STEM vs Humanities Debate

What if the problem is that the humanities are getting worse? The ancient definition of a liberal arts education was language (typically ancient Greek), mathematics, literature (often poetry), physical sciences, and history. During my time at University, I found that students in STEM were required to take classes in literature, language, and history. At my University, it was 8 of 40 classes - 20% of the work over four years, including 2 at a second year level of above. On the other hand, the hum

Maybe in liberal arts and crafts, but this bullshit doesn't apply to STEM.

I think you're expressing an unhealthy resentment here. I work as a SWE and I appreciate the critical thinking involved in the types of problems I get to solve. I'm also in graduate school for something that often borders on humanities and I am amazed at the complexity of thought that goes into the field due to how limitless the scope is and the way in which the humanity of the field allows anybody to participate. The STEM students I teach often struggle with exactly that, as well as w

I'm not sure you're being fair.I don't like the "STEM arrogance" bit (I wouldn't go so far as to say there is anything inherently arrogant about those in STEM), but I also don't think you can ever fairly judge the value of someone else's field.You don't know why they went into the field -- I promise it's because they saw more value in it for themselves than other fields.You don't why the school offers such programs, but I promise th

This comment is the single most compelling argument why STEM must include liberal arts/humanities studies

Unfortunately, many don't seem to see the point of things as learning "what it means to be a person". They want everything to boil down to a nice engineering problem that, while complex, is solvable with one solution being better/easier. I remember reading an HN post about "Not everything is an engineering problem" and, if I'm not mistaken, the top comment was basically "Like hell it isn't." That's the bigger issue, imo, the mindset w

I disagree with this, strongly.I was a double english and math (cs-emphasis) major. I went to grad school in Industrial Engineering/Operations research because I wanted to study a field where engineering type thinking is applied outside the traditional engineering fields.The things I've learned in engineering and science classes constantly influence my thinking outside these fields. For example, I recently did a computer science programming assignment (coursera data structures)

I find the attitude that only STEM is worth studying (which is not coincidentally believed most fervently by STEM grads) really pernicious.Let me restate the common argument--there's this feeling that it's useful to measure people by the good they're doing for society, and that getting a PhD doing postmodern feminist readings of Christopher Marlowe is less useful to society than getting one doing Alzheimer's research or whatever.I'll just say that it's worth c

See the "humanities is easy" comment below. Too many STEM-Lords in HN a lot of the time sadly. It's a very immature view but a sadly common one in much of tech.

That's what happens when you focus too much on STEMS education and forget about Humanities ;)