| Thanks for the thoughtful response. Let me first clarify that I'm not talking about education as a type of technical school that will teach you what ever skill is hot at the moment. Rather I think the original point of this discussion started with the claim that good design is not just how things looks but rather a deep understanding of how the whole thing works. Knowledge which is both wide ranging and deep is a prerequisite for good design. That is something I strongly agree with. A liberal arts education was suggested as the thing which provides both deep and wide ranging knowledge. And obviously I am bit sceptical of that. For example: I view college rather as a place for people to learn more about themselves, and to have the freedoms to discover things they would never discover on their own. Exactly! Except I don't quite agree with never discover on their own. College happens to coincide with the time of your life where you are learning the most about yourself. And if you decided to travel the country (or the world) on a motorcycle, I bet you would learn a lot about yourself and have incredible freedom, and discover things you'd never even dreamt about. But I don't mean to disparage college. College also brings together other students and professors and it's very safe, so an absolutely great experience. However, I do find that often people who defend liberal arts education imply that self discovery without it is just not as good. I strongly disagree with that, I don't think you even need college for self discovery. Curiosity and a sense of adventure is just as good. Add travel to that mix and I think few colleges can beat that. The other unfortunate implication is that people who don't have a liberal arts education are a bit shallow or narrow focused, or not quite as well rounded. This I find frankly offensive. But never mind how I feel about it, I think it's plainly wrong. Science and engineering don't sap student's souls. Scientists and engineers are not all boring, grey people, with no sense for art or music. I recall the Ad Council commercials with a boy telling the street musician to get a job, and a little girl asking her dad to read to her from the Federal Reserve meeting notes. Actually, if I had to name the one area of study which saps people's souls with overbearing work loads, it would be medicine. And MDs aren't exactly known to be shallow or not well rounded. Scientists and engineers love music and art too. I mean how can you look at the Millau Viaduct http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/01/wonders_bigdigs/sour...
and not see the art and beauty in it? Your paragraph: For a creative mind, all of these things aid both in specific studies — I could reel out a list of scientific discoveries formulated by scientists who were inspired by an utterly different line of thought — and in the more important study, which is: realizing that the world is interconnected in a lot of ways, and that those connections tend to mirror other connections elsewhere, and that studying all these other things will lead to a richer and deeper education/human being. Is a perfect example of implying that scientists and engineers are just not as aware of the nature of the universe, the subtle connections in it, the beauty in it. That scientists and engineers just aren't quite as "creative". College isn't about me getting a job. It's about me becoming a better person. Liberal arts is geared towards making me more diverse and thoughtful than I would be otherwise. It's working. And amazingly science and engineering work in exactly the same way for science and engineering students. I mean literally no one wants to hire software engineers right out of collage. So yeah, pretty much exactly like a liberal arts degree :) |