Is there too much focus on STEM? (Liberal Arts strikes back)

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Today on CNN, there is an editorial from the president of Wesleyan on how focusing on STEM may be a bad thing.

He didn't say focusing on STEM is a bad thing. He said there is a danger of STEM displacing other areas of endeavor.

In the most recent times there has been a tendency of college students to not take courses "in their field".

Once upon a time a "liberal education" required things like language, history, music, literature, philosophy / religion, including various sciences, such as "natural philosophy" now known as physics.

In today's world of hurrying to finish a degree in four years and declare ourselves "educated" there isn't enough time to learn the things one should.

Engineers cannot communicate, and "liberal arts" majors are inadequately trained to understand the physical universe, which has political policy implications.

Liberal arts majors learning more STEM concepts along with STEM majors learning more 'liberal arts' is a good idea.

Woodie Flowers has talked to some of these concepts in his lectures to other audiences and university lectures. I will have to go back and review the video but during this year's kickoff he had a video played that lasted maybe three minutes. It had video insertions of various mentors.

During this video he touched on a LOT of topics that are subtle and complex but was a very short explanation of becoming educated, "liberally educated !!", understanding the universe, putting all this together. It almost reminded me of trying to create a 10 minute video where you told the history of the world.

Being a liberal arts major is a different thing indeed than being liberally educated.