History isn't a 'useless' major, it teaches critical thinking | Hacker News Reader

History isn't a 'useless' major, it teaches critical thinking

latimes.com

36 pointswalterbell67 comments

These articles reinforce the imperative of thinking beyond majors. Rarely is any major all-consuming, and students who prepare well can complement a major in one general field (e.g., the social sciences) with a suite of technical coursework. The ethos with which one can approach a history degree isn't altogether different from how to confront training in computer science: rigorous introduction to fundamentals – whether through theory or method, is often more enduring than a skills-based view that is too anchored to the whims of the day.

In many universities, major programs for CPSC, physics, etc. require courses with prerequisite chains that take several years to go through. It would be quite hard to build up to these while only taking a minor in these subjects. There are courses for non-majors, but these are typically dumbed down to be made more accessible and possible to jump into without much in the way of prerequisites. For example, there is typically a vast difference between a quantum computing course for physics majors (with a few quantum physics courses as prereqs) and a quantum computing course for non-physics majors.

Meanwhile, talking to the prof and being willing to work a little bit can get you into graduate level history courses even if History is not your major and you've taken next to no History courses. An interest in the subject, time to read, and writing skills honed by other subjects are all you really need. For this reason, I'd argue that History is a great minor to take with a science major, but perhaps not the other way around if you plan to work in a technical field. It's definitely possible for a science major to dive into a senior level undergraduate or graduate history course intended for history majors. Arguably, this is more rewarding that taking a course intended to be an easy option for non-majors.

> In many universities, major programs for CPSC, physics, etc. require courses with prerequisite chains that take several years to go through.

At my university, UCSC, math and CS courses tended to be "structured" in the opposite way -- once you'd completed a modest suite of lower-division courses, you tended to be qualified for almost every upper-division course. I assume this was meant to make it easier for people to graduate on time.

The considerable downside was that nearly every class devoted a substantial percentage of the total time to review at the beginning.

It's really useful to distinguish technical fields from engineering and especially natural sciences fields once you get past K12. STEM is not actually a very coherent grouping.

Almost all CS programs are relatively flat, but many science programs have longer chains of linear or parallel pre-reqs.

Math programs differ from both because long chains of pre-reqs in Math often correspond to required maturation rather than required knowledge (e.g. the Calc sequence as a pre-req for algebra courses).

Math and CS professors and students complained loudly about the lack of prerequisites. It did great harm to the curriculum. Defending it on the grounds that math and CS don't need long prerequisite chains in the way that other fields do misses the point.

WRT CS, my comment was meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. FWIW I agree with you, but what I said is largely true of CS curriculum in the US.

I'm not sure whether I agree with you regarding math. I think pre-requisites should reflect required knowledge accurately, and should leave required maturation to the student and his/her instructor. Requiring the calculus sequence prior to courses that contain no calculus strikes me as a silly historical accident, for example.

> Requiring the calculus sequence prior to courses that contain no calculus strikes me as a silly historical accident, for example.

Sure, but I haven't said anything about that.

There is still a chain for history, or used to be thirty years ago, including a foreign language, philosophy, economics, literature, political science, and usually visual arts. That undergraduate history is more accessible than, say, quantum computing, or that professors might let you into a graduate level history class with no prior courses, does not (or at least should not) mean that you are gaining everything that can be had from such a course compared to someone with the full background.

Here is the thing though. Although critical thinking is important it's definitely not what academia lacks. What it does lack is constructive thinking. I.e. the ability to propose new testable/semi-testable theories.

Entrepreneurs are always going to be more constructive thinkers than critical thinkers and thats why the are valuable.

You're making a distinction between practical thinking and thinking for thinking's sake.

There's a difference between arguing and critical thinking. I've often found myself in discussions with graduate students in humanities subjects where the main arguments end up being, "have you read <name>? <name> says <argument related to a given argument>." Pretty soon, it's opinions built on opinions built on opinions, and the shoutiest voice wins.

In science, eventually we can actually test whether something is factually true. At least in history, there is some ground truth as well, but often it's still more vague than we'd like it to be.

I think more technical degrees scientific/technical fields end up forcing a more practical approach to critical thinking. Who cares if something makes sense in the context of some random ivory tower theory? The better question is: does it help me enjoy and appreciate life more completely?

I absolutely believe history can teach critical thinking as well as a technical field, but I think technical fields teach it by default. If I say something wrong about biochemistry, nature itself will beat me to a bloody pulp. In the humanities, another human has to do it, and may not be standing on very firm ground when they do.

Non-engineering fields when taught poorly also more prone to suffer from regurgitate-to-pass syndrome. You can get by in a lot of badly taught classes by reciting the book if you're not forced to apply your knowledge. Most engineering classes by default force application, which also naturally reinforces critical thinking in the "why isn't this working" steps.

That said, I love history, I love art, all of these things enrich my life and help me understand how people work, interact and are motivated. These things also help put life in perspective and figure out what's really important.

I feel like history isn't quite as important as we currently emphasize. The ability to manipulate your surroundings is far more useful than the exploration of how best to do so. I feel we would be better served to reinforce how to change the world, than to show how others have changed the world (a slightly different view).

That only makes sense if you don't intend to learn from any of the ways other people have tried to change the world before you try yourself.

Which seems like a bad idea.

Scientists may lack resources and proper incentives, but it's pretty bold to claim that they lack the ability to propose new testable/semi-testable theories...

When I first started university, I had the same attitude as most other STEM majors, that history and all arts degrees were useless and a waste of time, I used to joke that BA stands for Bugger All. The only non-stem degrees I thought were worthwhile were law and accounting.

But then I actually met some people doing history, and how interested they were in it, and I realised that it's perfectly valid to do a degree just out of interest, if it's what you're interested in. Some of the people I know doing arts degrees are more passionate about their field than I am about programming.

The people that were wasting their time and just accruing debt at university were the people doing commerce or criminal justice degrees. I never once actually heard them talking about their degree, they had no interest in the subject matter, they just wanted to live the university lifestyle, or were told they needed to get a degree. Criminal justice was the worst for that, because anyone actually interested in that was doing law.

So these days, I think as long as it's something you're passionate about, then there's nothing wrong with doing an arts degree. Universities don't solely exist for vocational training, there is validity in learning for the sake of learning.

The fact that tuition is a lot cheaper, and interest free student loans in New Zealand means that it's a lot more feasible to do a degree that interests you though, without crippling you financially.

I think I'd ask:

Is there any way you could either develop 'critical thinking' skills for less than X thousands of dollars, or, for the same money, also obtain some more immediately marketable skills?

You see this in so much commentary on education. People point out that something has a benefit, and they're absolutely correct, but they fail to examine if it's superior to alternatives.

If we want critical thinking skills, is a history class the most efficient way to go about it? Maybe one of the other humanities is superior in this regard? What about those classes we've titled "Critical Thinking"?

I loved my AP history classes in HS, and I think it's something everyone should be familiar with... but majoring in it? Not so sure.

During my first startup job, I took my freshly-minted history degree and explicitly treated the body of communications from engineering, marketing, sales, and the customer base as 'historical sources'. This helped me figure out what was actually going on, as opposed to what everyone was constantly yelling about, and I suspect that's why I was able to weasel out of that customer support gig into a product management position. In turn, that let me eventually make the connections and get the background knowledge necessary to start my own thing. So yes, I certainly don't consider my degree 'useless'.

Honestly, you want some humanities majors sprinkled around your organization for the different skill sets they bring. Rands' classic 'Russian Lit major' post says it better than I could:

http://randsinrepose.com/archives/russian-history/

A degree in History is usually associated with leftist/socialist/communist thinking in South America, usually due to indoctrination from professors. Is it the same in US/Europe/Asia?

Saying that history professors do leftist indoctrination is a ridiculous statement, is just like saying that astrophysics professors are doing "anti-bible indoctrination". You can study history and support right-wing positions, as many have done in the past.

In fact, studying story has no direct connection with leftism. The problem is that right-wing people feel very upset when historians view history outside their traditional models. This is always a big problem for conservatives, because the work of the historian is exactly to discuss new views and interpretations of history. Doing otherwise would be scholastic work, not critical thinking. For this reason, most historical research ends up being an analysis from a point of view that is complementary or even antagonistic to conservatism.

  >This is always a big problem for conservatives, because the work of the historian is exactly to discuss new views and interpretations of history. Doing otherwise would be scholastic work, not critical thinking. For this reason, most historical research ends up being an analysis from a point of view that is complementary or even antagonistic to conservatism.

This is true in the sense of what the study of history has unfortunately become in recent decades at universities, but untrue in the sense of what the study of history has meant and been over the centuries.

Not to mention the sort of lamely attempted indoctrination I experienced, such as the professor who flatly told us all that we should vote for Gary Hart. It was 1984. The course was on 19th century Russian history. We learnt far more about Lenin's and Stalin's mothers than we did about, oh, say, Russia's territorial ambitions and their reactions to the shifting alliances in Europe at the time.

So, you can say that I'm just a crusty conservative because I had to do a lot of extra reading to get the big picture of what was actually happening in Russia at the time and I found the information the professor shared with us from her thesis to be as interesting as watching paint dry. I'm ok with being labeled if that's what it takes to make the point that not all history done these days is particularly helpful for understanding the things that affected tens of millions of people.

> but untrue in the sense of what the study of history has meant and been over the centuries

Nobody is under any obligation to do things in the way it was done over the centuries. If you just want history as it was done in the past you can read old history books. Modern historians have a obligation with their own generation. Sometimes they will be more progressive than some people wish, some other times they may be more conservative than others want. Society, being multi-faceted, will frequently disagree, and that is fine.

In my experience yes. Any time someone holds up a major and uses terms like 'critical thinking' or 'widens horizons' and they're not talking about a logic class they really mean hard left indoctrination.

Ha. Yeah, it's amazing how often people use this phrase when they mean "I find it illogical that people disagree with my politics". Actual critical thinking, a skeptical examination of assertions and data, tends to be called something else.

It's not clear from your comment whether you're assuming history is like this because of your experience with other majors or whether you have experience with history in particular being like this.

If it's the latter, can you give some concrete examples? I'm genuinely pretty curious because all my experiences with post-secondary academic history have been unusually non-partisan (compared to many/most other social sciences).

If it's the former...well honestly that's just silly. Just because it's a favorite tactic of the left to claim that anything contrarian is critical thinking doesn't mean the converse is true (i.e. that anything labeled critical thinking is on the hard left).

I find the claim particularly dubious for history: if you really squint and try to label it as partisan, it seems just as likely to me that it would seem right-ish than that it would seem left-ish. The discovery students make in the postsecondary study of history that historiography exists is one of the linchpins of history's alignment with critical thinking: instead of reading sources (and historians) as bearers of incontrovertible truth, you realize that they make up a best-effort account of facts subject to things like lack of information, blind spots, etc. This is fundamentally similar to not blindly trusting academic and scientific authority, a view which dovetails neatly with both the contemporary and historical right[1] (the latter case including opposition to things like high modernism on the left). It's true that a level of distrust of status quo knowledge exists on the left as well (e.g. post-modernism), but that just reinforces my point that it's not fundamentally partisan.

[1] This isn't a commentary on which approach is better, but I hardly think it's controversial that the idea that scientific facts are set hard in stone and you're simply flat wrong if you question them is far more common on the left at the moment than on the right. Skepticism of academia and the scientific establishment consists both of 1) anti-intellectual "scientists are all scammers" and 2) a sober-minded recognition of the limitations of the scientific method and the attendant belief that progress based on scientific knowledge should have some brakes built in.

Sorry, I think my statement appeared a little too broadly.

I'll try to re-state it. In my experience, outside of hard science every one of my professors who was fond the phrase 'critical thinking' was pushing marxism hard, including several history professors I had.

I'm not trying to state that history is hard left overall. Just that if I heard the phrase 'critical thinking' I should prep for a long lecture on worker alienation or class struggle.

I don't think my Philosophy degree was hard left indoctrination.... and not all of my philosophy classes were logic class.

That's fair I was far too broad.

Wait, are you being serious? Can you explain that.. very broad statement?

So my experience is anecdote not data, but by the end of my time going to college any time a professor said "This class might be about <subject> but it is really about critical thinking" or "The point of education is to widen your horizons" the class was just chalked full of the same unchallenged, easily repeatable Marxist or hard left ideas.

What do you mean by unchallenged? Marxist ideas are challenged every day, almost everywhere you go. Now, even if they are wrong (I am not going to enter into this discussion), studying them would increase your critical thinking abilities in trying to disprove them. So, the professor was right all along!

That largely depends on the depth of the engagement.

Reading Das Kapital should be an exercise in critical thinking, regardless of one's political persuasion. For example, where in the software industry is the labor theory of value a reasonable model? Where is it not reasonable? Why? Answering these questions requires what any reasonable person would call critical thinking.

Conversely, hearing a bunch of passionate lectures about worker's rights movements is considerably less enlightening...

I don't see any problem with passionate lectures about worker's rights movement. In college I also heard passionate lectures about the marvel of free markets, and had to endure them. Different professors have different persuasions and that is all right, they're not trying to fool anyone. It is up to each one to form his or her personal views of the world, and use the information they get from history and philosophy to enlarge these views.

By "unchallenged", I presume thescribe means that the professor gave only the pro-Marx side of the story, and gave it as if it were The Truth. They called it critical thinking, but it was really just propaganda.

I understood exactly what he said. But any college student knows fully well that there's nothing that is The Truth in a class, after all this is not a church. I believe that if the professor presented only the pro-Marx side of the story this is just fine, after all, this is America, everyone knows the other side of the story. For the professor to present the arguments anti-Marx in his class would in fact be just the opposite: capitalist indoctrination, where you would be lead to believe that Marx was really wrong and capitalism is the only "correct" system.

> I believe that if the professor presented only the pro-Marx side of the story this is just fine, after all, this is America, everyone knows the other side of the story.

That's probably true.

> For the professor to present the arguments anti-Marx in his class would in fact be just the opposite: capitalist indoctrination, where you would be lead to believe that Marx was really wrong and capitalism is the only "correct" system.

Also probably true.

The problem, though, is that the professor is only presenting the Marx side, while claiming to teach critical thinking. That's not critical thinking! Critical thinking means criticizing both sides.

Now, if the professor wanted to teach the Marx side "as a balance to what everybody else says", that's OK too. The problem is the one-side-only combined with the claim of "critical thinking".

So a handful of professors at a single university lead you to make a statement about "any time someone" does something?

I think you probably need to take a few more courses that will help your critical thinking ;)

That's completely fair I was too broad.

I'm in the awkward position of wanting to strongly agree and disagree with you at the same time. I did two degrees here: economics and arts(philosophy and religious studies...as in history and anthropology, not theology)...which I think made me one of about three people in the entire university bridging the left/right subject divide.

My history, anthropology and philosophy classes were consistently professional: empirical, critical, draw from sources, develop thesis, discuss, defend, attack.

Once you moved over into anything connected with contemporary economics/politics, it was a different story, and that goes for both my economics or my political economy/philosophy classes (that's right or left for those that need to translate the euphemisms).

That there's a certain infiltration of "leftism" in some of the Errr...more contemporary/recently invented arts fields, I don't want to argue because I think it's largely true.

But if I'm honest, my economics degree was essentially indoctrination as well: alarmingly ahistorical (those of us who did economic history classes were in the minority), rote memorisation of models, never was the idea of empirically testing or competing our ideas ever floated, and those few of us who actually did read the primary sources or history of the field quickly found that most appeals to such names (Smith, Locke, Ricardo, Keynes, Marx, Say, Malthus, Marshall, blah blah blah) were often mythical figures and misappropriation rather than connected to their actual words, times or contexts.

Look, maybe things have moved on in ten years, but I doubt it, and my uni had a decent reputation for economics at the time...which I'm now thinking is directly tied to their ability to pump out large numbers of unthinking orthodox automatons...

There are academic departments that have that reputation in the US, but history (after high school) by and large doesn't have the reputation for being ideologically skewed.

No,in France, some universities/academic departments are said to be leftwing and other rightwing (in history, for instance) but they don't seem to indoctrinate, rather to attract some students who already have the same mindset.

In reality,in History, professors may be slightly engaged politically, and some students as well, but most are rather struggling to figure out what kind of jobs they are going to do after their studies.

This is aimed at some of the other comments but: Any non-technical degree comes with some ideological perspective.

Consider Shakespeare.

If you just consider him "great", and read him to appreciate him, then that is an ideological perspective.

You could say the way he treats xyz is a product of his times, that is a perspective.

If you say, he is over-rated and people have held him up to a high standard, that is also a particular ideological perspective.

Having a particular ideological perspective, and arguing against others does foster critical thinking, as long as you are arguing against another ideological perspective.

So if someone says, hey side X was the righteous side in this particular war, and someone else says no it was side Y, and a third person says they were all dirty, that's probably a good thing. It doesn't mean you can find a non-technical discipline free of ideology.

Technical fields -- especially those closer to technology than to natural science -- can also be extraordinarily ideological. Both in curriculum and (especially!) in culture.

For a perfect example of true ideology in action, look no further than these comments -- from members of a field renowned for epic religiousity over such comparatively inconsequential topics as programming languages, text editors, and software license preferences -- decrying the proneness of other fiends to ideological attachments!

I do agree with that, but I consider that to be much more controversial. I didn't want someone arguing "oh yeah? how is higher math ideological?"

It would lead us astray, I fear.

On the contrary, the answer to such a question perfectly illustrates the sort of critical thinking that is taught in a history degree program but not necessarily in a technicaly degree program.

After reading enough about the history of mathematics, it is nearly impossible to arrive at the conclusion that today's mathematicians do not have their own set of ideological beliefs. However, obtaining high scores in a mathematics degree program is easily achievable without seeing these beliefs as ideological ("that's just how it's done" is a profoundly common and profoundly ideological answer to questions of the form "but why not do things this other way" -- especially in upper-level undergraduate mathematics).

All degrees bar philosophy come with bundles of ideological perspective.

To truly think critically you must free yourself from ideology as best you can.

The demarcation between the humanities and social sciences and the so-called hard(er) sciences is not a division of technicality. To say that you can split the degrees awarded by our academic institutions into technical versus non-technical and then claim that the more technical are freer of ideology is a supremely ideological statement.

Also, you've managed to conflate not two but three distinct ideas in order to make the claim that you've made: for the purposes of this conversation subjective judgements come in two flavo(u)rs - the first is where you evaluate according to some standard, the second is where you impose your values. It is only the second of these that can be in any way said to be ideological and only then it is only when you become identified with the values you are imposing on the world which happens rarely - and get this, people in technical degrees do this all the time.

"Bar philosophy"? Baloney. Philosophy has its own ideological perspective(s).

How? It's the study and critique of ideologies, without a judgment of right / wrong.

In theory, yes.

In practice, though, postmodernism (taken as a whole) most definitely has an ideology. So did logical positivism.

And even more in practice, if you go to a university to study philosophy, the philosophy department at your university will definitely have an ideological bias.

For this discussion, we might have to distinguish between continental philosophy and analytic philosophy, and then talk about how each is biased in their own way.

Continental philosophy is, in one sense, about the bias inherent in all thought.

One might say that analytic philosophy is about finding the bias free portion of thought, and judgments differ on whether they succeed.

Richard Rorty would be an interesting example of a critique of the second sort of philosophy in this context.

That's an interesting perspective -- to clarify, do you just consider that any subjective judgment is derived from a set ideology?

I wouldn't go that far.

So the fact that I like peanut butter and jelly is not derived from a particular ideology.

It seems to me that it would need other things -- many people banding together, promoting it, fighting against others in various forums -- for it to be called an ideology.

I guarantee that someone somewhere has written an economic explanation of your fondness for PB&J. And someone else has used that to prove that you're a fascist.

Ha. Probably so. I just hope it doesn't become a movement.

I didn't look through all of them, but the excerpts look promising:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=peanut+butter+jel...

Speaking about critical thinking: has this assertion been tested? What was the definition of critical thinking in the article? I couldn't see one that the author gave.

So called "Critical thinking" is a collection of skills and history only maps to some of them. The skills that I believe history fosters at the margin, i.e. independently of any other subject, are the following:

- For intellectual history: understanding not only that an idea might have "prior art" that can be worth learning from (to evade errors, to find interpretations you didn't consider), but also understanding the lineage of how the idea was constructed and passed on, calibrates you as to both the originality and the level of independent confirmation you can give to it. If many people come to the same conclusion from different angles, great! But in all likelihood the idea has a few core progenitors that everyone is drawing from. If this is the case, then you know to discount the fact that "everyone is doing it" away from your evaluation of the idea, and focus on the original source itself and maybe a few key proponents.

- For societal history: too often I think we underestimate what is possible for human beings to do or achieve, both the height of our accomplishments and the depth of our horrors. Societal history also lets us understand what we have precedents for, which is critical in law. I don't believe it is much use to use history for "trend-seeking", not without some conceptual augmentation (see below cf. economics), but it can definitely help to lower your surprise.

- For historiography: taking the notion "primary", "secondary", "tertiary" etc hierarchy of sources to heart, and the level of prior validity you can expect from each one, lets you understand how difficult it is to separate bias from an account of an experience, as well as encourage coming to your own interpretations by seeking the original data.

However, despite these advantages, I don't think that history is the best field for critical thinking. I believe that trophy should go to economics. Why? The reason being that economics is a field of endeavor that is a source of non-narrative (read: not bullshit prone) explanations of historical phenomena, but also extends these models to the present day and even could allow predictions of the future. Other than citing precedent and giving you evidence to feed into your thinking, history alone doesn't directly let you do this in a fashion I would consider acceptable.

IME, having competed undergraduate studies in economics, it has a huge indoctrination blind spot in that as typically taught, the theories are presented as hard rules and students generally aren't exposed to more than one economic theory in depth. Study time is spent in a performance of mathematical theatre, extrapolating broad notions of how society behaves from simplified models. Some of it has useful explanatory power - especially micro economic theories that have plenty of experimental backing - but just as often there is a design constraint of "our options as policy makers are x, y, and z because those are what are in our model." And this is not probed so actively at the undergraduate level - to do the homework and pass the tests you have to answer "yes, of course z is the best policy, because our textbook model says so." Which, I suppose, is like high school history and its tendency to use a singular narrative of cause and consequence, but with some symbols thrown in. It is deceptively universalizing.

Agreed about the usefulness of history! It also teaches the useful skill of inferring truth from multiple sources of varying reliability.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem optimized for drawing in the right people. Professional/academic historian work is very different from all the "history" you take up to that point; before that level, it's mostly "memorize a bunch of stuff that happened, as inferred by historians doing the interesting work".

How would that draw in the people who have aptitude for real historian work?

It overlaps with journalism closely enough to the point where great history is just great journalism, just long-form. I imagine that aspiring journalists head straight to some technical school when they could do well to supplement some humanities work as well.

In hindsight, my choices in high school were probably gearing me up to become a competent journalist. I decided to develop my aptitude for computing instead. I don't regret it, though: the skills and models of higher-level geography and history have been essential in keeping me based rather than basic in 2016.

Although I will note that non-narrative explanations can have their own sort of bullshit, the kind that comes from abstracting too much.

Economics is also the source and home of some of the most bullshit-prone theories and explanations. That's why I ultimately dropped my Economics major. It's full of people that got into the field precisely due to their passion for of their highly politicized opinions. Those people generate elaborate theories, data sets, and models to justify their almost always a priori beliefs -- always under the guise of supposedly rational debate.

I would argue -- as a non-physicist and non-biologist and non-chemist -- that physics or biology or chemistry should take the crown. All explain historical phenomena via models and also extend those models to the present day and even the future, allowing eminently testable predictions. Additionally, the questions these fields pose are typically but not always far less likely to ground out in political preference and are therefore less susceptible (though not invincible) to bullshit.

I was, and still am extremely grateful for my microeconomics prof: he is a contrarian (http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canadian-economist-never-k...) that forced us to reason on a wide class of non-societal examples from first principles whenever possible. As far as being politicized goes, macroecon seems to be a bit more plagued than micro, mod any "homo economicus" fallacies.

He also writes stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/Institutional-Revolution-Measurement-... which showed me how effective economics can be for historical and legal analysis.

The natural sciences have a difficult time mapping onto human concerns bar whatever you get out of engineering.

I received a B.A. in History thirty years ago from a second-tier school. It included lots of coursework in history, of course, but also lots in philosophy, economics, literature, art, law, and archaeology. My favorite definition of history came from a professor: "History is the study of everything."

It is not at all like a technical degree, and does not produce the same kind of thinking. It is aimed at developing the ability to reason, make cogent arguments, evaluate evidence and sources, and becoming aware of your own biases.

(Edit: Yes, technical fields require many of the same skills, but the application of those skills is to different kinds of problems which develops habits of thought that are quite different from historical thinking.)

(Anyone who says they are unbiased has clearly not made it that far in obtaining the historical mindset. It's not that becoming aware of your biases makes them go away; rather, you become more attuned to your own blind spots and so work to develop the ability to compensate for them, especially when evaluating historical evidence.)

I have found that technical people frequently think they are highly skilled in critical thinking regarding the "liberal arts" subjects (history, literature, philosophy, the arts, etc.) but frankly their skills in logical thinking about "hard science" (programming, mathematics, physics, etc.) usually far exceeds their abilities in other areas and so they tend to rate themselves too high in those areas.

I attribute this to the fact that while they have been challenged to defend their findings in a hard science field, most have not had to do so in the liberal arts, and particularly in history.

(Other than in internet forums such as this, which is very weak tea compared to a class of people majoring in the subject and a professor with years in the field. It's a bit like the difference between being competent to comment on the comparison of BSD and Linux on the one hand, and being competent to submit a diff for the kernel on the list for OpenBSD or Linux where Theo or Linus is going to look at it and give feedback.)

You could make this argument about any major.

Which is why I find the desire to make such a definitive connection between 'what you studied' and 'what you do for a living' so strange. Unless you are going into a very specific field that has very strong ties to academic work, I don't think your major is nearly as important as people make it out to be.

I have built a wonderful software development career after completing my philosophy degree.

As if there aren't other ways of teaching critical thinking...

I agree 100% that a history major should important critical thinking skills, but how often does that happen in the real world? My concern is that critical thinking is frequently not taught in college.

So does pure math.

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