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Comment by didgeoridoo | Hacker News Reader

I would love it if most liberal arts institutions "fostered a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent." But they generally don't, at least not anymore.

The erosion of standards in the humanities and the promotion of grievance/identity "studies" have led to academic environments based on groupthink and insulation from unapproved ideas. And that's among the "intellectuals"! Many of the rest of the students are just getting wasted every night and taking "gut" courses with open-book multiple-choice exams.

It's mostly "hard science" programs like engineering and math that have avoided this fate. Probably because it doesn't matter what you "feel" if your code won't compile.

Edit: Sorry, to be clear this is coming from an American perspective. I have no idea what liberal education is like in other countries, but I have to imagine it can't be nearly as bad.

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I really have to disagree with one aspect of this comment ("the erosion of standards in the humanities.") Perhaps that's to be expected because I'm an academic who works in the humanities. But my point is a simple one and it's something that you can test out yourself: try comparing a half dozen academic history article written in, say, 1950, to a half dozen from 2015. I predict that, on average, a 2015 article will feature a far more robust evidence base, a broader range of sources, a richer historiography, and more rigorous language training than its counterpart from the 1940s, 50s or 60s. In my experience there is simply no comparison. In part this is because digitized texts make it so much easier to access a wide range of sources, but it also has to do with an increase in standards of graduate education. Getting a PhD in a field like history used to be an old boys club based on connections and family money. It certainly still retains some of those trappings today, but I think there can be no question that academic training today is far more rigorous (and entering graduate school or getting an article accepted more competitive) than it was in decades past.

I don't really take issue with the comments about students and multiple choice exams, though. The way we teach the humanities in the US leaves a lot to be desired.

I think the parent was talking more about undergraduate education in the humanities, and not research in the humanities.

I'd say that the palpable difference in critical reasoning capacity between the two ancestor comments speaks volumes.

Or, maybe they're both right.

I wonder if this is true. I suspect it's a bit like comparing Hollywood movies from today to 1950 — far better production quality, but script writing that's no better and possibly worse.

> I would love it if most liberal arts institutions "fostered a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent." But they generally don't, at least not anymore.

All in all, I feel that I got a pretty well rounded education.

I took classes in philosophy, piano, base intro courses to all branches of science, GIS, art of listening to music (that was an awesome class!) a nice variety of history classes, English, painting, and then finally my major (CS) and my minor (Math).

I went to community college and transferred to a state university.

I can discuss techniques for using colored pencils, describe harmonics in FFTs from accelerometer input to musicians, have an intelligent conversation about many aspects of world history and culture, and then go to work and apply my skillsets to solving real world problems for my employer.

There really wasn't much group think. I got a taste of a lot of different fields, and at times I had to stretch my schedule to allow me to take a few more things I was interested in, but I have no real complaints. Heck my community college offered the piano courses as free to anyone who already had a full course load. (It counted as 2 credits they just waved the charge, and with practicing it took up a lot of time, but hey, free piano lessons!)

> art of listening to music (that was an awesome class!)

Great! Tell me more!

Once by accident I heard the Beethoven 7th Symphony and got hooked and didn't quit until I'd gotten through the D Major section of the Bach "Chaconne" on violin. Still, I never had a course of any kind in music, certainly not a course in "listening".

So, I still want to learn! How about some remarks on how to listen to each of the following three:

(1) some Bach

http://grooveshark.com/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src=5

(2) some Vitali

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4B1ifcWa9o

(3) some Camille Saint Saens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X79OkSayPSw

At least one!

For the Bach piece, some of what I get out of listening to it, especially with that performance, is (a) a story of some of what happened to someone over some interval of time, (b) the story starts in an indefinite way, (c) the story continues and starts to repeat, with emphasis in various ways, what is important in the story so that now we can begin to follow the story, (c) some parts of the story are stressful and, in this performance, are indicated by some playing close to the bridge, (d) the story gets some serious parts indicated by some of the low notes, (e) the story starts to change due to some important and different aspects that add tension, (f) the end is an ascending chromatic passage that indicates triumph over the source of the tension and ends in a climax with some repetition for emphasis, (g) in this performance the last note with the forte at the end of the note indicates a successful conclusion to the story and underlines the victory over the source of the tension.

Is that part of what is meant by how to listen to music?

> Is that part of what is meant by how to listen to music?

My sarcasm detector is broken.

The course covered the history of music (very much Western biased), taught us the names for the various aspects of music, how to identify the different elements in songs, the commonalities and interrelationships between genres of music, and had us sit down and listen to songs in a wide variety of styles.

Going into the course I listened to a very narrow selection of music, by the end of the course I had an appreciation for a much wider range of music, and I can find something enjoyable about almost any genre. I'd say that in the very least it made me a happier person who can find more joy in life!

It's been quite awhile since I took the course so I cannot remember all the vocabulary, which is unfortunate since I found that having the right words to describe something helps highlight its essence. That said, if I was going to work on a project with musicians, I would go and study up on the field again to regain that vocabulary, thus aiding in communication.

(I likewise had forgotten 90% of the EE material I had studied until my current job where I was reacquainted with the material!)

Thanks. No sarcasm intended.

Maybe what you described is similar to what my wife once took as a course in Music Appreciation: I met my wife at Indiana University, was a grad student in math, lived in the dorm next to the excellent music school there, liked music a lot, and took that opportunity to get started in violin.

My wife knew a lot about music -- piano, clarinet, voice -- but next to nothing about classical music; so with my being interested in music also, she took a course in the music school in music appreciation. She really liked the course.

So, maybe your course covered the sonata-allegro from, tertian harmony, major-relative minor, key modulation, medieval, classical, rococo, romantic, modern, etc.

Okay, thanks.

> So, maybe your course covered the sonata-allegro from, tertian harmony, major-relative minor, key modulation, medieval, classical, rococo, romantic, modern, etc.

Yup, this sounds more like it. Although we also covered topics like identifying common themes in music, how to listen to different soundscapes, and other similar topics. (Of which I cannot remember right now!)

We mostly covered classical music, but I ended up with an appreciation for a wide range of music styles. My Pandora channel list got really weird. :)

> art of listening to music (that was an awesome class!)

So you spent several hundreds/thousands of either your own or the state's money to learn the "art of listening to music". Would you say you got your/their money's worth?

> have an intelligent conversation about many aspects of world history and culture

In other countries, that purpose is served by high school (I think the US might be better off fixing high school, instead of pushing everyone thru CC).

I suspect this is more of an American thing.

I have 6 years of liberal arts education from the top liberal arts college here in India. A lot of my professors got their PhDs from Ivy League institutions (Berkeley, Yale and Oxbridge). These were also the professors who subscribed heavily to the 'liberal' ethos and focused on those 'feel' arguments you described.

In contrast, the old-school professors who studied their whole life here would shoot down your arguments mercilessly if you didn't back them up with facts. You couldn't tell them that you 'felt' that Moby Dick was a symbol of American pioneer spirit; you had to give specific instances, quote research papers to justify your stand.

It's true that liberal arts education needs to cleanse itself. There are just too many cool rich kids in humanities who end up dragging not-so-cool, not-so-rich, and not-so-talented kids into humanities majors. All the kids who fit the liberal arts stereotype to a T in my college also came from loaded families (yet, you wouldn't know it if you looked at them).

The smartest, and the hardest working, on the other hand, were almost always there because they really, really wanted to do what they were doing.

You get out of it what you put into it, period. Those "loaded" kids aren't trying to get out of uni the same things that the aspirational middle class kids are. The upper crust just need the social network, not the coursework, to thrive.

The growth in the diversity of studies is not a flaw of the humanities, it is a feature. It the natural result of the growth in the sophistication and scope of what people think about.

In the time of Newton, natural philosophers studied the full scope of natural phenomena. Today, students can get undergraduate science degrees in molecular biology--a sub-sub-discipline that did not even exist 100 years ago. So, let's not pretend that science has not experienced its own diversity in areas of study.

But the point of liberal arts education is breadth. In a liberal arts curriculum, a women's studies major still takes some math and science, and a computer science major still takes some humanities and social sciences. A major is an area of concentration within a broad education, not a silo.

And science and technology do need cultural analysis. Not because one can "feel" code compiling, but because science and technology fields have their own cultures, and those cultures are prone to the same human tendencies as any other. Looking at the national conversation about diversity in technology, consider the possibility that maybe some folks in that field could benefit from taking a class in women's studies.

> I would love it if most liberal arts institutions "fostered a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent." But they generally don't, at least not anymore.

As I briefly mentioned in a lower comment, why can't high school be for "breadth", while university is for "depth"? More people would benefit from this, since most people go to HS, and it would also be cheaper on both individuals and society.

History, logic, basic mathematics, languages (both native and foreign), geography, and many more are covered by high schools curricula all over the world.

Edit: I think this idea that college needs to be "broad" also creates further craziness in how some of the "deep" education is structured: you go to law or medical school after 4 years of college. In other countries, law and medicine are university specialties (in my country, for example, medical school takes 6 years of university education; in the US, first you get 4 years of college, then 4 more years of medical school).

> academic environments based on groupthink and insulation from unapproved ideas.

Arguably this is true of most primary, secondary, and higher learning in America. It negatively affects everyone who goes through it, regardless of their trajectory.

Most math and science professors I had allowed notes or books during exams. Most reading and writing classes had exams in the form of essays.

This is an egregious comment. It's extremely biased with an N of 1, and it doesn't accurately represent the experiences -- either educationally or socially -- many liberal arts students in the US traverse through their time in college. Sure, there are subsets of students who are just there for sports fanaticism & partying, and there are professors who are liberal ideologues, but it's unfair to paint these as truisms across the board. Speaking personally, it isn't what I experienced at UVA In the mid-90s (as a history & religious studies major), and it wasn't what I experienced a few years ago at NC State (earning a masters in industrial engineering). To posit a counterpoint, if you look at the mess UNC is in right now regarding it's African American Studies department & "fake" classes for athletes, sure, that's a travesty and punishment should be swift and firm, but that's still only a tiny part of a large research university.

College athletics as it is in the US is globally unique. It has its good sides, but it there's a darker aspect, too (see UNC). This should be addressed systemically (not via Title IX) but that's beyond the scope of your grievance.

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