Comments on: “mathandscience” destroying the humanities? http://wingnuts.battletothedeath.net/2009/09/mathandscience-destroying-the-humanities/ Destroying misleading email forwards, one message at a time. Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:04:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Fritz Heckel http://wingnuts.battletothedeath.net/2009/09/mathandscience-destroying-the-humanities/comment-page-1/#comment-11 Fritz Heckel Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:47:24 +0000 http://wingnuts.battletothedeath.net/?p=44#comment-11 My problem is that he's making a claim in there that the problem is due to an emphasis on mathandscience, with the suggestion that declines in humanities are an enormous problem while mathandscience isn't suffering. The sciences are running into serious problems, even with the money-- pointing over at the engineering school and saying "it's all your fault" is counterproductive. My problem is that he’s making a claim in there that the problem is due to an emphasis on mathandscience, with the suggestion that declines in humanities are an enormous problem while mathandscience isn’t suffering. The sciences are running into serious problems, even with the money– pointing over at the engineering school and saying “it’s all your fault” is counterproductive.

]]> By: Nicolas Ward http://wingnuts.battletothedeath.net/2009/09/mathandscience-destroying-the-humanities/comment-page-1/#comment-9 Nicolas Ward Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:09:38 +0000 http://wingnuts.battletothedeath.net/?p=44#comment-9 I think I agree with Slouka's assessment that the money in higher education is one of the driving sources of the problem (in particular, schools seeing themselves as practically for-profit intellectual property generating institutions). I also agree that, at least in my slice of the technical field, a person with a broad background is much better than someone who is only about "pure" mathandscience. My thinking in this vein keeps coming back to a desire to implement some coarse-grained majors at the high school level. Start to figure out where people are headed earlier on, and emphasize those strengths. While this might feed into Slouka's perceived problem re: emphasis, I think this is more likely to make education on the average pareto positive for most students. Right now, if a student is simply bad at math, they are forced to continue to do it, which in turn ingrains a sense of disgust for educators who "make" you do "stupid" and "hard" stuff. I suppose this runs counter to what I just said about being broadly educated, but there's a balance, and I think emphasizing one's individual skillsets will help make the overall experience better. I think I agree with Slouka’s assessment that the money in higher education is one of the driving sources of the problem (in particular, schools seeing themselves as practically for-profit intellectual property generating institutions). I also agree that, at least in my slice of the technical field, a person with a broad background is much better than someone who is only about “pure” mathandscience.

My thinking in this vein keeps coming back to a desire to implement some coarse-grained majors at the high school level. Start to figure out where people are headed earlier on, and emphasize those strengths. While this might feed into Slouka’s perceived problem re: emphasis, I think this is more likely to make education on the average pareto positive for most students. Right now, if a student is simply bad at math, they are forced to continue to do it, which in turn ingrains a sense of disgust for educators who “make” you do “stupid” and “hard” stuff. I suppose this runs counter to what I just said about being broadly educated, but there’s a balance, and I think emphasizing one’s individual skillsets will help make the overall experience better.

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