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I don't really want to dig into the details of the arguments for the value of a "generalized, liberal arts education" here, mostly because I need to do some research on those arguments before evaluating them. But, on the other hand, I really do believe that an education in ye olde trivium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium), quadrivium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium), and a number of other areas are important for the citizens of a modern, democratic republic, quite aside from how "Literacy and numeracy are vital, but few of us use history, poetry, higher mathematics or foreign languages after graduation." I see this education as important on at least two levels. First, to fight the natural human tendency to assume that everyone else is like us (and that anyone who is different is deviant): we're all programmers here, right? And anyone who doesn't think in discrete, logical steps, is the bizarre alien them, right? More seriously, I had to take Texas government and history classes in college, the requirement for which (a history professor informed us with glee) came out of a number of soldiers from Texas who were captured during the Korean War and who decided to stay in China after the war. (Honestly, I have no idea how those things fit together.) But those classes and others like them, while not directly benefiting me as a computer programmer, did provide some background and common ground between me and a huge number of other people who would otherwise have nothing in common with me. Secondly, to fight the natural tendency for someone who is well skilled in a certain field to assume that field is all that exists. (You should recognize this from this very forum, where people suggest technological fixes for problems which are not technological in nature. And yes, there are problems which are not technological nature.) As for the wisdom of the students, choosing easy classes and complaining about those on topics they'll never use in real life? I took Spanish as a foreign language which I never really learned and promptly forgot, took four semesters to get through two semesters of calculus (badly; all my math be discrete), and those damn semesters of government and history. Guess what? None of those things were useful to me in my subsequent career. Nope, not even calculus, that horrid waste of time and grade points. On the other hand, I regard my lack of knowledge as a bad thing. A usable foreign language would have been nice. Other programmers do use calculus; I just had to avoid those jobs. So, yeah, I pretty much disagree with everything in this article. (End of part 2. See part 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409228) |