Of course how much mandatory Math needed and IF a previous test has been passed is good enough is up to debate.
If I had to choose skills that kids were forced to learn, I'd prioritise those that would stand to benefit them the greatest - so probably some form of home economics, sales & negotiating, psychology, and such. As far as universally useful skills go, most of STEM is near the bottom of the list.
[edit] to clarify my point:
- A subset of STEM (maths primarily) is pragmatically useful to basically everybody and should have greater emphasis in education
- most of STEM is not pragmatically useful to most people
- these non-everyday-pragmatic fields should be taught, and belong within general education, but are not special in contrast to other school topics - because the criteria of "especially good" in a school context are those with actual practical use in the student's life.
I wasnt even good in these subjects and im still glad i was taught the ideas and can explore them more readily as an adult...
If they're there to form part of a liberal arts education, to give young adults a broad experience in different fields alongside literature, art etc then great - I'm all for liberal arts education. But the parent set STEM aside as being especially and specifically important - which I disagree with. The only things that are especially and specifically important are those that will be useful in your life.
The last couple of years certainly highlight the problems caused when people aren't given, or don't pay any attention to, a certain level of education in biology...
The general understanding of scientific methods of enquiry/study/critique is also essential for modern life IMO, and sadly lacking in many very vocal and otherwise high profile people.
I see it the opposite..
but no, I weigh them comparably, depending on the specific "arts" you mean. Maths > painting, but philosophy > chemistry.
i didnt provide a definition for liberal arts.
also your own link is contradictory to your earlier comments...
> Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:
Life sciences (biology, ecology, neuroscience) Physical science (physics, astronomy, chemistry, physical geography) Logic, mathematics, statistics, computer science Philosophy History Social science (anthropology, economics, human geography, linguistics, political science, jurisprudence, psychology, and sociology) Creative arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)
this states that philosophy and biology are both liberal arts. Along with physics and other STEM topics. Linking this implies you agree that STEM is important, as much so as Philosophy, which i agree is an important topic along with all those in this link.
- general education is useful
- pragmatic education is a step above general education, and should be prioritised
- maths is pragmatic, most STEM is not
that's really all there is to it.
I don't believe that an extra year or two of education on thermodynamics or electricity would make the vast majority of the population better in their everyday lives, and it might make things slightly worse in terms of experts' ability to push things forward. Do we really want all our neighbors bikeshedding utility grid management like amateurs crowding into a github pull request? We've seen how good the general population is at epidemic management lately.
I was personally deprived of basically any education until community college due to how education and parental "freedom" work in the US, and while the gaps in my education (STEM in particular) are regrettable, in practice they really have not interfered in my everyday life. I enjoyed learning about biology, physics etc and do some reading on my own time to this day but the stuff that I actually need to know about in my everyday life tends to be from the 'soft sciences' or non-sciences, like history or economics - despite the fact that I've been working as a programmer for over a decade.
Math is essential, though, no question there.
> Do we really want all our neighbors bikeshedding utility grid management
we already teach these subjects and i dont see this happening. I actually feel like bikeshedding would happen more if people only self educated on these topics, theyd have no baseline to compare to and anything they learned would "separate them from the pack" so to speak.
Your answer is "to deter to expert opinion" which already happens with our current system, except by not teaching it in schools we discourage people from learning it unless self taught. Which i think is a bad idea.
I'm sure this is related to the "Republicans are anti-science" thing, but that's a cultural divide, not a lack of education.
One doesn’t need a lot of examples how this helps people from becoming “suckers”. We can merely look at the current state of the world. It is in the grips of a pandemic that is largely solvable - correlations between understanding science and vaccine uptake are well documented.
This claim that the world would have less conspiracy theorists if only there was more science on the curriculum at school has a huge [citation needed]. So much of that stuff is downwind from cultural conflict and distrust of the government, not a lack of education.
I don't think that studying science leads to increased critical thinking until the point where you're having to actually discover things for yourself - because before that point you're just re-learning what other people are telling you is true.
With respect to the association between engineers and extremist groups and beliefs, I would wager that this is probably better explained by a third factor (personality traits which make someone less flexible, and less comfortable with shades of grey, for example).
Your comment is interesting, but none of the questions it raises mean that what I said wasn't true.
The question is not "are engineers inherently better thinkers". The question is "If you take someone and teach them STEM topics, do they become better thinkers than they were previously". The answer is (ironically / speaking of black and white thinking) pretty unequivocally "yes".
The effectiveness of STEM education is certainly held back by the difficulties in keeping students engaged and interested, and in the failings of the educators themselves. I would suggest that raising the bar for educators (assuming supply wasn't an issue, which I recognize it is) would go a long way towards teaching STEM better, and augmenting its impact on students' lives.
Edit: I did learn about epistemology in school, but coverage was rather superficial and incomplete. I suspect people's experiences vary wildly.
I was going to include a few links to recent reputable studies which confirm exactly my talking points, but why - they are very easily found, trivial outcomes that have been proven time and again and I’m not here to do throw chicken bones to people that form counterpoints on emotion.
>this helps people from becoming “suckers”
Science is a helpful baseline and should also be taught for other reasons (everyone should have a basic understanding of how the world works). But it doesn't necessarily develop critical thinking skills, which is the real missing element these days. Many people would do better to understand basic logic, induction, deduction, fallacies, etc.
And, a lot of people are emotionally manipulated into becoming "suckers", wherein their knowledge and even intelligence are short-circuited.
Not 100% sure what to do about that problem.
Basic science is important so people have the foundation to access more complex science.
See these videos for examples:
Sine bar (This Old Tony): https://youtu.be/PO-Ab7YfBzY
Compound slide tricks (Blondiehacks): https://youtu.be/6AQzDVic-hk
Trig isn't so useful if you can measure everything, & I've made the mistake of using trig to skip measuring only to find that nothing's built straight. But it helps to ball park
Once was sitting on the edge of a river with my father & he raised the question of how wide the river was. A quick estimate was possible: stand straight across from a landmark point, then measure walking along the river for some distance. Measure the angle towards that previous landmark. Multiply traveled length by tan(angle). A particularly nice angle is 45 degrees, which requires very little math since tan(45) = 1 & 45 is an easy angle to eye ball
I suppose that's an indirect admission that you weren't an EE major.
I would also argue that economics (home in particular, but also micro and macro), social studies (government in particular, but also other societies), and history all have their places in life and are worth being part of the curriculum. But, aside from maybe home economics, they aren't as useful in everyday life as the STEM topics.
At least, that's my opinion based on my experiences. I only have me to base my opinion on, and I'm a sample size of 1.
Pupils have to become proficient and disciplined with setting up measurements and getting consistent results — often in pairs — just as much as they have to learn the ideas and apply the math.
It doesn't even matter which specific maths concepts you're exposed to, and it's not even about how directly applicable it is: every single piece of maths under your belt translates in non-obvious ways to a better ability to think and reason.
Denying students educational support in understanding the flexible and general frameworks of mathematics that lead to the organization of human activity sharpens the division of labor and diminishes the possibilities for democratic engagement in the society's mode of production. The anti-math argument therefore appears to support a hierarchical Brave New World social structure because it advocates that we raise children to become functional assets rather than full participants in the economy.
I'm talking about people claiming that kids rolling cylinders down triangular blocks or dissecting frogs is vitally important to their education beyond the level of a broad liberal education.
But learning math/science encourages certain cognitive habits which are useful in practice. For most people, I expect that these cognitive habits are where the value of a math education lies.
As an example, in math, you often need to define a new object out of thin air, and then think about whether the definition is useful (e.g., let u=log(x), then rewrite the integral in terms of u and see if it gets you anywhere). I hypothesize that even after you've forgotten the math content, this cognitive habit (constructing a new mental object ex nihilo, thinking about whether it's useful, and perhaps giving it a name if it is useful) sticks with you, and contributes to general intelligence in other contexts.
Depending on what level of education you're talking about, I had most, if not all these classes as requirements, plus a science requirement. There was plenty of time left over for other classes, too. I get that different places have different curricula (and that they change over time), so I can't be sure, but what you're asking for might be in place already.
Earlier levels of education, I think, give students a better idea of what they want to study in university (or not). Getting a little taste of math and physics (among chemistry and biology) in high school really informed me what I'm good at & what I'm interested. It was a major factor in my decision about what I wanted to study later on.
What are the most common jobs people have coming out the other side? According to the US Bureau of Labor (sorry I couldn't find the Canadian equivalent so this was the next closest)... the most popular jobs are retail salesperson, fast food and counter workers, cashiers, home health and personal care aides, RNs, customer service rep, laborers/freight/stock/material movers, office clerks, general and ops managers, stockers and order fillers.
A majority of these folks don't need to do STEM related things daily (if ever). They do need to deal with things around their homes.
These are jobs we all need in our society. Just like we need plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and other skilled trades. You can't outsource those over seas.
For school to be useful and beneficial to the masses in most jobs... what school education should they have?
I realize I'm not part of these groups. I know a lot of people who are. Their lives, over the long term, needs to be considered. I'm a STEM person but I realize it's not useful for everyone.
I see the point of school as exposing kids to all sorts of subjects to let them find out what they like and what they are good at.
I'm really bad at art. I got a passing but bad grade. Same in languages. Good grades while learning grammar and such. Bad grades when it got to reading Shakespeare and Goethe. I got good grades in math and some other STEM stuff and it interested me.
This obviously influenced my choices for university. It should (and I think does) influence choices for people that become electricians too. If you are bad in math and physics please don't become an electrician.
If you are reasonably good at both and you like working with your hands by all means become an electrician!
Two things can be true at the sand time. Putting an emphasis on proper STEM education doesn’t mean you skimp over vocational skills. People absolutely need to learn how to participate in society, whether it’s interpersonal skills, how their government works, world history or how to advance in their lives. But these are not necessarily universal skills: move from one country to another and all your knowledge about filing taxes with your government may become irrelevant.
Many people who learn how things function don't learn critical thinking or reasoning.
People can be told that something works a certain way because it's science. Just trust the people who told you because they sit in positions of expertise or authority. They people don't have critical thinking. They have trust of certain people for certain reasons.
I'm a proponent of critical thinking and reasoning. It's often missing. STEM isn't teaching it.
Maybe what we need is to teach the basics of philosophy, logic, and reasoning in school. You can teach this apart from STEM and it's useful to STEM, too.
So, I actually took home ec because I had an otherwise dead period in the middle of the day that had to be filled, and, aside from mechanics of cooking, it was largely hyperspecific applications of math proficiency. Psychology is a science. So, I mean, the specifics on your list aren't really holding up the anti-STEM thesis. Anti-TE maybe, though maybe if you added the next three important items, two of them would cover those areas as well.
To begin with, can you actually employ all those future engineers and scientists? China can. America arguably not so much unless some major 30-year old trends are dramatically reversed. Are your engineers and scientists respected and well paid professionals? What are the projections for the next 30 years? Again, outside of CS probably so-so.
In any case, there can be only so many high-IQ jobs. And so many scientifically-minded children with high enough IQ. So a reasonable educational system would find them and promote to higher-quality schools for sure. At least in a world where your people want to be competitive with, say, the Chinese. But there are the other 80% of population and they won't be able to cope with a stringent STEM program. So they would need an alternative curriculum, probably similar to how they orient such people towards trade schools in Germany.
Math is universally useful both to grow your mental capabilities and professionally. Sciences are less so unless you are planning on an engineering career. And even then people who are into chemistry are frequently not the same who are into physics who are different from those interested in molecular biology. Which again breaks this nice uniform idea of mandatory STEM! for everyone!
Where I agree with you is that the less STEM there's in schools the more political indoctrination there will be instead disguised as "liberal arts and humanities". So forcing children to stretch their minds in math classes while they are young is the least damaging thing that can happen to you in school.
Huh? Why should we care about the math skills of someone who only teaches English or French? Proficiency assessments should absolutely be subject-specific.
Then that should be fixed, at least wrt. junior high. There's no reason to expect an English or French teacher to be proficient in Math, or vise versa.
But I also think that there should be specialized teachers for math long before high school. Teaching math (or whatever) is not just about knowing it, it is also about know how to teach it at this or that age. And I don't think general purpose teacher can be good in knowing how to teach all subjects.
I am perfectly fine with teachers who cant pass this test teaching subjects that are not math or physics (or chemistry I guess).
I am absolutely not fine with math teacher who passed this test and that is extend of it. Specifically, math teacher should know a lot more.
How would moderate math skills possibly help with that? You think every public school teacher should be run statistical sampling on a continual basis AND dynamically addressing them?
I want math and science teachers using proper spelling and grammar even if that's not the subject they teach.
And many classes have overlaps, e.g. at least around here language classes are also where a good chunk of media literacy happens, for which a basic understanding of math is sort-of needed.
I went to University at a time when everyone was required, regardless of major, to take language and science classes.
Whether they're successful doing it is different discussion.
If you are in a STEM career, would you have been able to do it if you were mandated to take and pass (for example) a nursing course?
You might ask what nursing has to do with STEM, and you'd be right that there is not much of an intersection, but nurses have to pass math classes that are well beyond anything they will ever encounter in a nursing career, and the math requirement is one of the main courses that prevents people from pursuing a career in nursing in our area.
Likewise, for teaching, I don't think you can talk about 'teachers' in general. I know the union does, but it really does not make sense. Most teaching positions require very little math. It's too bad that anyone with a teaching degree can teach any math class in high school, whether they know the math or not. I have the experience of being taught by such a teacher. I survived, but you have to wonder why there are no safeguards against such a travesty. Now we know - it's unconstitutional!