<p><em>claps for NJSue</em></p>
<p>@californiaaa Did you just answer your own question…or? </p>
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Philosophy majors have already made their “case”. Philosophy is a major that has always been in the top three for teaching analytic skills, communications, etc. </p>
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They do not make you a better human being. I do not see that as humanities’ purpose.</p>
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My son (taking a philosophy course at a university probably considered pretty liberal) was shocked at how everyone except him assumed the existence of a supreme being. He was not expecting to be the most liberal kid in the room.</p>
<p>“has not taken a humanities course” </p>
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<li>You are right. I haven’t taken Humanities course in the United States. Most people around me had not. Yet, they are very nice, decent people, decent families, decent jobs.</li>
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<p>I attended a number of lectures sponsored by our Humanities department, mainly on feminism issues. I am a Latina Prof. in STEM; they wanted to use me as a example. :(</p>
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<p>We have laws against murder and people still kill each other. What’s the point of laws?</p>
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It’s nice to see another class composition. My class had a more people who did not believe in the existence of a supreme being. It’s nice to see the difference of perceptions on different philospher based on what they believed. </p>
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Decent is…decent. A lot of people can prosper from taking a philosophy class let alone a humanities class.</p>
<p>Where you offended that they wanted to use you as an example, californiaaa? I mean…a female professor who has made success in a field where women are underrepresented…?</p>
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<p>And if I want to bother doing some digging, I can probably find plenty of examples of folks with STEM degrees who are similarly notorious. Some off the top of my head:</p>
<p>Ted Kaczynski PhD Math Unabomber</p>
<p>Radovan Karadžić MD Psychiatry Indicted for war crimes during the Yugoslavian wars in the '90s.</p>
<p>Li Peng BS Hydroelectric/Civil Engineering Responsible with Deng Xiaoping for Tienanmen Square…</p>
<p>RAdm. Shigematsu Sakaibara (Naval Science Imperial Japanese Naval Academy) Executed 98 imprisoned civilian American contractors in 1943 while commanding Wake Island on behalf of the Imperial Japanese Navy</p>
<p>Dr. Shiro Isii MD Head of Unit 731, the biological warfare research group within the Imperial Japanese Army. An organization known for performing heinous biological warfare/medical experiments on POWs, civilian prisoners, etc. </p>
<p>Dr. Hans Eisele MD Performed heinous medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners as an SS officer under the Nazis.</p>
<p>californiaaa, you attended a school that never taught reading, writing, history, languages, etc? That seems awfully strange :/</p>
<p>There are a couple of issues with the humanities at present, but in the longer-term, they’re fine. Obviously the cost of college is important, and there are too many cases of humanities majors working as baristas post college. Unemployment rates are higher, which matter to people who have to work to pay for college. And the classes themselves can be frustrated. Non-majors don’t need or want super specific classes on 14th century Scandinavian Feminist Lit. Professors want to teach their “research” areas, but most students would prefer a broader survey class, like say Post-Renaissance Western Europe. Students still care about the humanities, but the humanities need to focus on the broader areas that students actually care about. Killing off the canon in the name of “diversity” isn’t helping.</p>
<p>Also I think there’s a major fallacy in the claim that critical thinking and analysis isn’t taught in the STEM fields. If anything, it’s emphasised more in the STEM areas. And let’s be honest, at most universities, the humanities are an easier option as far as GPA goes, and many students go toward them for that very reason. Average GPA’s in physics are quite a bit lower than in Classics or Comp. Lit. I don’t think employers value a Classics major’s critical thinking skills more than a Physics major’s. And that’s coming from someone who isn’t smart enough to be a Physics major.</p>
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I expect this primarily relates to self selection. Students with excellent analytical and critical thinking skills tend to gravitate towards certain majors. You see a similar effect in different majors having large variations in average SAT scores (at open enrollment colleges).</p>
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<p>Just for the record, both Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano were political science majors as undergraduates. Political science is a social science, not a humanities discipline. An essential part of critical thinking is being careful with your facts. </p>
<p>And the kind of broadside ad hominem attack you make here–“A studied X and A has no ethical values (according to me), therefore the study of X has no relation to ethical values”–is an incredibly sloppy and unpersuasive kind of argument, one that suggests a lack of critical thinking skills.</p>
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<p>Naval science is not normally a STEM subject today – it is usually the department heading for Navy ROTC courses (most of which are more social studies in nature, with some overview of naval engineering):
[Naval</a> Science Courses](<a href=“http://www.nrotc.web.arizona.edu/navalscience.php]Naval”>http://www.nrotc.web.arizona.edu/navalscience.php)
Was naval science in the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy something else?</p>
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<p>The issue was that back in 1918 which was the year RAdm. Shigematsu Sakaibara graduated, the Japanese Naval Academy like other Naval Academies like Annapolis had a relatively fixed core curriculum for all students and no “majors” as we know it today. </p>
<p>However, from what I’ve read about the curriculum at Annapolis and to a limited extent, the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy of that era, there was heavy emphasis on engineering subjects, especially ones relevant to maintaining and running Navy warships, weapon systems, docks, bases, etc. However, it wasn’t all engineering/STEM, either as there were mandatory classes in non-engineering/STEM fields like English or other foreign languages deemed important by the Navy. </p>
<p>This engineering/technology heavy emphasis in the core curriculum all cadets had to take was still in effect when Senator John S. McCain entered and graduated Annapolis in the '50s.</p>
<p>@ californiaaa</p>
<p>“I agree with you on Plato. I would not mind learning more about Plato, for example. Unfortunately, Humanities tend to be focused on progressive issues, not on Plato.”</p>
<p>To carry your biology comparison, most introductory bio courses spend maybe 5 minutes on historical figures like Darwin and maybe a class on Natural selection/Mendelian inheritance/modern synthesis theory. Most upper level biology related courses don’t even touch on them unless they are a genetics or evolutionary biology course in which case they skim over them briefly in the introductory lectures. Instead much of the classes are spent focused on research that many people would consider “progressive” like genetic engineering, cloning or stem cell research (virtually every biology department in any university has at least someone working with Knockout mice and cloning at least on a cellular level is nowadays considered to be a basic tool in research).</p>
<p>BTW arguing which type of degree produces more ethical individuals is an inane debate… I think we can all agree that the only field that produces an especially large amount of evil graduates is law ;)</p>
<p>PS: how do you quote sentences on CC?</p>
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<p>There is still a considerable core curriculum in the military service academies (e.g. [Course</a> Requirements :: Academics :: USNA](<a href=“http://www.usna.edu/Academics/Majors-and-Courses/Course-Requirements.php]Course”>http://www.usna.edu/Academics/Majors-and-Courses/Course-Requirements.php) at the USNA), but that does not make someone who majors in a humanities or social studies subject at an academy a STEM major. Nor would it necessarily mean that someone who studied a century ago at an academy where the core curriculum was the entire curriculum was a STEM major. He would likely have gotten a well rounded liberal arts education along with specialized education for a military officer, including both STEM and H/SS subjects.</p>
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<p>From some articles about John S. McCain and Annapolis’ curriculum changes since his time there, he’d probably have done better academically as now there’s more curricular flexibility. If he attended more recently, he could even major in non-STEM fields like History. Options which weren’t available to him when he attended in the '50s and which played a part in why he graduated near the bottom of his class.</p>
<p>I don’t think, by the way, that the point of studying humanities is to make people “better” or “more ethical” people. I’m not sure anyone has ever claimed that. I think that’s just a strawman of californiaaa’s creation.</p>
<p>We study the humanities for much the same reasons mathematicians study math, or scientists study science. We’re curious, and we want to push the boundaries of human knowledge and human understanding. We study history because we are curious about the past, especially about the past of our own species, our own cultures, and our own societies–and of other cultures and societies, different from our own–none of which is immediately accessible to us without careful, disciplined inquiry. </p>
<p>We study literature because writers have written, and we want to understand what they have written, and why, and what it signifies. In writing, they have struggled to give voice to their own insights and intuitions into questions, big and small, about what it means to be human. In writing, they have also given us art that speaks to us, and to the ages. There is much to be learned both from their insights and intuitions, as well as from the art and craft by which they express and communicate those insights and intuitions.</p>
<p>We study philosophy because philosophers have grappled–at their best in a rigorous and disciplined way–with the biggest of questions, questions that transcend science: What does it mean to be ethical? What does it mean for a statement to be true? What does it mean to say that we “know” a statement to be true, i.e., what is “knowledge”? What do we mean by “justice,” and when is a society “just”? We don’t study these big philosophical questions and the philosophers who have grappled with them because we think the philosophers have discovered the true and final answers; in general, they haven’t. But there is much to be learned merely by asking the questions, and thinking long and hard about them, and critically examining the answers that others have attempted, and trying to advance beyond those previous efforts.</p>
<p>These will always be important and valuable human endeavors, and people will always engage in them. Not everyone, but some subset of people. The humanities will never die, because as humans our innate curiosity and will to knowledge will never let them die.</p>
<p>^ circled and starred. :)</p>
<p>Bclintock: perfect.</p>
<p>Too many people seem to view humanities and sciences as entirely separate pursuits, but of course they aren’t. It enriches the study of chemistry to study history, and the study of religion to study astronomy. To advocate for the exclusive study of science, as californiaa seems to do, is to impoverish science. More concretely, my daughter just graduated with a degree in physics. While majoring in physics, she took courses in everything from medieval Welsh to Shakespeare to Japanese literature. Would anyone argue that she is a less capable physicist because she can read The Tale of Genji in Japanese? Or would one be more likely to think that someone who is interested in subjects far outside her comfort zone is likely to be more capable of questioning entrenched thinking, and thus of contributing originally and positively to her scientific study?</p>
<p>The argument that the need for humanities PhDs has declined sharply is far more compelling; we don’t need nearly as many physics PhDs as we produce, either. But the ugly realities of the academic market are not relevant to the question of whether we need courses in, and thus departments of, studies in Classics and History and Philosophy. And even English. </p>
<p>Californiaa, I am sorry for you. The world is full of fascinating subjects you are determined to dismiss and denigrate without any understanding of them, and while history is not affected by your lack of interest in it, your lack of knowledge of history is likely to hinder you, even if you don’t know it. Especially if you don’t know it.</p>
<p>marysidney ,</p>
<p>At a school level Humanities (English Arts and Social Sciences) are certainly useful. However, at college level some classes, presented to students, carry a scent of propaganda. </p>
<p>The only reason that I mentioned feminism, is because I saw this class first-hand. It was pathetic. Instead of teaching girls some useful job skills, they preach entitlement. I feel sorry for the parents who !pay! for such classes.</p>