From our upcoming Lyceum speaker Richard Eldridge:
"IN OUR CURRENT historical moment, STEM disciplines, with their experimental-mathematical methods and measurable results, are central in educational practices, and humanistic education is in decline. At my own elite liberal arts college, Swarthmore, only 15 percent of the students now major in the Humanities or the Arts, and 75 percent major in Computer Science, Engineering, Biology, Economics, or Political Science. To some extent, this is natural. After all, in a difficult world like ours, why should anything as vague and unmeasurable as cultivation be taken seriously? Why should one learn Greek or art history or music composition, unless one just happens to enjoy such things? And why should the public or parents pay for these private enjoyments that seemingly lack significant public effect and value for the conduct of life?Yet education is a historically evolved and evolving ensemble of practices, and it is also possible to wonder whether we might have lost our collective way. Do we really know what we're doing in turning so strikingly toward STEM and away from the humanities? And are there good reasons for this turn?" (continues)
"IN OUR CURRENT historical moment, STEM disciplines, with their experimental-mathematical methods and measurable results, are central in educational practices, and humanistic education is in decline. At my own elite liberal arts college, Swarthmore, only 15 percent of the students now major in the Humanities or the Arts, and 75 percent major in Computer Science, Engineering, Biology, Economics, or Political Science. To some extent, this is natural. After all, in a difficult world like ours, why should anything as vague and unmeasurable as cultivation be taken seriously? Why should one learn Greek or art history or music composition, unless one just happens to enjoy such things? And why should the public or parents pay for these private enjoyments that seemingly lack significant public effect and value for the conduct of life?Yet education is a historically evolved and evolving ensemble of practices, and it is also possible to wonder whether we might have lost our collective way. Do we really know what we're doing in turning so strikingly toward STEM and away from the humanities? And are there good reasons for this turn?" (continues)
This is the sad truth. I know someone personally that would have loved to major in the humanities, but she felt like she would disappoint her parents. Now instead she is a science major. Unfortunately, these disciplines lack the monetary compensation that other STEM fields do. Like the article notes, it's difficult to justify paying for an education that compensates very little, unless you are in love with the subject. Something about this system would have to change to even out the percentages.
ReplyDeleteIt is weird to compare choosing your major and ultimately your future to dolphins finding food everyday. How humans have moved from day to day inquiries to provoke deeper feelings is a progression I will never fully understand.
ReplyDelete"to abandon the cultivation of virtues and instead to teach only in order to produce measurable outcomes is to capitulate to an individualist culture of instrumental control and private satisfactions."