[jasperry]

You may be right that the classics aren't necessary for critical thinking. To me, that's not even the main reason they're important. It's more about the type of questions we ask.

We study humanities to help us realize that the values we collectively hold didn't come from nowhere, and that those are the things we should really be analyzing and questioning. You don't get that in a statistics course. And through studying thoughts on the big questions of life from people in different contexts from us, we can gain power to decide for ourselves what makes life meaningful. Or is education only useful if it makes us a better cog in the globalized economic machine?

[rayiner]

> Or is education only useful if it makes us a better cog in the globalized economic machine?

To the extent we require people to go to school for a big chunk of their life, and spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars per year on it, this should be the only function of at least a public education.

If people want to think about the “big questions” they should read the Iliad or the Bible or whatever of their own volition.

[mulmen]

This is an idea that seems to be common among technically (STEM) educated people, among others, and it scares me.

I believe we end up with a healthier society if we teach people diverse topics and introduce them to new ideas in an intellectually safe environment. Contrast this with going to school to double down on whatever you thought in high school and I hope you can see a benefit beyond pure economic gain.

In a democracy everyone should think about the "big questions". If we optimize for brainless robot workers then why ask them for input on how to run our society?

[crankylinuxuser]

> introduce them to new ideas in an intellectually safe environment

I do not think that means what you wrote. I've seen "intellectually safe", and it gets converted to "I accept nothing outside of my bubble". Worse yet, students get actively hostile to foreign ideas.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/safe-spaces-college-int...

I think the better term is "intellectually rigorous". Let people have opposing views, but instead challenge them on logos, ethos, and pathos. That discussion is where the truth lies.

[mulmen]

What I meant by intellectually safe is a place where it is safe to explore new ideas.

[rayiner]

> I believe we end up with a healthier society if we teach people diverse topics and introduce them to new ideas in an intellectually safe environment.

That's great you have this "belief." But we spend $600 billion per year on education in this country. We make kids spend most of their childhoods chained to a desk learning about a variety of things teachers "believe" will help them that they'll never use in their lives. As a taxpayer and a parent, I want this whole expensive, time-consuming endeavor to be based on more than "belief."

Just watch a politician speak sometime: education is billed to the public as a way to help the economy and make sure people have jobs. If you told parents: we want you to spend all this time and money helping your kids learn "how to think" (oh and by the way, it will be based on vague humanistic values that may be quite different from what you would have taught your kids), then you wouldn't get very many people to sign up. And that's an incredibly dishonest thing to do.

[mulmen]

How do you know that students will never use a given lesson? Which ones are they? In this case what you want as a parent (and taxpayer) is no more or less valuable than what I want as a taxpayer. This is all opinion.

What kind of a return do we get on that 600bn?

Personally I think part of the value of education is that it does teach students things their parents wouldn't. Why should children learn only from their parents?

You're going to have to be more specific than putting words in the mouth of a hypothetical politician for me to find your argument remotely compelling. As a member of the public and a consumer of public education I do not consider it to be only job training or a way to support the economy. There are less tangible benefits, especially in higher education.

[jasperry]

I didn't downvote you for that opinion. But I could never share it, if for nothing else but personal reasons. I have a Comp Sci degree, but I credit the humanities professors in my public university for playing a big part in helping me be liberated from the prejudices ingrained in me by the community I grew up in. For that, I'm eternally grateful.

[logfromblammo]

Anecdotally, I credit the humanities professors at my university for helping me tune my BS detector.

From my experience, I think it more likely that liberating a student from the prejudices ingrained in them by their previous environment simply opens the way for different prejudices to be injected into the void.

I am thankful that I was able to recognize the abuses of academia before allowing myself to get pulled into the Ivory Tower's stairmill-powered meat grinder. I still have to do stupid useless crap sometimes, but I actually get paid for that.