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> Citizens who cannot think about the world in numeric and statistical terms are not prepared to understand it, or the complex choices facing them... We don't spend $1 trillion a year on public education to have teachers indoctrinate kids on their philosophical and political views.

I think the "liberal" in "liberal arts" is throwing you off :-P.

Math, stats, and logic is very much part of a liberal arts education.[1] So are life and natural sciences, philosophy, history, geography, and political science. I would imagine learning all of these would make you a better informed citizen.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education#Modern_...

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics.

From that link:

> In the Renaissance, the Italian humanists and their Northern counterparts, despite in many respects continuing the traditions of the Middle Ages, reversed that process. Re-christening the old trivium with a new and more ambitious name: Studia humanitatis, and also increasing its scope, they downplayed logic as opposed to the traditional Latin grammar and rhetoric, and added to them history, Greek, and moral philosophy (ethics), with a new emphasis on poetry as well.

In practice, modern “liberal arts” programs often dispense with logic, math, and empirical science. Again, from your link:

> For example, the core courses for Georgetown University's Doctor of Liberal Studies program cover philosophy, theology, history, art, literature, and the social sciences.

More fundamentally, it’s insufficient to throw in a few courses on math that everyone quickly forgets. Math, science, and logic should be the basic foundation for cultivating children’s world view, not literature, philosophy, or social studies.

For example, consider how kids learn about history. They read stories, mostly focused on individuals. But that’s not the only way to learn history. I took a class at Georgia Tech in the history of science, which looked at the impact on society of various technological advances. History education doesn’t quantify anything. But we have lots of data. What was the GDP per capita of ancient Egypt versus Mesopotamia? What are quantitative indicators we can use to help put those societies into context and compare them with ours? what was the infant mortality rate in India before and after British colonization? What were the demographic trends in Mandate Palestine prior to the creation of Israel?

> In practice, modern “liberal arts” programs often dispense with logic, math, and empirical science...it’s insufficient to throw in a few courses on math that everyone quickly forgets.

Where are you getting any of this from? What in the world are you talking about?

Since you mentioned Georgia Tech, I looked up their liberal arts programs at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Selected undergrad majors: Computational Media (computer science and design)[1], Economics (pretty mathy, check out the curriculum[2]), Global Economics and Languages (ditto [3]).

Selected graduate majors: Digital Media (tons of programming and design work[4]), Human Computer Interaction (tech-y by definition [5]), Economics, Infosec [6]. Seems like any of those degrees would require plenty of "logic, math, and empirical science".

But then one might say, "Georgia Tech is an engineering school. Of course their liberal arts stuff is going to be tinged with rigor. But them lefty, coastal, liberal hotbeds can't reason their way out of a paper bag."

So I looked up Wellesley College, one such institution. They offer majors in such soft disciplines as Astronomy, Physics, Astrophysics, Biochemistry, Math, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Geosciences, to name a few.[7] They graduate students in these majors every year.

I don't think you understand the breadth of disciplines that a liberal arts education can encompass. There are liberal arts degrees attained by taking the bare minimum of math, or science classes and then there are liberal arts degrees such as geology that have plenty of hard (haha!) science and math behind them.

> consider how kids learn about history. They read stories, mostly focused on individuals. But that’s not the only way to learn history. I took a class at Georgia Tech in the history of science, which looked at the impact on society of various technological advances

What does a class you took at Georgia Tech have to do with how kids are taught history in school? They are different things. Kids being taught history poorly doesn't invalidate the importance of the subject. Kids are taught math and science poorly too.

Advanced studies in history do explore questions of the sort you raised.

> Math, science, and logic should be the basic foundation for cultivating children’s world view, not literature, philosophy, or social studies.

I think philosophy and social studies are just as important as math and science, and maybe literature is less important. First off, logic has its roots in philosophy[8]. Social studies such as history, civics, and geography are important for a well-informed citizenry. Economics is pretty handy. You may scoff at literature as being useless, but it forms the basis of the entertainment industry - plenty of money there.

1. https://www.iac.gatech.edu/academics/undergraduate/bs/cm

2. https://www.iac.gatech.edu/academics/undergraduate/bs/econom...

3. https://www.iac.gatech.edu/academics/undergraduate/bs/geml

4. https://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/program/courses-2/

5. http://www.mshci.gatech.edu/program/about

6. https://www.iac.gatech.edu/academics/graduate

7. https://www.wellesley.edu/academics/deptsmajorprog

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

There is an issue of terminology happening here. While Georgia Tech might have a "Liberal Arts College", that's not the same thing as a "Liberal Arts degree".

From wikipedia: "There is no formal definition of liberal arts college".

Here's someone else explaining better than I can: "A bachelor's degree in liberal arts means that the courses you take will be in general areas of study such as philosophy, mathematics, literature, art history, or languages, rather than in applied or specialized fields."

If you think that Biochemistry is a "liberal arts degree" then you've really misunderstood what the above poster was talking about. Biochemistry is a specialized field, and no one would consider that a liberal arts subject.

If it helps, you want to be looking towards degrees like: psychology, business, literature, arts, sociology, women's studies, languages, history, political science... Does this mean these degrees will never touch math? By no means! But it's foolish to think the level of mathematical and technical rigor would be similar to a degree in, say, Physics.

Generally speaking, even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives, as part of a "liberal arts education"; what we might call well-rounded. But while the physics student might read a few books and find it interesting, and keep that as part of them for the rest of their life... it's generally not the case that a student of Fine Arts is going to take Calculus and occasionally wistfully perform derivatives.

STEM people have a real blind spot with this.

Who runs the world? Not STEM people. Most politicians have a legal and/or liberal background. They may also have a background in STEM - particularly likely in Europe, less so in the US - but you get nowhere in politics without studying and understanding foundational liberal arts skills such as rhetoric, persuasion, and public debate.

The idea that liberal arts majors spend their entire time writing on essentially useless activities - like post-structural critiques of famous literature - is hilariously naive.

Some liberal arts academics do indeed do this, but that's because the liberal arts have pure and applied elements. Just like STEM. And STEM academics also spend their time on wildly impractical theoretical pastimes.

But at the applied end, the liberal arts run the planet. They don't keep the lights on - engineers do that - but they set the policy goals and define the political, economic, moral, and philosophical orthodoxies that virtually everyone conforms to, whether or not they're consciously aware of it.

> you get nowhere in politics without studying and understanding foundational liberal arts skills such as rhetoric, persuasion, and public debate

I’m skeptical that attainment of political power is easily attributed to a good liberal arts education. I think desire for power, some intelligence, and a relaxed relationship with principles go a long way. Well-crafted rhetoric...eh.

A lot of practice comes a long way. A few truly top politicians were also actors. (Not necessarily very good ones.)

Funnily enough, most politicians* are from law backgrounds... which while it falls on the 'arts' side of the spectrum is definitely a specialized field and vocation.

I suspect that the dichotomy isn't so much 'STEM vs Arts' but 'Accountable vs Unaccountable'. Most STEM fields are accountable to reality and future employers, and law is similarly accountable to rival scholars of law and employers of new lawyers. That makes law a rather noteworthy outlier in the liberal arts.

*in western countries

And quite a few politicians have an equivalent of economics degree.

Those fields are in neighborhood of STEM more than old "liberal arts" standard of language, foreign language, art (painting or music) and history. (Note: no ethics or philosophy.)

Physics, math, chemistry, logic, biology, history, geography, geology, astronomy, even economics are "accountable to reality". They are all liberal arts. Your idea of liberal arts is incomplete.

Are you accepting the dichotomy of STEM and Liberal Arts, and then categorising math as a liberal art?

Do you know the M in STEM stands for 'Mathematics'?

I think it's pretty clear from my posts that I'm not accepting this dichotomy - the "S" is science. Most sciences and math are firmly in the realm of liberal arts. I believe the argument is over how much T & E there needs to be in school and college education.

> even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives

ok, yes, STEM students study a little bit liberal arts

> generally not the case that a student of Fine Arts is going to take Calculus

But now you're asking a liberal arts student to study Calculus and derivatives, which are not easy topics and not something that useful in day to day life.

This is a blatantly double standard in your argument. Few STEM students go that deep in liberal arts to the "level of Calculus". It's like asking a STEM student to read Kant.

"level of Calculus" is not very deep, Calculus is a first year college math course at best, most who study stem take it already in high school, it is hard to get much shallower than that and still call it a college course.

one could say Kant isn't very deep either, you study in your first year philosophy. but few STEM students know about it.

Unlike Kant, knowing calculus will help you with balancing books. (And many other useful real world stuff.)

If you want to add something useful to the mix, try law, ethics (technically a subset of philosophy), logic (as analysis and rationality, manipulation) and acting. Group work can be exercised in any field, therefore including basic management.

> knowing calculus will help you with balancing books.

How? I can see how calculus is used in quantitative finance, but double-entry bookkeeping predates the invention of calculus.

I did basic accounting without needing any calculus. In fact I only used calculus after trying some machine learning. 90% of the population doesn't use calculus in their life.

>But now you're asking a liberal arts student to study Calculus and derivatives, which are not easy topics and not something that useful in day to day life.

Calculus is a high school subject where I live, at least single variable calculus, it's not that hard.

neither is Kant or Marx, both studied in high school where I live, but STEM students usually know nothing about it.

Maybe my education doesn't mirror most STEM people's, but I took philosophy, literature, history, etc. courses as part of my Bioengineering degree. I could also take capstone courses from various arts programs as electives, despite them being "deep in liberal arts". I enjoyed those courses for the most part, and I think we should have STEM students reading Kant. I don't agree with the STEM or nothing argument, but baseline statistics and classical science should be a requirement for everyone.

In my experience, the double standard usually goes the other way.

Many of the liberal arts electives I could choose from (as a physics major) were foundational requirements in that major. For example, in a literature class I took, the instructor was surprised many of us had not also taken Literary Criticism 101.

On the other hand, an English major friend of mine was able to take a physics course nicknamed "Physics for Poets", where rounding g to 10m/s/s was acceptable.

> even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives

I think you're missing my point. In the North American definition of the term, a physics degree is also a liberal arts degree. Physics is a natural science. North American liberal arts colleges offer physics degrees.

Liberal arts education is in contrast to applied or technical educations. For example, aerospace engineering, which is physics applied to a specialized domain.

Your definition of liberal arts seems to be "anything that doesn't involve too much math." Which is a weird kind of snobbery. (I'm speaking as an engineer btw).

My kids are both STEM majors (geology and biochem) and both are in the LAS school at UIUC.

The thing that drives me nuts is that it is always presented as this dichotomy between teaching STEM and teaching liberal arts, as if you have to pick one or the other. The schools have these children for twelve or thirteen years. You could easily do both if you cut the shit and the nonsense and didn't waste their time.

You might have to track children according to ability, which is unpalatable to some. You might also have to have a revolution in the art of teacher education and practice, which is probably impossible due to the entrenched interests.

You could teach some motivated fraction of children orders of magnitude more academic information but the goal of primary education is equally if not more to socialize them into being what the society demands of its citizens. Seeing foreign elementary schools hammered this home for me, what I’d forgotten or assimilated so much I didn’t even notice it- that teachers are constantly reinforcing their normative values about whats good and bad behavior. Because this varies so much by culture its wild to see for example a Japanese elementary school.

>Now that I have my own kids in school, I understand why my mom, moving to the US from an Asian country 30 years ago, was so befuddled by the education I was receiving.)

Schools in East Asia, alongside pushing STEM topics are still also vehicles for pushing the philosophical and cultural views of the state through the teachers and curriculum, so I'm not sure why this is befuddling as such.

For a concrete example see Chinese medium schools in Malaysia, where it's not just about them being ostensibly better at teaching math or other STEM topics, but about Chinese language as a proxy for Chinese culture and values.

> Schools in East Asia, alongside pushing STEM topics are still also vehicles for pushing the philosophical and cultural views of the state through the teachers and curriculum, so I'm not sure why this is befuddling as such.

Schools in the US, at least in theory, don’t teach the philosophical and cultural views of the society. This is a concession to the fact that the US is a multi-cultural society, so teaching values as such would be inappropriate. Kids therefore get some instruction in US history, civics, and government, but you can get through the whole sequence without learning anything about Christianity or Western Europe.

Ah so what you meant is your mother was befuddled that US schools were non ideological?

She was befuddled we didn’t learn much math or science, nor anything else for that matter. In her words, she felt we spent all our time “cutting paper.” (Dioramas, mobiles, etc.)

Thanks for the explanation, I can imagine this now!

>This is a concession to the fact that the US is a multi-cultural society, so teaching values as such would be inappropriate.

That in itself is teaching values. From kindergarten and up, American schools teach students that diversity is a great thing, and we're all equal, and it's what makes America so special. It's something we're taught to be aware of and cherish. That's something loads of other countries' public education systems don't teach at all, and some even teach the opposite.

How a country teaches values isn't obvious to someone raised within that country. It's just thought to be common sense.

Dude they make you say the pledge of allegiance, every - damn - day. US schools are extremely culturally conditioning.

Citizens who cannot think about the world in philosophical, historical and ethical terms are not prepared to understand it, or the complex choices facing them.

~ STEM Professor.

Teaching students non-STEM stuff isn’t indoctrination by teachers into those teachers personal political and philosophical views. Do you seriously think that’s what goes on?

I did music, foreign languages, philosophy, art, business studies in a public high school in Australia. These subjects, obviously, had a state wide curriculum. I was not indoctrinated by my teachers.

That’s exactly what the article describes as going on:

> No, the purpose of education in a democracy ought to be to prepare children for their role as citizens and that means that they learn to think for themselves, that they ask a lot of questions, that they question authority, that they stand up for what they believe in, and that they understand that their contribution to the world cannot be measured in money.

This is indoctrination into a specific value system.[1] None of this is necessary to teach kids math or writing, logical analysis, data analysis, or even the functioning of our government.

[1] As an Asian immigrant, it’s also largely not the value system I want to teach my kids. I’d rather have kids learn to respect authority, to respect the wishes and preferences of the majority of people around them, to be very considerate of how their actions affect others, to keep their heads down and work hard, to fully understand why things are the way they are before advocating for change, and that their function as people is to contribute to economy and thus the society and get a well paying job so they can support their own families.

I strongly suspect that for most Americans, or at least a large swath of Americans, the values they want to teach their kids hew closer to the above than “question authority.”

> Indoctrination (noun) - the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.

I understand what you're saying about conflicting value systems, but you're flat-out wrong that what the author describes is indoctrination. The key word from the definition is "uncritically".

Here's the key part of what you've quoted:

> they learn to think for themselves, that they ask a lot of questions, that they question authority,

All that is the opposite of "accepting uncritically".

this is an incredibly disheartening comment.

> 11 years ago was 2009.

Now that's depressing.

> It's an artifact of the culture of western aristocrats.

There are elements of truth in what you said. But liberal education is also the bedrock of western education and knowledge which includes STEM fields. Every stem field was created and advanced by those who came from "liberal arts education".

Also, liberal arts education has always included math and science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

Liberal arts education created the western world order. It's why the west is on top. It would be counterproductive to discard it. Perhaps we should just increase the share of STEM within the overall liberal arts education system?

> Also, liberal arts education has always included math and science.

Math and physics are solidly on the STEM side when people argue the merits of STEM vs liberal arts.

So instead of arguing semantics, understand what people mean. When they say "Don't study STEM, study liberal arts" what they mean is not "Don't study the more practical sides of STEM like engineering, study the liberal arts side of STEM like Maths", but instead "Don't study anything which requires more math than Algebra 1".

> Math and physics are solidly on the STEM side when people argue the merits of STEM vs liberal arts.

That's my point. I disagree with the assertion that STEM is separate from liberal arts education. Historically it hasn't been true. And it's not true today.

> So instead of arguing semantics, understand what people mean.

Not arguing semantics. I understand what people mean and I am disagreeing with them and I provided sources and historical proof.

> When they say "Don't study STEM, study liberal arts"

Who says don't study STEM, study liberal arts?

> but instead "Don't study anything which requires more math than Algebra 1".

You've built up an exaggeration of the side you are arguing against. That's not an honest portrayal of the issue at hand.

You can study both science/engineering/etc and history/philosphy/politics/etc. It's called getting a well rounded liberal arts education. The backbone of science, technology, engineering and math along with philosophy, history, politics, etc. My suggestion was increase the amount of "STEM" within the liberal arts education system we already have - particularly the technology and engineering. It's not an either-or issue that people like to portray it as.

> Who says don't study STEM, study liberal arts?

The article we are commenting on.

Which part? Definitely didn't pick up on that. I think you might have blown out of proportion the more subtle argument he was making.

> My objection is that all this talk about STEM is just the latest way to keep our schools focused exclusively on vocational training

> I did not enter the teaching game to prepare young children for their role in the economy

The guy is a preschool teacher. Let's be honest, he's not really in the 'teaching game' anyway.

My son learned letters, numbers, colors, shapes, could count to 100 and add two digit numbers as a result of his preschooling and was just beginning subtraction when he entered kindergarten.

I don't get your point. So you think the ability to teach a child what color is "red" and what color is "blue", gives you the background to make blanket statements about science education and jobs?

It's an arrogant dismissal to say early education is not serious education. The house built on sand will not stand...

Take your view of the author's lack of meaningful credentials regarding teaching to its logical conclusion...we ought to not have any classes except the final ones, so no math education, except for the last most advanced calculus courses, because math before that isn't really in the 'teaching game'.

You can immediately see how abrupt and flawed that approach would be. If anything, the greatest care is needed in the first steps.

Oh please. Your slippery slope argument is garbage. The truth is, only ~33% of 4 year-olds even attend preschool in the US [1]. So by the facts of reality, preschool is completely optional. Plenty of people go on to get college degrees without going to pre-school and it's ridiculous to claim it's the same as skipping high school.

Speaking of college... Unlike for real teachers, only half of public preschool programs require any sort of degree or qualification, and this guy works for a private preschool, which often have no requirements at all.

Indeed, after a difficult search, I found that he actually never finished college [2]. So yeah, he's basically just a random guy with no official background in education. So who the fuck cares about his opinion about STEM in education?

He got the job because his daughter went to the preschool. That's it. That's not a qualification.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/315074/percentage-of-pre...

[2] https://artfulparent.com/teacher-tom-on-child-led-learning/

Teaching preschoolers and the early 1-2 grades is the hardest.

Imagine how are you going to make them understand abstract concepts when they have no idea about them.

They have very small attention span to what adults consider important things.