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Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous
HughPickens.com writes According to an op-ed by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post, if Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country's education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills, expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities. "It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher." But according to Zakaria the dismissal of broad-based learning, however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts — and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future.
As Steve Jobs once explained "it's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough — that it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing." Zakaria says that no matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write and cites Jeff Bezos' insistence that writing a memo that makes sense is an even more important skill to master. "Full sentences are harder to write," says Bezos. "They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking." "This doesn't in any way detract from the need for training in technology," concludes Zakaria, "but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out — yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all, study the human condition."
As Steve Jobs once explained "it's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough — that it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing." Zakaria says that no matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write and cites Jeff Bezos' insistence that writing a memo that makes sense is an even more important skill to master. "Full sentences are harder to write," says Bezos. "They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking." "This doesn't in any way detract from the need for training in technology," concludes Zakaria, "but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out — yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all, study the human condition."
The push to expand STEM is the result of so many people in the past rushing toward humanities majors that we have a glut. I don't think people are trying to eliminate them, but just bring some balance back.
You only need only Steve Jobs to design the outside. You need thousands of engineers to build the hardware and write the code. The engineers don't need liberal arts background.
Like everything else in this country, people seem to have this pathological need to take things to extremes. The neglecting of STEM subjects in schools was a problem that needed to be fixed. In the past, we have given far too much credence to the notion that you can just study focused subject to the exclusion of all else and you'll be a success. Trouble is, we have too many people who studied nothing but transgender religious environmental studies and now they wonder why they can't get a job.
So naturally, the knee jerk reaction is to swing the pendulum all the way to STEM at the expense of a broad education. And that's just as bad.
Yes, we do need to increase the amount of STEM training we provide to our students. But only insofar as we eliminate the neglect those topics have suffered. And we cannot justify neglecting the other subjects. Having students understand the basic concepts in STEM fields is just as important as understanding the significance of the major events in history and understanding the basic classical themes in literature, not to mention the need to know how to communicate effectively in speech as well as in writing. They are all pieces in a greater whole. Neglecting any of the pieces reduces the whole.
All I know is that I tested out of all of my humanities credits when working towards a degree
My daughter is going to college to become an English teacher.
I think that it is to spite me, but I bet that she'll be working as a tech trainer before long
To be honest, the sheer mass of the US student body pretty much guarantees that even the hardest push towards STEM education will only result in a small percentage of students really moving in that direction.
I only wish that most of the HR and Sales types that I gather requirements from had some baseline exposure to logic :/
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Great engineering or science is art. If you look at the evolution of bridges they have become more and more beautiful as newer technologies have been developed and applied. Where bridges tend to be ugly is when the engineering is old school and workman like.
Also it tends to be the muddy thinking of the humanities that can drive horrible disasters of thinking. Things like trickle down economics had pretty much zero real math behind it. Plus many of the worst dictators in history had humanities and/or arts educations along with many of their worst henchmen. Things like the scientific method are critical to great political policy making, not law degrees where rhetoric and finding a misplaced comma in a written law lets your serial killer client skate on the charges.
Often when horrible things happen and science gets blamed it is actually an artistic interpretation of science at the source. Eugenics would be a perfect example of simpletons applying their interpretation of science.
A great example of this sort of crap would be how religious people are trying to drive intelligent design into the education system through a terrible interpretation of how science works.
I have zero problem with having someone with a hard core arts degree have some input on the building of a bridge in things like choosing he colours or picking from a group of equal designs, but I really really don't want them designing he whole thing and then having the engineers find a kludge that might keep it from falling down.
But where this guy really falls down along with many STEM pushing policy makers is that while it would be nice for the average school kid to have a better grasp of the physical world around them what is sorely lacking is a place for kids who can excel at science to thrive. A great example would be my daughter's high school. They have science requirements to graduate; fine. But in a 1,200 kid school there is no science fair this year; yet the school budgeted $50,000 for a football team that generates zero revenue.
What it boils down to are two things. Take all the art out of your life and see how you are living. Now take all the technology out of your life and see how that goes. One interesting factoid is that most people access their art through technology anyway and the art is often massively reliant upon technology for its generation.
STEM is not an either or with art. But art is largely a not without STEM. STEM is the difference between the third world and the first. I think that much of the anti STEM sentiment comes from those jealous that in most cases the arts alone leave you in the economic dust either as a person and especially as a country.
Except for maybe hardcore nerds, I've noticed most people in STEM actually are very interested in Liberal Arts ( Literature, Music, Anthropology, History, Graphical Arts, ...) and enjoy experiencing and learning about it on their own time. Of those people who were into STEM in high-school, most achieved higher grades in the Liberal Arts courses given in high school than the so called liberal arts students.
I am one of those people. I absolutely hated the required dumbed-down intro liberal arts classes, but on my own time, I find myself wanting to pick up history books or dabble further in languages more than the 101 level here and there. I found that many of my peers in the math and sciences had some similar part of the liberal arts they were interested in.
Many liberal arts students like to read up on science too. They unfortunately read the pop-sci books that are not always very good (I found myself fielding questions from friends regarding 11-dimensions and quantum theory that didn't make a whole lot of sense, for example), but I think they were interested too. Again, when they could dabble on their own, and not be forced to take a boring intro class.
We need to trust that people in college deserve to be there and are smart enough to make their own decisions (particularly when knowledgeable professors are around for guidance), and let them tool their own curricula based on interest rather than stupid requirements.
No one has said we should focus on STEM to the exclusion of all else.
If you want to take a double major, sure, go ahead and get that degree in Medieval French Lit - Just make sure your other major(s) actually makes you qualified to earn a living.
No argument, a humanities degree will go a long way toward making an engineer "well rounded" (I took the double major path myself); but far from having a glut of narrowly-focused STEM professionals on the market, we instead have a staggering preponderance of unemployable college graduates who had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives and saw a liberal arts degree as the path of least resistance. Nothing "noble" about that, and "well rounded" applies to both sides of the fence. All Nietzsche and no Newton makes you just as square as all Calculus and no Yanomami
Now, if you really do want to work as an anthropologist, hey, more power to ya! But don't complain that no one wants to hire you to smoke a lot of weed and ruminate about how much The Man has conspired to keep you down.
From the linked piece...
And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.
When I travel especially in Asia, (read China, South Korea, Singapore etc), I find better employment of technology than in USA right from the airport! This technology isn't necessarily American at all!
What I find we Americans have, is the view that we are at the epitome of the best. You can't compare the subway system in NY to that in Shanghai in terms of deployed tech for example! NY is in the dark ages. I know because engineers from NY go to Shanghai to "learn" how things are done on such scale.
The Koreans have come to dominate ship building not using western tech, but their home grown solutions to enormous problems.
What I find is that we in America are really one confident lot, right from school kids. We also have a spirit of "self congratulation." But trust me, those Asian folks beat us in many ways.
"I find author's facts dubious" sums up your comment rather nicely. Other (asian) nations might appear to be technological leaders because their airports are new and shiny (at least, the one airport at the capitol that you visited) and that's all well and good but as soon as you get away from the metropolis you see where the actual differences lie: in the US you have technology accessible to nearly 100% of the population, in terms of cost and functionality. That shit ain't easy. In developing countries, the upper half (maybe) can afford it, but the lower half live without even reliable electricity, much less a computer to grant them access to rich information/education/entertainment/etc.
It's primarily popular amongst the circles that want to solve the "problem" of high wages in STEM by attempting to saturate the market, since they're getting push back on the H1-B and overseas design center angle.
What we have today is a severe problem with our education system as a whole. Classical education has been completely dumped, and people are learning how to believe everything they are told by a person in authority. The fix is to revert to the classical system of education, but with the people holding all the power in Government it won't happen. Remember, they want workers.. not thinkers.. STEM requires the latter, not the former.
Where I mostly agree is that the mastery of things like Math is important. I'll argue that so is communication, critical thought, rational discourse and dialogue, and science that has math as the foundation. Read back 100 years and look at "how people learned" and you will see the difference. Also remember, the US Government moved us over about 40 years from a "Classical Education" system to the Prussian designed "Industrial Education" system. The selling point of the Prussian system was that it is good enough to make artillery guys smart enough to target enemies of the State, stupid enough to never question their orders.
The Classical system started with the fundamentals. Reading, Writing, Basic Math, and basic rhetoric (simple fallacy, simple debate). As math improved, physics was introduced. As rhetoric improved, so did the critical thought exercises (Philosophy). Trig was introduced with Music so that you can see how trig works with musical notes. Physics was introduced with Algebra, complex physics with Calculus. It was a continuous system of improvement. Private schools still use this system, go figure..
Compare that system to what we have currently, which is kids learning how to take tests and give predetermined answers. Kids spend almost half of every school year learning to test and taking tests on average. Poor results means more time testing. All of this means that they can't learn, and are under so much pressure that the few lessons they have are useless.
Selling "STEM" is a crock on just about every level. A EE grad that can only use Matlab/Simulink and can't design a circuit by hand really does not understand EE. But they sure did pass a test on Matlab.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Taught but seldom learned.
I started programming at age 10 on a Vic-20. By high school (1987) I wanted nothing to do with literature classes, but I had it crammed down my throat that one needed to be well rounded, and science and mathematics just weren't enough (I didn't go to Catholic school, so that isn't a literal cramming down my throat). Then came the magnet schools, and their more targeted programs; but alas, it was too late for me.
My opinion: Kids need to be well rounded coming out of high school. Writing should be emphasized more, based on the writing quality of my peers and those younger than me. What we need to change is the idea that we must go to college, and that trade jobs are for blue collar people.
I fear we have created a chasm between the college and no-college crowd, and a strict division of college and no-college jobs. College people largely end up with high-level skills; no-college people end up with practical skills that used to be viewed as essential. We college people have divested ourselves of having to truly know that world. We consume at a level that allows us -- and sometimes even requires us -- to live in blissful ignorance.
In conclusion: Take your college degree and learn how to make your own sausage. Or bread (without a machine). Or soap. Or operating system.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
I think the root cause in a lot of this comes from the fact that the govt. funding and solicitation of college students for colleges/universities as their income streams heavily shapes the "ivory tower" mentalities found there, which hardly maps at all to how money is made outside of there. What you are taught in the ivory tower is what works well inside the ivory tower.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
That has a lot to do with the fact that most of these places are using much newer systems. The first line on the Shanghai metro was opened in 1993, and much of the system opened with the last 5 years. In comparison, NYC has some subway cars from 1964 still in use. The US has been slow to upgrade major systems because it is politically hard to mobilize the capital to replace existing infrastructure, not because we lack the knowledge.
You learned predicate calculus.
NAND gates won't point out to you the fallacious thought traps to which the human brain is susceptible.