[teh_infallible]

As someone who majored in English, I assert that the emphasis on STEM and shift away from the humanities is causing serious problems in our society.

Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing.

If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.

[btilly]

Your argument assumes that taking humanities is required to develop critical reading skills.

However attempts to measure critical reading skills, for example in standardized tests such as the GREs, consistently find that STEM majors are better at critical reading than humanities majors!

Secondly, critical reading is not the only required skill for critiquing and assessing potentially flawed arguments. Quantitative reasoning is also needed. For example you can't assess public policy questions about COVID-19 without quantitative reasoning. However STEM courses are far more likely to teach quantitative reasoning than humanities courses.

This critique of your argument is brought to you by someone with a STEM degree.

[jerf]

I think one of the major reasons you see this is that if you're going to go to college and come out with debt that takes you 20 years to repay, crippling you financially while you do [1], any reasonably smart person is going to ensure that they come out with skills that will justify that. If you want people to feel like they have the resources to spend on humanities, it needs to be cheap enough to justify it.

And the truth is, there's no effing reason for a humanities course to put you into that kind of debt. Cheap (often free!) books, a room to meet in, and some small groups for slightly-focused discussion among the students shouldn't be costing on the order of a thousand-dollars per credit hour (per student!) over the course of your compounding-interest loan. It's a terrible value for the money; if it wasn't for the credential nobody would be doing it because if you just want the knowledge/wisdom there are far cheaper ways to get it.

[irishcoffee]

The meat of the below quote: you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.

Quoting the whole thing:

""" CLARK: There's no problem. I was just hoping you could give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities—especially in the southern colonies—could most aptly be characterized as agrarian pre-capital—

WILL: [interrupting] Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, you’re gonna be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon, then you’re gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

CLARK: [taken aback] Well as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of —

WILL: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth..." You got that from Vickers, Work in Essex County, Page 98, right? Yeah I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us—you have any thoughts of—of your own on this matter? Or do—is that your thing, you come into a bar, you read some obscure passage and then you pretend, you pawn it off as your own—your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

[Clark is stunned]

WILL: See the sad thing about a guy like you is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library. """

https://genius.com/Good-will-hunting-good-will-hunting-bar-s...

[SketchySeaBeast]

And in another movie Tony Stark built an arc reactor in a cave with a box of scraps.

[irishcoffee]

Yes, a comic book hero did comic book hero things in a comic book hero movie. Not sure what point you think you're making.

[btilly]

The point is to demonstrate that if a fictional character in a work of fiction does X and it works out, that does not serve as evidence that a real person doing X will work out in reality.

[irishcoffee]

You can't read a book and understand it unless you pay someone to sit in a class and tell you how to think about what you read?

[SketchySeaBeast]

Well, that just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's true.

Few people would get to any sort of level of understanding of that sort of material just by reading it, and just because a movie genius can do it doesn't mean it's easy.

If we replaced all those examples with engineering textbooks, wouldn't it be the exact same, if it not, why? We learn he's an untrained math prodigy later on in the movie, so he doesn't need any education. It would appear a STEM education is a waste as well.

[irishcoffee]

So in order to understand something, you need to a.) and then b.) have someone tell you how to think about what you read? While paying them? You can't wrestle with deep and complex topics unless someone tells you how to think?

[SkyBelow]

>Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing.

1. Humanities does not teach any sort of critical thinking more than other classes, and if anything I found my STEM classes to teach more critical thinking because of more formal systems of proof or statistics needed to back a point.

2. A very large percentage of the population doesn't go to college. If we wait to teach the basic skills in college, it is already too late. This type of thinking needs to be taught in grade school.

>If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.

Why wouldn't this be a symptom of the market? There is money to be made in controversy and click bait, and that applies just as well in politics.

[wumpus]

Wow, I had no idea that STEM education results in people who lack critical reading skills.

You didn't offer any support for your claim, though, which triggers an alert from my critical reading skills.

Did I pass the test? I did major in STEM.

[Auracle]

Just 40 years ago it was pretty rare for someone to go to college, so I don’t think you can blame a shift away from humanities on that.

[bosie]

I am not following your argument, is your first and second sentence connected?

why is a mathematican less likely to be able to critique and assess a flawed argument compared to an English major? why is an English major less likely to fall for propaganda compared to a computer science major?

[traverseda]

Are universities in the US being used as an expensive stand-in for the failing k-12 education system? At least the basics of that kind of critical reading is something that the english classes in high school should teach.

[twic]

You don't have to look very hard at all to find people who are participants in and cheerleaders for those debates who have degrees in the humanities. Most journalists, for example.

[potta_coffee]

Funny, I was exposed to more propaganda in university than anywhere else. Are you saying that only humanities majors are educated enough to recognize propaganda?

[irishcoffee]

You're unfortunately disproving your own point.

> Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing.

Do I need to point out all the flaws in this sentence or can you critically read your own writing?

> If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.

Would you agree that the majority of politicians are lawyers, or at the very least non-STEM majors? What you're claiming then, is that humanities majors create and participate in "shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling"

Was that the point you were hoping to make?

[lordnacho]

Is it not the case that most people still do not go to university? Then what is having a few humanities majors going to change?

Political debates are a circus because the political system was designed in a different era that didn't have reality shows and endless mind melting entertainment.

[0xEFF]

Psychology and the social sciences have another explanation: Politics is mostly about how people feel and has little to do with how or what people think.

[WalterBright]

Considering that humanities majors tend to believe in socialism does not burnish their critical reading skills and resistance to propaganda.

The reality of the history of socialism is one of failure.

And yes, I do understand that everyone thinks that those who disagree with them are ill-informed and susceptible to propaganda, and those who prefer socialism will think that of me :-)

[gvjddbnvdrbv]

Socialism in the form of social democracy has built some very very nice countries here in Scandinavian.

[voldacar]

having a capitalist country with a large welfare system != socialism

[gvjddbnvdrbv]

The Nordics are more like socialist countries with a large capitalist sector. We use the regulated market as a tool where it works.

[WalterBright]

20% of Norway's GDP comes from oil pumped out of the ground and flows to the government. It's enough to cover the deficits of socialism. The others keep enough of a free market to keep things afloat, but are not known for being economic powerhouses. None have tried communal food production yet, for good reason.

[gvjddbnvdrbv]

Denmark and Sweden and Finland have the same systems without oil.

And yes these countries do use the market in a regulated fashion where it does a good job.