[todd_whitehead]

This is a very disappointing article. It's a regurgitation of cliches. "Education is about critical thinking and 'self enrichment'; Steve Jobs was a Prophet; Mark Zuckerberg is a Public Hero" -- how much was the author paid by Apple and Facebook, or is this what a "stupid sheep" looks like? The conflation of STEM with "Asian educational systems" is hackneyed; every person who does serious things in STEM knows that it's not just memorization. Speaking of which, why is it that people who aren't in STEM (the journalists and politicians) are so vocally worshipping it and "whining" about women and minorities being under-represented?

"No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write." Ironically the author has none of these skills, and the best thing for him to do would be to avoid the humanities and take several rigorous math courses -- maybe then he will learn how to define his terms and stop writing things that mean essentially nothing.

[jdefr89]

You are essentially attacking the person instead of his argument. But, the article never claimed STEM was about memorization. Perhaps you should re-read more carefully.

[todd_whitehead]

People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character. If he's going to litter his article with first person pronouns and make it personal, then he's "fair game."

I said the article conflated STEM with "Asian educational systems", which are conflated with memorization. Read:

>But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovation and economic success. America overcomes its disadvantage — a less-technically-trained workforce — with other advantages such as creativity, critical thinking and an optimistic outlook. A country like Japan, by contrast, can’t do as much with its well-trained workers because it lacks many of the factors that produce continuous innovation.

>Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity.

[fweespeech]

> People like him should be "attacked", if you want to dilute the meaning of "attacked" to include non-violent criticisms of character.

Attacking isn't purely about violence, it never was.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attack

> to criticize (someone or something) in a very harsh and severe way

To be honest, you are a prime example of the article's point. There is more to education than just STEM. The fact you failed to realize the person you were replying to used the word "attacked" correctly, for instance, can lead to a failure of communication. Failures of communication lead to things like this:

http://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-repor...

Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss something purely due to your own arrogance.

Additionally:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

> Ironically the author has none of these skills, and the best thing for him to do would be to avoid the humanities and take several rigorous math courses -- maybe then he will learn how to define his terms and stop writing things that mean essentially nothing.

Yet another flaw in your style of argument that could have been corrected with classes in the humanities.

[todd_whitehead]

"Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions. Have you heard of "meaning as use", Wittgenstein's "motto"? The first half of my college education was spent as a philosophy major, which I think was useless, both personally and economically.

Please don't call me arrogant. (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.) I don't have any pretensions to being intelligent or having something worthwhile to say. What I wrote was a knee-jerk reaction to what I read, and I criticized his character because the idea of his existing as a person "made me angry", and because I could not fully articulate my problems with the content. Maybe someone else will be able to do that. Part of it is that I spent a portion of my life believing in things like "self enrichment through education" or "being a well rounded person" -- the general sentiments expressed in the article -- but now I think they're meaningless. I learned Homeric Greek and read parts of the Odyssey in it, but the idea of an engineer going home after a day of work and reading the Odyssey in Greek and thinking to himself, "boy, this really makes me think; I am a well-rounded person. Maybe tomorrow I will start Gravity's Rainbow" strikes me as ridiculous and makes me laugh, again for a reason I can't fully articulate, probably because I once had thoughts like that and I no longer do.

There is nothing wrong with that last quote about his writing style. It is vague to the point of meaninglessness. My experience with the humanities has taught me to reject most writing. In fact I have "unlearned" most of my writing style and now try to be as honest as possible. Many people assume I am uneducated, so I guess it's worked.

[fweespeech]

> "Attack" has violent connotations; so does "harsh." There is more to language than prescriptive definitions.

He communicated clearly and you are simply being picky because you believe restricting the word to its more violent connotations is "superior".

The belief that a person is "wrong" because they do not meet your subjective expectation is a conceit. Sorry, you can't simply expect the rest of the world to bow to your subjective expectations.

> (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.)

I don't dislike you or have any opinion of you beyond the assumption you don't seem to realize how you come across and that word relayed that message. The fact you would complain about a person's diction when they are literally correct is precisely in line with that behavior.

> There is nothing wrong with that last quote about his writing style. It is vague to the point of meaninglessness. My experience with the humanities has taught me to reject most writing. In fact I have "unlearned" most of my writing style and now try to be as honest as possible. Many people assume I am uneducated, so I guess it's worked.

> Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.

That is pretty direct.

I'm dropping this mainly because at this point I am leaning towards this being another troll account, honestly.

[pravda]

I agree with everything you said, but I found most disturbing in the article was: "You can make a sneaker equally well in many parts of the world, but you can’t sell it for $300 unless you’ve built a story around it."

So when Beats®, Monster Cable® and Bose® trick the weak-minded into overpaying for commodity products, that is a good thing?

"The value added is in the brand — how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained" Gee, we used to call that the "rip-off"