To deny the intrinsic value of (humanities topics) is to deny a fundamental feature of what it is to be a person. Who denies the intrinsic value of those? Does such a person actually exist? Or is the author setting up a straw man or simply mis-informed? Ive worked in STEM fields my entire life and every last co-worker of mine has had favorite bands or jazz musicians or classical composers, favorite painters, and favorite authors. A fair number were musicians themselves and a few were artists. Practically every one was bi- or trilingual (Wiki recognizes languages as a humanity skill) and traveled internationally on a yearly basis to soak up foreign culture and history. Its hard to believe the author, Emily Eckart, is unfamiliar with such people, but if shes not cynically stating such people dont exist in order to sell an article, perhaps she simply lives in a closed world. Ive certainly known humanities types who saw zero value in math and sciences and perhaps the author is simply making the incorrect assumption that the reverse mindset also exists among STEM workers? Eckart has missed a very important point: championing STEM majors over humanities majors is absolutely not the same as saying STEM is better than humanities or that the humanities lack intrinsic value. This pushing has nothing to do with intrinsic value of the skill, and everything to do with the number of people studying the respective fields. The Law of Supply and Demand tells us exactly what will happen if the supply of workers in a field is higher or lower relative to the demand. Few workers relative to demand? Assured employment at high salary. Many workers relative to demand? Spotty employment at lower salary. The inadvisability of getting a degree in the humanities is merely due to the relatively high supply and low demand. If most students were to study STEM and only a few study humanities, wed see the newly-minted historians and philosophers commanding the six-figure salaries while engineers worked minimum wage. The intrinsic value of neither realm would have changed, yet wed be pushing our kids into literature and performing arts. Accordingly, I wont obsess about pushing my son into science and math specifically, but into whatever field seems like it will be in short supply relative to demand. However, at the moment its looking like that will be science and math. Hell also be growing up bi- or trilingual, with guitar lessons and yearly international travel to sites of culture and history, and have not only a couple dozen music instruments but 1000 books in the house. Meanwhile, even if he does go into humanities, hell also have hopefully fond memories of Lego Technics, building a model railroad, flying drones and programming Christmas tree lights with an Arduino microcontroller with dad.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 02:27:59 +0000
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