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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

Why should people study STEM specifically? Maths is generally useful in life so basic algebra, trig and such makes sense. But I've never really understood why science should be mandatory in schools, beyond teaching kids about how the scientific method works and thus imparting some pro-empricism philosophical ideas.

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.

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physics for example, teaches people how the world actually works... thermodynamics, electricity, light, all useful information for determining fact from fiction when they turn into adults.

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...

"how the world actually works" is a bit of a misleading statement. a deep understanding of various concepts can take years or decades to develop, and the understanding you get from 1-2 years of general education can lead you to make false assumptions and assume you know more than you actually do and as a result dismiss the opinions of people who are actually informed.

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.

youre correct that it may not be enough time, but it gives them a foothold they can use later in life where the subjects might otherwise appear impregnable.

> 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 not denying that the natural sciences are /interesting/ - but are they especially useful?

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.

> I'm not denying that the natural sciences are /interesting/ - but are they especially useful?

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.

if you're talking about anti-vaxxers - that's not caused by lack of education. I don't know that much about viral transmission either, neither do you, or 99% or the people who are taking the vaccine, masking up and so on. The difference is primarily cultural - trusting versus not trusting the government & scientific advisors. All these anti-vaxx people haven't been failed by a lack of scientific education, they just don't trust the motives of the government - and that's not remedied by more alka seltzer volcanoes in school.

I disagree. I'd be willing to bet that the better educated a populous is, the higher the vaccination rates would be. I also believe that it's not a high bar to expect people to understand basic physics and biology and chemistry before being called an "adult". The info may not be immediately pragmatically useful, but people being less ignorant in general cannot be detrimental to society. How much can I trust someone that doesn't understand that feathers and rocks fall at the same speed, it's merely the air resistance that changes it? How many centuries back do we have to go before we consider something mandatory information?

so, liberal arts > STEM in your eyes?

I see it the opposite..

that's not what liberal arts education means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

but no, I weigh them comparably, depending on the specific "arts" you mean. Maths > painting, but philosophy > chemistry.

If you're judging value by pay, math and chemistry and (and pretty much anything STEM) will kick philosophy's ass. If you're judging value by abstract value, haven't we left the territory of your argument? Aren't you saying we should only give people pragmatic skills and go light on the other stuff?

> thats not what liberal arts education mean

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.

I think general education is useful, yes - but I was responding to a comment that was hyping up STEM as especially important. Aside from maths, I don't think that's correct.

Your examples seem to all be contradictory though. It seems you have your own barometer for value that doesn't line up with your arguments.

my barometer is pretty simple, and calling them contradictory doesn't make them so:

- 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.

It's not that these aren't interesting subjects or potentially useful in adult life. They just shouldn't be the priority. Is it potentially useful in adult life to know how your car's IC engine works? Sure, but nowhere near as useful as knowing how to get a good rate on your car loan.

Medical professionals (nurses, pharmacy techs, etc.) and tradesmen (welders, electricians, mechanics, etc.) come to mind as two groups of people for whom baseline scientific knowledge is important to even get started. Compare this to trig, which I've literally never seen used outside of a math class.

Basic science is important so people have the foundation to access more complex science.

Welders/fabricators and machinists use trig to set up accurate angles. In general, if one has never seen something from middle/high school math used, one isn't looking very hard.

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 is useful to at least know the unit circle for sin/cos/tan: http://crystalclearmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Unit... (Amusingly I had to learn about this outside of class, but it carried me through)

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

How much does the basic science end up directly used in the careers of the medical professionals? My understanding is that much of the training is preparation for med school, but the underlying concepts more or less aren't used at all while on the job (except for pharmacists and biochemistry)

> Compare this to trig, which I've literally never seen used outside of a math class.

I suppose that's an indirect admission that you weren't an EE major.

Because everyone has a responsibility to vote. Even in a representative government, we've been shown over and over again that voting requires at least a basic science literacy.

how is that the case? IIRC when I was in secondary school (ages ~11-16 in the UK) I had to take science (I also took physics in college afterwards, but that's besides the point). What did I learn? Newtonian mechanics, some basic experimental procedures tested out against the whole "objects fall at the same speed regardless of weight" proof, and such things. How does any of that help people to vote?

I'm sure this is related to the "Republicans are anti-science" thing, but that's a cultural divide, not a lack of education.

Every wingnut that thinks windmills give you cancer, essential oils are medicine, is anti-vaxx, votes for pro-oil lobby politicians, climate change disbelieving and so on, has been failed by lack of STEM education.

Studies have shown over and over again that scientific literacy is no panacea against believing in bad science and that facts are poor counter-points to aggressive disinformation. HN is filled to the brim with people who declare their STEM credentials quite loudly but who seem to only have enough scientific literacy to google for papers from which they can cherry-pick stats to support their own politically-motivated positions.

yep, this is part of what I was trying to say. There are a lot of STEM-heads who like to point to their interest, employment or education in STEM as credentials for their rationality but who are mostly incapable of thinking critically. The level at which you have to critically engage with topics like empiricism and epistemology are way beyond the level of science education and towards being an actual research scientist.

Panacea is a strawman. If a little extra science education would relieve society of at least a few homeopaths, flat earthers, and free-energy kooks, maybe that's enough?

Understanding stats and geometry is necessary to understand basic concepts about history and system design across many disparate fields of human activity. For example, in computer security, we talk about "reducing the area of the attack surface". There's no surface nor area, but the conceptual analogy remains useful. When you determine the appropriate staffing level for a customer service line where people call in for help, you use a statistical model that leads to the Erlang equation. The work to be done may not involve math at all, but in order for the employees to understand how their company is run, math is essential. When you build a house, you need to do various calculations to come up with an estimate; we do not think of construction as technical work, but if you need X concrete blocks and you can fit C blocks on each of N trucks that take a time T to move between supply and site, you end up with a mathematical model that leads to your final cost estimate.

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.

This is a good point. When people talk about the "usefulness" of math/science, they tend to assume that learning math/science is analogous to being trained in how to operate a forklift: it's thought of as a "skill" that's useless if one never needs to directly apply the content.

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.

you'll note that I pointed out that of the STEM fields, maths is actually useful.

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.

Understanding statistics and the way that companies, academics and governments lie with statistics to mold public opinion is important in having a civically engaged population.

The school system is one place everyone goes through. It's a single point.

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 agree that none of these people need to know STEM stuff to a good level.

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!

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

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.

Exactly. That's good enough for a job in an Amazon warehouse.

Knowing some amount of physics, chemistry, and the like come in handy on a regular basis for me in my everyday life. Plus, as noted, knowing how to use the scientific method (how to analyze, hypothesize, and test ideas) is incredibly useful.

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.

> so probably some form of home economics, sales & negotiating, psychology, and such

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.

People should study STEM because that's how you learn to think properly, even very generally speaking, regardless of your discipline.

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.

Don’t forget that school science is 50% practical work. It’s not just about learning F=ma.

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.

People who don't learn enough science are people who get into healing crystals, psychic auras, and horoscopes and then vote like they're real.

Why? Because we value an educated populace where people have an understanding how the world works. You do not need to look any further than people who deny climate change, vaccine conspiracists, flat earthers, 5G hysterians, pseudoscientific con people and so forth to get at the root cause of the problem which is a lack of education. Learning science is at the bedrock of critical thinking, reasoning and rationalizing and enables people to actually apply the scientific method.

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.

> Learning science is at the bedrock of critical thinking, reasoning and rationalizing and enables people to actually apply the scientific method.

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.

Studying science teaches the ability to find facts and use evidence in decision making - as well as the ability to properly discount outdated ideas or improper kinds of evidence.

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.

none of that is true. Learning science in school is not about teaching you how to analyse methodological errors in whitepapers. That's way too high level for high school students. In my experience it was mostly about learning the basic scientific method, and learning about some practical scientific models like Newtonian mechanics, basic biology & chemistry, that sort of thing.

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.

“none of that is true” - compelling. lol.

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.

You can be mad if you want, but my reasoning is based on my understanding of what's actually taught in physics or chemistry classes - not the empirical and epistemological process of "science" that got us the findings in these fields, but the findings themselves - scientific models of chemical reactions, Newtonian mechanics, etc. I would love it if we could increase the critical thinking skills of the general populace, but I don't see how that's the way to do it. And having these basic skills in specific scientific disciplines could spark interest in a career in research, which is great, but they don't make you more rational unless you're teaching empiricism or logic or whatever as well - at which point, why not just teach empiricism, logic and critical thinking?

All of it is true, but not as a direct consequence: improving your ability to think and reason, generally speaking, and not with respect to any specific concept that was taught to you, is a higher-order effect of STEM education.

that's not true at all. Case in point: engineers are over-represented in extremist groups and beliefs.

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.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo

Engineers are human too, are susceptible to being wrong, and are susceptible to all other sorts of human cognitive biases.

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".

if high school science classes were about epistemology, then I might agree with your comment above - but they aren't, they're about learning some bits about biology, chemistry and physics. You don't really learn anything about epistemology, rationality, or even really empiricism from learning the periodic table or what a frog's organs look like.

I will agree with you that the manner in which we teach science has a lot of room for improvement, but in the aggregate, despite all the failings of the education system, I maintain that what I said is true.

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 just don't see it when it comes to science education. If we were talking about teaching students critical thinking and reasoning skills then I'd be 100% on board with that because that's a directly-useful skill (and one I should've probably included on the list of pragmatic skills). But learning those skills by proxy of science would be extremely roundabout, and definitely isn't what's happening right now.

>Studying science teaches the ability to find facts and use evidence in decision making

>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.

if they even didn't get basic statistics, how can they read news paper and vote?

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