However attempts to measure critical reading skills, for example in standardized tests such as the GREs, consistently find that STEM majors are better at critical reading than humanities majors!
Secondly, critical reading is not the only required skill for critiquing and assessing potentially flawed arguments. Quantitative reasoning is also needed. For example you can't assess public policy questions about COVID-19 without quantitative reasoning. However STEM courses are far more likely to teach quantitative reasoning than humanities courses.
This critique of your argument is brought to you by someone with a STEM degree.
And the truth is, there's no effing reason for a humanities course to put you into that kind of debt. Cheap (often free!) books, a room to meet in, and some small groups for slightly-focused discussion among the students shouldn't be costing on the order of a thousand-dollars per credit hour (per student!) over the course of your compounding-interest loan. It's a terrible value for the money; if it wasn't for the credential nobody would be doing it because if you just want the knowledge/wisdom there are far cheaper ways to get it.
Quoting the whole thing:
""" CLARK: There's no problem. I was just hoping you could give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities—especially in the southern colonies—could most aptly be characterized as agrarian pre-capital—
WILL: [interrupting] Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, you’re gonna be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon, then you’re gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
CLARK: [taken aback] Well as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of —
WILL: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth..." You got that from Vickers, Work in Essex County, Page 98, right? Yeah I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us—you have any thoughts of—of your own on this matter? Or do—is that your thing, you come into a bar, you read some obscure passage and then you pretend, you pawn it off as your own—your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?
[Clark is stunned]
WILL: See the sad thing about a guy like you is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library. """
https://genius.com/Good-will-hunting-good-will-hunting-bar-s...
Now in fact it is possible to learn from self-directed study. But your odds of learning are massively better when you get to ask questions, test your understanding by talking with others, and have your ability to explain your understanding graded.
Which means that, on average, people get more value out of going through a book in a classroom setting than they get by reading it on their own.
Whether that is enough value to justify tuition is another story entirely...
Few people would get to any sort of level of understanding of that sort of material just by reading it, and just because a movie genius can do it doesn't mean it's easy.
If we replaced all those examples with engineering textbooks, wouldn't it be the exact same, if it not, why? We learn he's an untrained math prodigy later on in the movie, so he doesn't need any education. It would appear a STEM education is a waste as well.
Again I ask, given that textbooks exist, can you make the argument that STEM is any different?
I assumed this was true for most people in STEM majors in college, no?
That's a skill that the liberal arts pick up as well.
> I do remember spending quite a lot of time in either a computer lab or in the library fighting my way through problems.
Will did that all on his own, without the need for a college. You're also describing a technical institute.
I don't see any skills there that really require a university either.
1. Humanities does not teach any sort of critical thinking more than other classes, and if anything I found my STEM classes to teach more critical thinking because of more formal systems of proof or statistics needed to back a point.
2. A very large percentage of the population doesn't go to college. If we wait to teach the basic skills in college, it is already too late. This type of thinking needs to be taught in grade school.
>If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.
Why wouldn't this be a symptom of the market? There is money to be made in controversy and click bait, and that applies just as well in politics.
You didn't offer any support for your claim, though, which triggers an alert from my critical reading skills.
Did I pass the test? I did major in STEM.
why is a mathematican less likely to be able to critique and assess a flawed argument compared to an English major? why is an English major less likely to fall for propaganda compared to a computer science major?
> Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing.
Do I need to point out all the flaws in this sentence or can you critically read your own writing?
> If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.
Would you agree that the majority of politicians are lawyers, or at the very least non-STEM majors? What you're claiming then, is that humanities majors create and participate in "shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling"
Was that the point you were hoping to make?
Political debates are a circus because the political system was designed in a different era that didn't have reality shows and endless mind melting entertainment.
The reality of the history of socialism is one of failure.
And yes, I do understand that everyone thinks that those who disagree with them are ill-informed and susceptible to propaganda, and those who prefer socialism will think that of me :-)
And yes these countries do use the market in a regulated fashion where it does a good job.
Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing.
If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.