America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous
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53% don't believe in climate change (2) 15% don't think vaccination is safe.
Then I don't think you don't hace a problem of obsession with STEM, bit with The lack of It. 1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolutio... (2)http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/26/poll-53-of-americans-dont-...
To believe in evolution is to contradict their beliefs in God.
Most people on HN didn't reasoned out the chain of evidence that lead to us to believe in evolution, yet they probably believe in the theory of evolution.
Once again, no. Stop spreading this tripe. Catholic doctrine for example is quite clear a belief in evolution does not contradict church doctrine. This is the kind of statement that tries to create a conflict where one shouldn't be.
Of course they are, they have to adapt. Who would go to church if they still insisted that the sun revolves around the earth? Just goes to show that God begins where true knowledge ends.
Science and religion are not intrinsically at odds with each other please stop spreading that extreme non-sense
Or tell it to this girl's father: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=h... (scroll down). This is modern times, by the way.
In 2015, there are people who treat women as subhuman beings due to religious reasons. Please tell me more how religion doesn't go hand-in-hand with ignorance.
US isn't the only country in the world, and Christianity isn't the only religion. Christianity has been (and continues to be) watered down to be able to exist in modern western society, that is why you are able to say that it's not at odds with science. Back in the day, if you dared questioning the geocentric model, you'd be burned at the stake.
Scientific descriptions of reality are required to adhere to strong principles of information conservation. Religious beliefs are, both by definition and in practice, required to reject such principles. If that isn't 'incompatibility,' then the word is meaningless.
Is it a real issue if someone is doing really good things for society, being an excellent person, but happens to disagree with you about evolution or climate change?
Science is getting to be its own fundamental religion for many IMHO, who prescribe 'science' as the answer to everything, and treat scientific papers as the bible (They also cherry pick the scientific papers they like, and ignore the ones they don't, just like religious folks do).
Also, the link you cite for climate change is 404, but I would expect the only real bone of contention is whether any change in the climate is caused by humans or not. Are there really people who deny the climate is changing?
People who do not believe in global warming are even worse. I will literally suffocate in my lifetime because of these imbicils.
I suppose in some philosophical sense, no we don't all need to agree, but in a practical sense if we want to survive and thrive as a species, we must.
You would be more likely to survive a pandemic in the future because there would be more public support for research into how diseases evolve.
There would be less racial strife because more people would understand that the differences we see in people lie on a continuous genetic spectrum, not broken up in distinct "races."
Even if you just look at environmental factors, we're more likely to die either from the bee population dying due to pesticides, or because of the massive increase in routine use of antibiotics in meat production. Neither of which really get much media attention, maybe because they're both issues caused by science, and people like cheap food.
But at the end of the day we're going to die from overcrowding . The population has doubled in the last 30 years. (Hence why science has to make horrible dangerous food to feed them all).
Whether your fellow man believes in global warming is pretty irrelevant, and whether he believes in evolution is even less relevant to anything that matters. You're certainly not going to die from global warming!
Your comment is the sort of "scientific fundamentalism" I was talking about.
Quality of life is far more important than quantity. Define "overcrowded"... First world countries are more crowded than they were 30 years ago, and (IMHO) the quality of life has gone down.
And as for your "increase food production"... We're force feeding chickens to be morbidly obese, pumping them full of anti-biotics so they don't get ill from living in squalid conditions. We're killing off the bee population with pesticides everywhere. These things are not good, and will only get worse as there are more people to feed.
The best way to improve your quality of life is not to look to science (Unless you're actually ill), it's to look to nature.
People living in cities are healthier and less obese than their counterparts living in the suburbs, rural areas, and small towns.
The best way to improve your life is to look to science. Please stop spreading ignorance around. You're actively working to hold society's progress back.
Is what the OP said, and it's false. I will not. The average may be 30 years longer, but that's a fairly meaningless statistic.
The fact that you were born today means that you will be shielded, either fully or partially, from many of the factors that made the average lifespan 30 years shorter 2 centuries ago, infant mortality included. The lack of these factors would then lead to you "probably" having a 30 year longer lifespan ("probably" in the statistical sense).
You could argue that a more robust statistic like a median would provide a better representation of the expected lifespan less drastically affected by outliers, but calling the 30 year difference in average lifespan "meaningless" is disingenuous at best and could represent a fundamental denial of basic empirical evidence at worst (the latter of which seems more likely to me judging from some of your other replies so far on this subject).
Which is dangerous because it leads bacteria to evolve away from the antibiotics, becoming harder to stop in humans. Antibiotic resistance is one of the issues hurt by the poor understanding of evolution.
Anyway, the general problem is that people don't have an understanding of science in general necessary to understand issues on which the government must make public policy. It's like trying to drive a car somewhere without knowing how to read street signs or a map.
While the rest of the world leaps forward perhaps?
There are, of course, various smaller groups of believers and faith-based private schools that espouse creationism, but it is certainly not very prevalent.
just because someones beliefs don't directly cause me harm, doesn't imply that those believes are immune from criticism. especially on correctness grounds.
>Science is getting to be its own fundamental religion for many IMHO, who prescribe 'science' as the answer to everything
If "not believing in evolution or global warming" isn't a real issue for society, I don't understand how "believing too much in science" can be a real issue. Senators and other powerful politicians deny global warming and evolution to demonstrably negative effects. I haven't seen any evidence that the /r/atheism-style fundamentalism is having any effect on the world besides being pompous and annoying.
I'm also assuming that you're criticizing the vagueness of giving 'science' as an answer to big problems as some internet atheists might be wont to do. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're criticizing.
I don't "believe in" evolution and I'm not a creationist!
If I said "I don't believe in heat dissipation" you'd think I was just as much a moron as I would be.
You can disagree with either of these proposals (and I disagree with both), but it is wrong to set up one as a straw-man to argue against the other.
The real reasons to think that STEM-mania is silly are much better described elsewhere (e.g. here; http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myt...).
There is little-to-nothing to be gained by trying to entice reluctant students into fields with high unemployment and stagnant wages in the face of STEM majors leaving their respective fields in droves.
Those STEM majors leaving the field often get salaries higher than people who majored in that field going into it. It seems that these employers value the STEM education moreso than people who major in the same field.
Second, it is entirely possible that these STEM majors voluntarily left the STEM field. More people are doing STEM but that doesn't mean more people are passionate about STEM. Engineering isn't for everyone, and I myself have thought about leaving the field and going elsewhere not because I can't find a job but because I want to.
Edit: and are you sure that your higher-wages claim (source?) is not just evidence that STEM majors act as an effective filter for the smart and driven.
Quote: "People in STEM jobs benefit from being in such high demand. Study[1] after study[2] confirms that STEM professionals get paid more than non-STEM professionals -- often much more -- even when you control for their education and other factors. Contrary to Charette's claim that STEM wages have stagnated, reports from Georgetown, the Commerce Department[3], and the Information Technology Innovation Foundation[4] show that they have risen faster than non-STEM wages, even in recent years. That is a sign that employers are feeling the pinch."
The Studies linked: [1] http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/stem-good-jobs-now-and-future
[2] https://cew.georgetown.edu/report/stem/
[3]http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/stem-good-jobs-now-and-future
[4] http://www.itif.org/publications/real-story-guestworkers-hig...
Indeed. But critical thinking and creativity are the things second least prized in US classrooms, right after outright disobedience. So it's no real wonder that broad, general education has fallen out of favor.
Nonetheless, my experiences with US (university) classrooms have generally been positive. As long as it's relevant to the topic of discussion, students are free to pose a wide range of ideas without fear of social or academic reprisal. Although I must admit that some recent developments on college campuses with regards to freedom of speech are troubling.
The high schools have already selected for obedience and rote memorization skills when sorting their students for university admission. That and rich cheaters who can afford to purchase higher grades by taking accredited night classes.
In university, yes, after 13 years of the exact opposite.
Graduating with a liberal arts degree leads to masses of dissatisfied students who pine of the job desirability and pay of STEM workers.
in terms of creativity, I'm pretty sure science has lots of creativity. What does 'creativity' even mean? imagination, ability to create things? What have the liberal arts given society whereas sciences have brought forth the end of diseases, solutions for all kinds of maladies, shortcoming and ills of society.
Critical thinking is paramount in science, but I think general education as an end in itself is an oversell.
You don't see china and India rushing to shore up their GE gap, do you? No, I'm pretty sure they know what pays the bills and energizes their economies.
Let me know when a liberal arts degree brings home the bacon.
A modern education is more than trade-school workmanship, and your rhetoric devalues it to such. You're right, in that China, India, et al. don't value that. But they as countries and cultures aren't at the same point on the cultural equivalent of Maslow's hierarchy as we are, and their actions in no way must determine ours.
The courses that were considered part of the humanities, at least as far as STEM folks go, were pretty questionable in general, too. My university thought "technical writing" was a good course to be part of the English curriculum for STEM majors. But "good writing" wasn't, if you follow? Nor was any sort of philosophy, more than the barest rudiments of history (in a country where primary and secondary history education is little more than heroifying the names everyone knows)...it was a dire scene. (Of the liberal arts courses I found, and continue to find valuable, only microeconomics was a required course. Incredibly valuable, though--literally every person should be comfortable with the basics of microeconomics and macroeconomics, and if anybody posting here isn't, you should drop everything and get there. It's Understanding Humans 101.)
Even as I'm working with some people involved with the school to push for better technical literacy for non-STEM people--because that's important--I am pushing on the CS department to turn out functional humans as well. "We're tech people" cannot be an excuse for social, political, historical, and economical ignorance.
From my experience people go to university mainly to make themselves marketable in the broader economy, not so much to come out as well rounded individuals. People who want to be well rounded individuals typically are able to pursue those interests on their own. That's not to say that there might be an occasional student who does want to become a meaningful critical thinker, but for the most part people who go into liberal arts do it because they saw themselves as not up to par in STEM so decided to take a path of least resistance but also gave them some credibility.
Really?
I never got downgraded for giving an answer that the teacher disagreed with, rather I was given good marks for being able to clearly present my side of a discussion.
For the classes I took that were subjective, History, English (in regards to literary critiques), etc, it was made quite clear that what was most valued was our ability to made a well reasoned and well thought out argument.
I had teachers who would frequently play devil's advocate and argue against any position a student took up, with the same teacher taking opposite sides of an issue for sequential questions asked.
Highlights of Middle School include debating the supremacy of Roman versus Greek societal structures, studying major world religions past and present, and lots long form essays.
High School and College history classes consisted of "well here is the truth about stuff, yeah it is nasty" and the breaking down of nearly every beloved trope and fetishism of American supremacy.
But that is just my experience going through public school. :) (And of course anecdotes aren't worth much, but I don't think there is any sort of nation wide conspiracy to undermine critical thinking!)
I don't happen to think so either. Sorry I gave that impression. I think that a bias against creativity and critical thinking exists as emergent behavior. Teachers and administrators have to get things done, there's tests to give and grade, forms to fill out, report cards to send out, and loads of standardized testing upon which schools and teachers are rated. Some random kid arguing against some question on a standardized test only disrupts the entire thing. There is a bias, I don't think you can deny it, and it's all emergent, a second order effect of other things.
To the OP, I would suggest that the STEM fields do better on deep and critical thinking than philosophy and art history.
For the US K-12 scores in math and science and the comparison of those scores with South Korea, Singapore, Finland, etc., I'd say: The claim of the OP on these scores is that US K-12 education needs to do better to catch up with the other countries.
Okay, let's consider that claim: Compare the scores of students in those other countries with the scores of students in the US with recent ancestors from those other countries. E.g., compare scores of students in Finland with the scores of students in the US with recent ancestors from Finland. Then are doing better comparing the schools and not just the cultures. So, in crude terms, will be controlling on country of origin.
Here the OP has yet another straw man erected just to be knocked down.
It's a big strawman argument because the average American is poorly educated in STEM areas, and in philosophy and English. One area isn't being pitted against the other.
Anyway, it's a big strawman because universities have liberal arts credit requirements for science and engineering majors. You can't just load upon STEM-related courses and nothing else. (Maybe you can in some schools? That's a local problem to fix in those schools.)
A science education at a North American university exposes the human being to approximately the right does of the liberal arts.
Encouraging kids into STEM steers them in an area where they will be able to do find some kind of career, and pick up a rounded education along the way.
That gets compounded with the fact that colleges are now practically vocational schools which themselves tout a "return-on-investment" as their salient feature.
The solution is quite simple: expand humanities requirements and make them stringent. Make a student take at least 1/3 of courses in non-STEM subjects.
Edit: Also philosophy is part of STEM ... just lacks rigor sense and practicality.
I'm also tired of posting the same rant all over the place! ;)
TL;DR of my previous HN comment on this is that my CS degree included history, writing, music, painting, philosophy, and many other fields of study, just like a degree with the letters "B.A." in it would.
But on top of that I also had to take science and math, courses which used to be considered part of a proper "liberal arts" degree!
Don't most people just get degrees in stem, because they think it leads to a good job. There was an article on HN before on how students are jumping ship from law school to engineering school.
You can't teach that creativity. The people with some of the most notable kinds of creativity didn't get it from sitting through some humanities courses.
There is no evidence for this.
>A focus only on STEM is what gets you modern-day China, Korea, and Japan, where there are many technically skilled workers but a lower inclination to be innovative.
More stereotyping with no evidence. As someone who was worked with many Chinese, Koreans and Japanese as a scientist this statement is just outright ridiculous. Guess what, many of the top creative scientists in America are educated in the very countries you deride.
They're not, of course, and you explained that well. I do think that there is a problem of (surprising?) STEM anti-intellectualism, especially in industry. Some programmers are literate in history, the arts, and philosophy. Some are not. The latter category seems to get our industry in so much trouble; if they understood aesthetics, they wouldn't be so dismissive of languages that aren't Java, and if they understood human nature (through history and philosophy and literature) they'd have a better understanding of why "Agile" is dishonestly-sold bullshit. My 10x aesthetic sense isn't something I was born with; it comes from being exposed to a large number of seemingly unrelated topics.
At heart, I'm a liberal arts guy. I went to a small liberal arts college (Carleton) when I had several big-name schools in the bag (e.g. a contact at Princeton) because, when I was 17, I wanted to be a writer. I was more passionate about poetry than the sciences, at the time. I majored in math, though, and was able to transition into software. I definitely think that a broad-based, liberal education is important.
All of that said, a quality liberal-arts education includes math and the sciences. After all, two of the original seven liberal arts were mathematical, a third was astronomy and a fourth was music.
There are narrow scientists and programmers, of course, and that's part of why we encounter so much nonsense in our industry, but there are narrow history and English literature people (even at high levels) as well and they're just as bad. Scientific literacy is important, and the creativity comes from exposure to a large number of fields. Like you, I reject the idea that some fields (e.g. the humanities) are more creative than others (e.g. the sciences). However, I think that people who simply refuse to learn a subject, whether it's history or the sciences, generally aren't very creative.
"STEM education to the exclusion of other liberal arts"
versus
"STEM in balance with liberal arts"
and I tend to agree the latter is more preferable for the overall well being of a society.
"No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write." Ironically the author has none of these skills, and the best thing for him to do would be to avoid the humanities and take several rigorous math courses -- maybe then he will learn how to define his terms and stop writing things that mean essentially nothing.
I said the article conflated STEM with "Asian educational systems", which are conflated with memorization. Read:
>But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovation and economic success. America overcomes its disadvantage — a less-technically-trained workforce — with other advantages such as creativity, critical thinking and an optimistic outlook. A country like Japan, by contrast, can’t do as much with its well-trained workers because it lacks many of the factors that produce continuous innovation.
>Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity.
Attacking isn't purely about violence, it never was.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attack
> to criticize (someone or something) in a very harsh and severe way
To be honest, you are a prime example of the article's point. There is more to education than just STEM. The fact you failed to realize the person you were replying to used the word "attacked" correctly, for instance, can lead to a failure of communication. Failures of communication lead to things like this:
http://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-repor...
Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss something purely due to your own arrogance.
Additionally:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
> Ironically the author has none of these skills, and the best thing for him to do would be to avoid the humanities and take several rigorous math courses -- maybe then he will learn how to define his terms and stop writing things that mean essentially nothing.
Yet another flaw in your style of argument that could have been corrected with classes in the humanities.
Please don't call me arrogant. (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.) I don't have any pretensions to being intelligent or having something worthwhile to say. What I wrote was a knee-jerk reaction to what I read, and I criticized his character because the idea of his existing as a person "made me angry", and because I could not fully articulate my problems with the content. Maybe someone else will be able to do that. Part of it is that I spent a portion of my life believing in things like "self enrichment through education" or "being a well rounded person" -- the general sentiments expressed in the article -- but now I think they're meaningless. I learned Homeric Greek and read parts of the Odyssey in it, but the idea of an engineer going home after a day of work and reading the Odyssey in Greek and thinking to himself, "boy, this really makes me think; I am a well-rounded person. Maybe tomorrow I will start Gravity's Rainbow" strikes me as ridiculous and makes me laugh, again for a reason I can't fully articulate, probably because I once had thoughts like that and I no longer do.
There is nothing wrong with that last quote about his writing style. It is vague to the point of meaninglessness. My experience with the humanities has taught me to reject most writing. In fact I have "unlearned" most of my writing style and now try to be as honest as possible. Many people assume I am uneducated, so I guess it's worked.
He communicated clearly and you are simply being picky because you believe restricting the word to its more violent connotations is "superior".
The belief that a person is "wrong" because they do not meet your subjective expectation is a conceit. Sorry, you can't simply expect the rest of the world to bow to your subjective expectations.
> (However much you might dislike me I can assure you I dislike myself more.)
I don't dislike you or have any opinion of you beyond the assumption you don't seem to realize how you come across and that word relayed that message. The fact you would complain about a person's diction when they are literally correct is precisely in line with that behavior.
> There is nothing wrong with that last quote about his writing style. It is vague to the point of meaninglessness. My experience with the humanities has taught me to reject most writing. In fact I have "unlearned" most of my writing style and now try to be as honest as possible. Many people assume I am uneducated, so I guess it's worked.
> Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.
That is pretty direct.
I'm dropping this mainly because at this point I am leaning towards this being another troll account, honestly.
So when Beats®, Monster Cable® and Bose® trick the weak-minded into overpaying for commodity products, that is a good thing?
"The value added is in the brand — how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained" Gee, we used to call that the "rip-off"