<p>To BigAppleDad,</p>
<p>Kids that are great at the humanities are called “talented” - it is just a different word for smart.</p>
<p>Hey Dadguy,</p>
<p>I sent you a PM. :)</p>
<p>Sometimes, kids who hate math are kids who somehow missed learning some essential math concepts or facts years ago and have been struggling ever since. They hate math because some parts of it seem incomprehensible.</p>
<p>A good tutor can help correct this kind of problem.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve never worked at a tech company where the engineers made more than the sales people. While the sales reps might have had math and science skills, they are far less likely to have degrees in math or a hard science. In terms of salary, engineers start off with higher salaries, but they plateau relatively quickly.</p>
<p>I’m sure that’s a vaild point, WashDad. But a humanities education is not any more likely to led to a career in sales than a math or science eduction. </p>
<p>Having some sales or managerial skills on top of a science or math eduation is far better than not having those skills at all. If you’re stuck in the backroom like a lot of engineers are, you will only get so far. But you will get somewhere.</p>
<p>because science is the key to the future and we are looking for the best minds to further humanity’s progress. The LIBERAL arts and humanities are of secondary importance.</p>
<p>As you can tell I am a staunch “Big Science” advocate, so if you were offended by the above, now you know.</p>
<p>I don’t like to look at it that way though. My belief is that Medicine = Business > Law</p>
<p>The sciences may be the key to our material progress, but the humanities and the arts feed the soul.</p>
<p>A brilliant abstract is belied by its harrowing writing. Today, it may seem as though brilliant writers are structurally disadvantaged, but this is hardly the case–though a theorem may go disproved, though the technology of today will be the trash of tomorrow, great literature is immortal. Of course, one could always note the “starving artist” scenario.</p>
<p>A son of friends is a brilliant theoretical physicist. His parents swear he still doesn’t know his multiplication tables. I agree with letting your son follow his bliss, but as others have said, we do need some basic math skills to get by and he might understand and enjoy higher math a lot more.</p>
<p>I think all of your posts on one thread have the same # and when you post on a different thread the # goes up. I didn’t know that posts in the cafe didn’t count, number-wise, but they count in other ways.</p>
<p>Same here with my daughter. She is not as strong in math as in humanities. I think partially to blame are the teachers that teach math, they have undergraduate degrees in non-math subject. They seem struggling to explain something so intuitive to me.
But I don’t worry, my husband and I combine, are good in math, science and engineering and I don’t consider us that successful. So I tell my kids, jokingly of course, they don’t have to worry about standing under the shadows of very successful parents.They are going to be much more sucessful than their parents, at least that is my hope.(:-)</p>
<p>bigappledaddy…</p>
<p>just curious…when did you notice that son’s math grades were dropping? how were his math grades in elementary school? how about in middle school? does he test well on standardized tests in math but then the actual grade for the class is a concern? does he fully complete all the assigned homework or the in-class work assignments?</p>
<p>ds entered middle school this year and was bored with the pace of the instruction in his math class.</p>
<p>I’ve never worked at a tech company where the engineers made more than the sales people. While the sales reps might have had math and science skills, they are far less likely to have degrees in math or a hard science."</p>
<p>The sales reps at h’s company are pulled from the engineering ranks. You gotta be able to walk the walk and talk the talk.</p>
<p>It’s a mistake to “draw boxes” around math/science and humanities as totally seperate things. Each feild can inform the other. For the scientist, humanities helps build an ethical framework and shows that there are dreams and aspiriations beyond the labatory. For those with more interest in the humanities, math and science provide a pramgmatic grounding and offers a logical framework.</p>
<p>We should not be so quick to assign our students into one bucket or the other, but encourage them to study both.</p>