by DanI-S on 10/16/13, 3:13 PM with 80 comments
by rayiner on 10/16/13, 4:21 PM
I'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life.
Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.
I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.
I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under-emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over-emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.
by 3rd3 on 10/16/13, 4:48 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B...
Transcript:
.. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.
It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention.
All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...
by netcan on 10/16/13, 4:11 PM
by rubidium on 10/16/13, 3:47 PM
This is quite a gem. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.
by cstross on 10/16/13, 5:44 PM
(This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine-tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe-horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)
by lkrubner on 10/16/13, 4:10 PM
----------------
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on...
Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance.
----------------
There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s:
----------------
Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry.
Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics.
It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs.
----------------
I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate:
1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth.
2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub-specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands).
There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.
by matthewtoast on 10/16/13, 4:33 PM
by rokhayakebe on 10/16/13, 4:51 PM
If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior.
Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.
by rmk2 on 10/16/13, 3:53 PM
by lkozma on 10/16/13, 5:40 PM
by everyone on 10/16/13, 8:13 PM
by rch on 10/16/13, 6:18 PM
by ArekDymalski on 10/16/13, 4:11 PM
by bchjam on 10/16/13, 7:23 PM
by rasengan0 on 10/17/13, 7:56 AM
SOS
by maerF0x0 on 10/16/13, 4:54 PM
by peter303 on 10/16/13, 9:26 PM
by revscat on 10/16/13, 6:16 PM
by graycat on 10/17/13, 4:31 AM
But now the book and the OP strike me as not well considered.
Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more important than is commonly or easily described. It took me a while to understand this point.
Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world, both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my life, in particular, 'security', and for those wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to settle for anything less solid than, say, plane geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of course then only some of this could I articulate.
So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more sure!
Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about the world, where I was trying to get control and security, that was too complicated and subtle for mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any good and (2) that part of the world was so important to my life that, even though I didn't have solid tools to address it, I still had to handle it in some sense.
Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me handle those complexities, but eventually I discovered that some parts of the humanities could to at least a useful extent.
Generally my central criticism of the humanities was that, in strong contrast with mathematics and mathematical physics, and, really, most of engineering, technology, medical science, medicine, and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear just what they were claiming was true and (2) for any claims nearly never provided convincing evidence. While these remain valid criticisms, amazingly in places the humanities can be important nevertheless.
Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g., in, say, the English departments, a common claim was that English literature had a lot of good knowledge of people and would help readers understand people. I concluded, and still do, that maybe a little.
Once I discovered the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, awash in real practical expertise, well considered and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm was a good example of progress on information for understanding people. For more on love specifically, actually some of the relevant articles on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places they have explained some of what I figured out more or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a lot more.
So, it is possible to get some understanding of people, but for this purpose I would mostly set aside English literature as too thin and/or even misleading.
For understanding people, I'd say that the most important contribution of English literature to understanding people is that some people like English literature.
The crack in my scorn that got me started with the humanities classical music. A brilliant person once said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe, maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone wanting to understand people or even themselves, amazingly.
Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part because there were usually few or no words to take literally and, thus, argue with.
Well, it turns out that classical music has something of a language, especially about human emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest chapter is human emotions.
Classical music is an example of a common definition of art as in the communications, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Well, it can be easy enough to find parts of classical music that are quite effective meeting this definition of art. So, here there is some progress in understanding humans.
One description of much of the media is vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment which sounds next to worthless for the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this description to vicarious emotional experience and, then, learn about people by feeling their emotions -- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a person understand people.
For some value for the audience, good art is supposed to be universal and, then, often a person in the audience can see where the art is describing things much as in their life from which that person can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen, others did the same, and maybe some of the main causes are not really from me.".
E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate. To me she was always the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if they were last week. She was my first love and, apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more forget her than I can forget my own name.
Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18 months and started when she was just 12 and in the seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade.
I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list of false beliefs about each other that had us making mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't think that there was anything seriously wrong, and everything wrong was based just on mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later discovered that so was hers.
Then there's Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner "Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced to walk away from his new bride.
So, Lohengrin told me that I was not the first guy to walk away from the young woman he loved and that such things go back to at least 1850.
Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We asked too much of the understanding of our women and should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation.
Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn.
As good art communicates emotions about the human experience, members of the audience can begin to learn more about other people.
The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly effective in communicating about humans; we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes.
Took me a while to see these points.