage in this - very few fuzzies find pure math of any sort interesting, while i think techies tend to be interested in at least a few areas of the social sciences and humanities.
I don't believe I'm operating on any stereotype of techies. I don't think they're any more likely to do immoral or destructive things than fuzzies; poli sci majors on the whole certainly go on to do more harm to more people than CS majors. However, the discussion is whether natural science/engineering students should be required to study the humanities and social sciences. That's why I'm talking about techies.
I don't think it's a stereotype to say that there are a lot more techies who hold the humanities and social sciences in contempt than there are fuzzies who hold the natural sciences in contempt and think there's nothing valuable to be learned from it.
I think the fact is, fuzzy classes do deal more on the whole with knowledge that's useful to all people as far as functioning in society, and techie classes do deal more on the whole with knowledge useful only for specific career paths / very specialized skills.
I won't tell anyone what kind of values they should have. That's up to them. I do feel that a quality education is one that encourages people to think critically about what their values are, and also to think critically about their society and culture and their place in it. And I don't think a college curriculum encourages that without a strong background in the humanities and social sciences.
I also very much take the specific view that the Hum Bio program here is kinda based on, which is that it's impossible to understand human beings from the perspective of just biology/chemistry without a grounding in the social sciences, and vice versa. Discrete academic fields are just arbitrary bullshit divisions anyway. There should really only be one science: Science with a capital S.
Reply
I don't think techie knowledge is nearly as valuable for everyday life (i.e. outside of any kind of specialized work) as fuzzy knowledge. Yes, it's probably a good thing to learn how to think logically and analytically - math and philosophy both help with that. I care a lot less about knowing linear algebra or how DNA is transcribed to produce proteins (which I just learned in Hum Bio, and which is actually pretty interesting, but still does me very little long-term good to know). I think it'll do me a lot more good to recognize situations in which I might be susceptible to groupthink, or be able to apply Marx's idea of analyzing society in terms of its economic relations to understand why certain ideologies and institutions persist even though they screw a lot of people over. Those things are relevant to me no matter what career I may wind up in, simply because I live in a society.
Reply
Techies are required to take 3 5-unit quarters of IHUM, three courses in the "Humanities and Social Sciences", and two out of three of "World Cultures", "American Cultures", and "Gender Studies".
Do you see any inequity here?
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and i haven't met anyone who really likes the area 4 reqs, and very few people of any kind really enjoy pwr, and even less like ihum. there's more than enough pain to go around for everyone.
and there's definitely easy ways to get out of the area 3 and 4 reqs too. if you're a freshman you might not have heard of it, but french porn's a very easy way to clear your area 4, and you can always take soc 1, etc. for area 3. i would go so far as to guess that it's harder for the average fuzzy to get a b in physics 21 than it is for the average techie to get a b in soc 1.
at any rate, all of this is sorta beside the point. if you're looking for the easiest way out of things, there's many many relatively painless ways to finish those core reqs. i think the idea really should be to take classes that you feel are interesting /and/ important. if anything, i think as a techie you have an advantage in this - very few fuzzies find pure math of any sort interesting, while i think techies tend to be interested in at least a few areas of the social sciences and humanities.
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