With regard to your last two paragraphs, I completely agree. I was fortunate to earn my bachelor's in computer science at a small liberal arts school. I learned about literature, music, history,...
With regard to your last two paragraphs, I completely agree. I was fortunate to earn my bachelor's in computer science at a small liberal arts school. I learned about literature, music, history, economics, psychology, anthropology, etc. while I was there, and my friends in the humanities and arts learned sciences and mathematics. We were certainly not experts in any of these topics, but we were conversant enough to have discussions about them, and bring knowledge from many fields into our own primary work. There was an incredible cross-pollination of ideas happening every day there.
When I got to grad school at a large state university, hardly any of my peers had knowledge from any fields but computer science, IT, or software engineering. Few people I worked with were interested in the world around them, and would disparage academic study outside of STEM as being "easy" or without purpose or a waste of time. They would mock contemporary art and scoff at gender studies. It was extremely disheartening to see this subset of the future scientists and engineers of the world.
Our society can do better than this, and I hope we will, though I do sometimes fear I won't be alive long enough to see meaningful education reform. Young people should be given the opportunity to blossom in every direction. A flower pruned of half its petals is only beautiful from one angle.
With regard to your last two paragraphs, I completely agree. I was fortunate to earn my bachelor's in computer science at a small liberal arts school. I learned about literature, music, history, economics, psychology, anthropology, etc. while I was there, and my friends in the humanities and arts learned sciences and mathematics. We were certainly not experts in any of these topics, but we were conversant enough to have discussions about them, and bring knowledge from many fields into our own primary work. There was an incredible cross-pollination of ideas happening every day there.
When I got to grad school at a large state university, hardly any of my peers had knowledge from any fields but computer science, IT, or software engineering. Few people I worked with were interested in the world around them, and would disparage academic study outside of STEM as being "easy" or without purpose or a waste of time. They would mock contemporary art and scoff at gender studies. It was extremely disheartening to see this subset of the future scientists and engineers of the world.
Our society can do better than this, and I hope we will, though I do sometimes fear I won't be alive long enough to see meaningful education reform. Young people should be given the opportunity to blossom in every direction. A flower pruned of half its petals is only beautiful from one angle.