Are you saying that you and your smart math friends discussing things (certainly part of the education process, I agree) and reading on your own was tantamount to the same thing or even “far more relevant”? How could you possibly know that since you didn’t do it at all after the age of 14?
If that’s what you mean, I have to say that position takes an impressive amount of self-assurance. You seem to be equating what you did prior to the age of 14, with the level of instruction and teachers that tend to accompany education at that age, with what other kids did in college between the ages of 18 and 22 or 23 with PhD educated faculty at the college level.
Could it be that you and the other “humanities as a hobby after high school” crowd did not actually get as much out of it as you think you did?
I for one have not encountered a single student - not a one - who was not writing, thinking, arguing and referencing the world at a higher level after college than before college. Not one.
Something is going on there besides indoctrination.
My point is that my experience is not atypical in the U.K., where you specialize very early (I skipped a year in elementary school and another in high school which is why I was 14 not 16 when I stopped formal study of humanities) and I don’t think that people in the U.K. are notably uneducated or incapable of “writing, thinking, arguing and referencing the world at a high level” because they don’t follow a broad but shallow curriculum like in the US.
A lot of people in these discussions make this very point, as if anybody said that such people were uneducated or incapable of those things. It’s really rhetoric, though.
Let’s not lose track of what we’re talking about here, and that is analyzing this claim that you don’t need to study humanities in college because you can just do it in high school and do it on your own with friends or on the side as a hobby.
When you or others say things like that, by implication you are saying that the people who did pursue those studies in college wasted their time and money and are somehow no better off as compared to those of you who just took care of it like a checklist item in your spare time. If you’re not saying that, then I’m not sure what you’re saying. The guy upthread is most definitely say that.
I’m just saying that maybe those other people have achieved or acquired some facility at a higher level than have you, holding constant for other variables (like how hard they and you worked in school, what kind of high schools were attended, relative levels of native intelligence, etc.).
I’ll share just one anecdote and move on: the top law 5 law students in my top 5 law school majored in philosophy, classics, rhetoric, economics and music. The EIC of our law review had a PhD in comparative literature. You would have to show me the high school grad who could keep up with or outpace those people in the bundle of skills you need to succeed in law school before I believed it.
No, I’m saying that there is no need to force people to study humanities in college. Most other countries in the world don’t do that, because they assume students know by then what they are good at and want to study. And those countries don’t seem to be worse off for that choice.
Those students who want to study humanities should do so, those who don’t shouldn’t be required to. Neither is a waste of time or money if you can (and are motivated to) use the time to demonstrate deeper understanding of a specific academic subject. And hopefully your course will teach you a bunch of skills (of whatever sort) that will be useful after college.
I don’t think one should assume that requiring a student who would prefer to do more math to take humanities courses (or vice versa) is the preferred solution, since many students will just do the minimum necessary and choose the easiest possible courses to satisfy their GEs.
What I find ironic is that some top colleges like Brown have an “open” curriculum where you can actually specialize and avoid humanities (or math) if you don’t find that interesting. Indeed UVA promote this as one of the “benefits” of their Echols scholarship for top students. Why would they do that if they believed taking a cross section of humanities and science courses in college was so important? It only makes sense if they think top students don’t need to be forced into more formal instruction because they will gain enough knowledge of the humanities (or math for that matter) from the combination of what they learned in high school and what they will learn informally or by pursuing their interests.
So you are making an argument against gen eds requirements. I am having trouble understanding how this relates to the theme of this thread which is “Should students choose useful majors?”
About a decade ago, Brown did a study going back to the inaugural year of the “New Curriculum” (1969, so hardly “new” right now in any meaningful way) when they renamed it the “Open Curriculum”. I don’t know if I can find the original study, but as far as I recall, it showed that in the early years (1970’s), students were, in fact- focusing on their areas of strength and interest, but that over time, a majority of students were doing their own “Gen Eds”. History majors taking math; physics majors taking literature; with a pretty broad self-made curriculum which included rigorous foreign language, art history, etc.
So now, after more than 50 years of this experiment in higher ed, most students replicate on their own what they’d be doing at a U with a core curriculum. One meaningful distinction though- because the classes are chosen and not required, more students are doing higher level courses in their “non-area of interest”.
Which makes sense. A kid who got admitted with a high proficiency in music but who is majoring in geology doesn’t need a freshman survey course in “The history of music”. That kid can take a more advanced and specialized class. The kid who was a math whiz in HS but also loved literature doesn’t need “Freshman Lit” and can likely move into a seminar on James Joyce or Tolstoy.
I think an interesting approach is Yale’s Directed Studies (known on campus as “Directed Suicide” because the workload is so heavy). Just another way to think about “what should college be teaching?”
I’ll just note there are in fact people who believe the US system of continuing general education for longer than most of the world does make a positive difference in some cases. It would be very hard to prove, though.
And yes, Brown still expects kids to use their system to continue an exploratory, broad education before picking a major. My understanding is the advising encourages that, and in fact admissions tries to select kids who understand that is the expectation.
That’s a related discussion but probably deserves its own thread.
The overwhelming majority of students at Brown and other open curriculum schools tend to be intellectually curious, independent and value an education that goes beyond job prep. I think it’s much less often about “Yay! I don’t have to take a bunch of courses on topics I don’t know anything about but which I’m sure I won’t find interesting,” and more about “I want to craft my own “core” to go along with my concentration.”
My math concentrator (Brown) has taken all kinds of courses because she wants to. My physics/astro double major (Wesleyan) did too. Both took, for example, a philosophy course on rationality. My English Lit major took two in a series of logic courses in the philosophy department. The Brunonian also took a religion course (only one of my kids to do so) and got a lot out it. I know they’d tell you they’re all much the better for it. I’m also confident they’d tell you it was not at all redundant of high school, and two of them were IB students and one of them an AP student. Not even close.