From: Allan Bloom
Subject: Re: Engineer bashing
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 19:15:00 GMT

[Arne?  Are you listening, or have you picked up your ice axe for Portland
yet?  :-)  -SD]

By the way, Michael, I don't think we're disagreeing here at all.
(And please correct me if I'm wrong.  :-))  You've just caught me
on a topic which is interesting to explore.

In article <13069.2a6e91fc@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu> msp@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu (Michael S. Pettersen) writes:
>In general, the broader the range of a person's tastes, the better.  On the 
>other hand, if some natural scientists don't like the humanities, and some 
>social scientists don't like the nat scis, then it doesn't really seem to 
>me that you make them better people by forcing them to take classes which 
>are wasted on them.

I certainly agree that there might be people for whom learning about
any particular field or discipline will be totally wasted on them,
because they just won't get it, even if they try.  On the other hand, I
think they're in the minority, and anyway, particulars aren't my point
here.  We're mostly talking about 17-21 year olds who have a firm idea
about what they want to study, which is often not quite the same as
obtaining a liberal education.  I got a better liberal education from
my high school than I did at college, and that was mostly my own fault,
because I felt that biology was the most important topic to me.  I know
better now.

How you influence young people to make educational choices on more than
their immediate interests, and how you set up a structure to implement
this concept of "liberal education" aren't questions that I have an answer
for.  Harvard's initially-lauded "Core Curriculum" always struck me as
the old Gen Ed requirement in a handsome new binder.  But it is the
responsibility for a liberal arts college to exert an influence on
its students to make good choices, at least subtly.

>Liberal arts shouldn't be forced on those for whom it is unsuitable.

I think trade schools are a Good Thing.  It would at least reduce the
number of trade school graduates coming out of our liberal arts colleges.
The problem these days is that a BA or a BS or an AB or a SB doesn't
mean that you've been exposed to a liberal arts education.  The problem
is all around us on USENET, when you see what passes for argument and
thought, let alone the ability to string words along in a sentence and be
understood.  And this is a self-selected subset of the nominal elite!

Joe "Cardinal" Chapman went to MIT and majored in Humanities, which
is roughly the same as getting a degree in Engineering at the same time.
I love that because it's so delightfully perverse (and characteristic
of him), but it strikes me as an ideal training for any engineer
who wants to be more than a beaver shaped like a person.  (Now, I
happen to be a person shaped like a beaver.  I don't know what that
makes me.)

>I think that calculus is one of the most beautiful creations of the human 
>mind, and simple enough that everyone who gets through high school should 
>be able to understand it--its beauty is in its simplicity.  On the other 
>hand, some people just don't have a taste for that sort of beauty.

Absolutely.  But that's a particular.  You wouldn't make the same
argument for exempting elementary high school/college algebra and
geometry from what is assumed as part of a liberal arts education,
would you?  You have to draw a line somewhere; I'm not going to insist
on where it needs to be.

>Some people don't have a taste for poetry.  To say that one must like both
>in order to be well educated is a form of intellectual snobbery.

And what's wrong with that? :-)

But seriously, the issue is not that you have to like poetry, but that
you form an opinion based on something more than ignorance of the topic
and at least having had some decent exposure to it.  (I think your
example of "poetry" is a little broad: try replacing "poetry" with
"prose" or "music" or "mathematics" to see what I mean.)

>In any case, liberal arts education all too often means that scientists 
>and engineers are required to take humanities, but not the other way round.  
>See the article by Frank Westheimer in Harvard Magazine a few months ago.

Since they send us 4 copies of that damn rag every month, I'm sure
I have no excuse for not having read it.  And if that's so, I
would agree that some students are getting cheated.

I think that teaching someone how to think critically within a
discipline, whether that's the humanities or the sciences or
engineering, is very very hard, and it's too often left by the
wayside, to be absorbed by osmosis while a student is immersed
in the details of whatever course she or he takes.  This may
pay off over time in the student's concentration, but it doesn't
help them in their much briefer exposure to areas outside of their
field.  A liberal arts education isn't supposed to fill someone's
head with details, it's suppose to provide them an intellectual
context by which they can make sense of the world around them,
even on topics they haven't been exposed to before.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: soc.motss,soc.bi