Scientific Elites vs. Illiterates

Rackemup writes "An article at Technology Review examines how it's possible for the same education system to produce both scientific elites and illiterates. While the article is kind of hard on current Elementary school teachers (whom the author says are hostile towards the scientific studies because becoming an Elementary teacher is the only way to graduate from college without needing to take a single science course), he does raise the issue that if we gave these teaching positions the pay-level and respect they deserve it would be much easier to attract Doctoral-level people to fill them."

Comments

Re:Umm... how much shakespeare does this guy know?

[gilroy]

I will state the following general rule, confirmed by all observations I have done:

On average, a science/engineering major will be better read, more broadly educated, and more receptive to out-of-field learning than a liberal arts major

This is only a general rule and of course varies tremendously in individuals, but I have seen it borne out well during the fifteen years I've been thinking about it. Science and engineering types are well aware of literature, art, music. Many work consciously to improve their appreciation of same. But very few of my English Lit friends read Scientific American, much less Q.E.D.. Their eyes glaze over at even the most elementary science or technical discussion.

Look at it this way: When I was in college, as a physics major, I had to take

• 14 physics and science courses
  
• 10 math courses
  
• 2 computer science courses
  
• 2 literature courses
  
• 4 philsophy courses
  
• 4 religion courses
  
• 4 social science courses (econ, soc, history)
  

Note that the school differentiate among philosophy, social science, and humanities. But for non-tech majors, all of physics, chemistry, biology, mech engineering, chem engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science, continuous mathematics, and discrete mathematics were lumped together as the undifferentiated blob "math/sci". And fuzzies only had to take a total of two math/sci courses.

Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be. And I like it. Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.