Paul Cantrell
In college, I took a class called The Letters of Paul. I took it for two very good reasons:
1. I was (and am) named Paul.
2. The prof was (and is) cool.
I didn’t figure it was an especially practical course. It was for fun, for the challenge, for the cultural knowledge, for the pleasure of doing it.
WHAT LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION IS FOR: A THREAD
1/
Paul Cantrell
The class turned out to be more less “A Letter (singular) of Paul:” we spent the semester reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, at a rate of about 3 sentences per week.
Why so slow? Because we read multiple translations of each of those sentences, and multiple commentaries on them, spanning many centuries — plus a bit of social and historical context. Slow, diligent, careful. And…
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Paul Cantrell
We asked, over and over: “What do we think Paul was thinking, given that he chose those words? What do think each commentator thought Paul was thinking? Why do we think they thought he was thinking that? Does it really make sense for Paul to have thought X? For us to think they thought he thought X?“ A theory of mind hall of mirrors!
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Paul Cantrell
The heart of the course: “What can we learn about what other people are really thinking, about their mental models of the world, by paying very careful attention to the words they use?”
And I thought that course had •absolutely no practical relevance• to my career as a software developer until I started encountering text like this (ht @AndrzejWasowski):
https://scholar.social/@AndrzejWasowski/110388147932757071
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Paul Cantrell
When I’m on a software project, I try to listen hard to what everyone is saying, to the words they choose. “Don’t blame me! They asked for it!” is never good enough. I ask critical questions about what people are really thinking, what we’re all hearing each other say, from the start.
I have saved many companies on many projects a whole lot of money (and tears) by nipping misunderstandings and hidden assumptions in the bud early with that skill.
A skill I honed in a Religious Studies course.
5/
Paul Cantrell
Here’s the hidden truth of education:
You don’t know what you’re preparing for.
Your teaching doesn’t know. Your future employer doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Not really. What you’re preparing for might not even exist yet. We •hope• it doesn’t exist yet: don’t we educate students in the hope that they will make the world better by changing it? By creating realities that don’t even exist yet?
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Paul Cantrell
Doesn’t that mean education is impossible then? Not at all! Because we’ve learned over time that there are kinds of learning that help you prepare for an unknown and unknowable changing world. We can do that learning with joy and confidence in its value if we accept that we will only understand its specific utility in hindsight.
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Paul Cantrell
Is a Religious Studies course “for” a software career? Well, is a Computer Science course “for” a software career?
That Religious Studies course applied to my software career in •exactly• the same way that my Algorithms course applied: I rarely use (and have mostly forgotten) the specific knowledge from it. I use its approach, its patterns of thought, •constantly•.
8/
Paul Cantrell
There is always a tension in education between teaching the knowably practical and the unknowably valuable.
The former we often call “vocational education:” specific knowledge we believe students will need for specific reasons in a very specific future. That kind of knowledge is often the primary barrier around a specific career, or a specific problem. We learn it in class, or in training, or in an online tutorial, or from tinkering. It tends to be immediately useful, but ephemeral.
9/
Paul Cantrell
That latter kind of education — learning that is valuable in unknowable ways in an unknowable future — has a name, too. It is liberal arts education.
Contrary to popular belief, “liberal arts” ≠ “humanities & fine arts.” I teach liberal arts computer science courses. It’s possible to get non-liberal-arts education in the arts or humanities; preparing for an orchestral career with a degree from Curtis is a great example of that.
Liberal arts is an educational philosophy, not a discipline.
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Paul Cantrell
Of course the “I didn’t realize learning X would be applicable to Y!” phenomenon exists everywhere in education, inside and outside of school. (School ⊂ Education)
What “liberal arts” means is •centering• that, making it not just a happy coincidence, but a primary goal. It’s about preparing students with the expectation that they’ll have to adapt to an unknown future they’re helping to shape.
There’s a history behind that, one with an ugly side — and a tough lesson for us now.
11/
Paul Cantrell
Do you know where the term “liberal arts” comes from? I long assumed it meant “liberal” as in “all-inclusive” or something…but no. The original Latin phrase, _artes liberalis_, means roughly “skills or practiced principles worthy of a free person.” Free as in taking a fully privileged part in civic life. Free as in self-determining. Free as in not a servant or a slave.
12/
Paul Cantrell
If a person lives a life of servitude, if they are enslaved, then they need •only• vocational education. If their human existence has no utility beyond their job, if they cannot shape their world or create new paths through it, then why teach them things they don’t need?
Isn’t it only free, fully privileged, self-determining people who •also• need a liberal arts education?
Think about that. Think how our society views “liberal arts.” Think what that says about how we view human beings.
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Paul Cantrell
Don’t get me wrong: I emphatically do not think everyone should go to a private 4-year liberal arts college like mine. I don’t think everyone should have to go to college at all. Education can — should! — take many, many forms. Education doesn’t even have to happen in school!
What I •do• believe is that some form of education with that liberal arts philosophy — “Because you are free, you must prepare for the unknown” — should be present in the life of every human being.
14/
Jeff Miller (orange hatband)
@inthehands I feel lucky, looking back, to have taken a course called "Method, Imagination, and Inquiry" in the English department at the University of Washington.
I find its history-of-Western-Thought content, as well as cultural anthropology, useful for insight into how people understand things together and share those understandings.
Curiosity based choices for me at the time.
Paul Cantrell
I cringe, cringe deeply, to my core, when people try to create socioeconomic mobility by force-pushing tech and STEM and give-them-lucrative-careers content into schools. I cringe even though access to that kind of learning •is• important, and can unlock choices.
I cringe because at its heart, it is about meeting employer needs, not human needs. It is asking students to conform better to the world, not to reshape it. It does not treat children as human beings who are and should be free.
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Paul Cantrell
Our society treats liberal arts education as a luxury good. Think: Which K12 schools cut supposedly inessential programming to focus on “practical” learning? And which K12 schools still have that supposedly inessential stuff like, say, robust music ensembles?
That is the •same• question as, “Which students does society view as fully privileged, free humans beings, and which does it view as cut out for a life of servitude?”
⚠️ The ⚠️ same ⚠️ question ⚠️
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Paul Cantrell
@jmeowmeow hits an important nail on the head here:
https://hachyderm.io/@jmeowmeow/110390981721363562
Curiosity is the •best• guide for that “preparing for the unknowable” kind of education.
Think: Where in the structure of schools do we structure to let students pursue their curiosity? Where do we actively thwart that? Which schools are actively oriented to the former, to the latter?
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Tim Kellogg
@inthehands @jmeowmeow I'm a huge fan of Waldorf education. They bake in curiosity from the very beginning. At all ages it's all about recognizing where the kid is at and meeting them there, using creativity & engaging them in stories. They really don't spend much time on math & reading/writing, but when they do spend time on it, the kids soak it up like a sponge
Paul Cantrell
Singing off for now. Folks:
Follow your curiosity.
Ask who every school is for. Ask how it views its students.
View with skepticism any putative efforts to help marginalized students if those efforts work by •narrowing• them.
If you’re in college, go take those classes outside your discipline, outside your comfort zone. You cannot possibly know how much they will matter.
Exercise your freedom. Claim it in your education (in and out of school). Fight to make that available to everyone.
/end?
Paul Cantrell
@kellogh @jmeowmeow I’m a Montessori kid myself, then and now!
Paul Cantrell
@jmeowmeow @kellogh “One size fits all” is always a recipe for failure in education. It is important to have a wide variety of approaches, because there is a wide variety of people in this world.
Jeff Miller (orange hatband)
@kellogh @inthehands Waldorf ended up being a failure for our child especially during the middle school grade years. He didn't relate well with creating an artistic lesson book. He was very happy to go to public high school. The system overweights the class teacher's responsibility to handle everything, which can sometimes be good and sometimes very bad.
Waldorf can be a good match for some, yes.
Paul Cantrell
@dtauvdiodr Totally. It’s a fine needle to thread, because sometimes all the STEM talk turns into “This stuff is awesome! Yes, it can be for you too! Give it a try! Jump on in! Here’s lots of support for you!“ And when that’s what it means, I am all for it. That is broadening, not narrowing. But it all turns into narrowing so easily, so invisibly, so quickly, on a dime.
craquemattic 🏳️🌈
@inthehands awesome thread. i cannot support this idea more strongly than have lived it myself. diversity is how the universe operates, it only makes sense that we treat our education the same way.
i dislike the STEM movement. it pushes young minds to think they must work against their own sense of self to be successful in the world. i have a “STEM” job & my liberal arts education centered on music. none of our kids are doing STEM… it’s hospitality, theatre, and psychology. they’re doing great.
Paul Cantrell
@ZOEconomy Thanks for reading!
Dr. Zoë Plakias (she/her)
@inthehands Really love this thread! Thank you!
Paul Cantrell
@bleistifterin @dtauvdiodr Yup. Again, liberal arts is a philosophy of education, not a specific kind of subject matter.
And of course good vocational education (school or otherwise) is essential for anybody who wants a job. The two should ideally work together: broad education turbo-charges specific skill acquisition.
Good luck with the job search. Software development is a particularly hard thing to learn without social support over a long period of time. Hang in there.
Bleistifterin
@inthehands @dtauvdiodr well. Considering that FOUR of the seven artes liberales were considered mathematical , i.e. geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and, yes, music -- there is a lot of STEM included in the liberal arts. It just needn't be reduced to a vocational training or use cases.
I believe in liberal arts education. From the bottom of my heart. I also did a vocational (re-) training in software development (can't code sh*t though) because I cannot find a job.
Paul Cantrell
@rjblaskiewicz Yup. Life is interdisciplinary!
Bob Blaskiewicz 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇬🇱
Welp, that's a follow right there. I teach in our Uni's General Studies Program...possibly because I never sufficiently specialized. :) I've taught WWII in film and lit, American Conspiracy Theories, Science and Pseudoscience, the History of Alternative Medicine, business writing courses, and critical thinking seminars. All students are required to take "at some distance" courses that have nothing to do with their majors. Interdisciplinarity is the only way to fly.
Paul Cantrell
@Htaggert Exactly this.
Htaggert
@inthehands I’m a nurse with a BA in history. With the well rounded liberal education, I have found it much easier to relate to a wide variety of ppl - as various classes taught me how different ppl value different things. While a4 yr degree may not be needed, I wish more ppl would chose to go to a library/author presentation, a symphony or a jazz club and a museum…
JamesLaPlaine
@inthehands wonderful thread, thank you.
I recently have been thinking more about verbal, visual, and spatial thinkers. So much of our education system favors the verbal thinker (standardized testing is a great example) that we are excluding whole classes of thinkers from getting the education they need.
Word based thinking is sequential and linear, comprehends things in order, good at understanding general concepts, good sense of time (not always direction). Tend to dominate conversations.
Paul Cantrell
@JamesLaPlaine Yes, people have all kinds of wonderful different minds, and one of the primary (and hardest jobs) of schools is to meet students where they’re at. Education that has that flexibility is a beautiful thing.
JamesLaPlaine
@inthehands Visual thinking is not about how one sees, it is how they perceive and process information. Two types: object & spatial.
Object thinkers make rapid associations. Maps, art, and mazes. Grasp how mechanical things work & enjoy figuring them out. Tend to be problem solvers. Spatial thinkers think in patterns and abstractions, they make the trains run.
If we aren’t meeting learners and thinkers with the right education style for them, then they are ill prepared for the workforce too.
Paul Cantrell
@thatandromeda High five!
I think it pained Cal (prof of my Paul class) that it was not feasible to make fluency in Koine a prereq for the class. Maybe one of us knew it, if that…? He tried to teach us a smidge, but clearly we could have gone deeper if we truly knew the language. I envy you that!
Andromeda Yelton
@inthehands oh my gosh, I spent an intermediate Greek class translating Paul and it became fundamental to how I understand organizations and leadership
Paul Cantrell
@ablackcatstail Yes, we are thinking many of the same things here.
Meow.tar.gz :verified:
@inthehands I cringe as well but for slightly different reasons. I cringe because it devalues learning for the good that it does us mentally and emotionally. It conditions us to only learn for a monetary reward, much like Pavlov's dogs. It's more conditioning than learning. Learning should be done for the good that it does us, not for some reward at the end of the effort.
Paul Cantrell
@kotaro Yes, a really good example!
kotaro
@inthehands Zelensky is a prime example of the liberal arts. His knowledge of Western literature allows him to sway the leading figures in Western politics.
Paul Cantrell
@bleistifterin @tshirtman @kellogh @jmeowmeow Oh, don’t beat yourself up even a little: that’s a distinction I’m pretty sure I’d have mangled, and I’m a native English speaker!
Gabriel Pettier
@bleistifterin @kellogh @inthehands @jmeowmeow i think you meant anthroposophical (which i know is not really a word, but anthroposophy is the steiner pseudo-scientific "philosophy" while anthropology is a science).
What they pretend to do (freedom of expression to children, catering to their needs and personality) is completely different from what they actually do, which is deprive them of knowledge, and orient their curiosity in very specific (theological) directions. They also hate dissent.
Bleistifterin
@tshirtman @kellogh @inthehands @jmeowmeow
Yes indeed, exactly.
Also I'll edit the post.
Should not type in a foreign language after midnight. Thanks for pointing it out.
Bleistifterin
@kellogh @inthehands @jmeowmeow I acknowledge that some Waldorf methods foster creativity but the anthropological (edit: it is "anthroposophical", of course. ) ideology is deeply troubling.
Also, while a good student-teacher relationship is crucial for teaching, Waldorf teachers have way too much control over students, books and dessemination of knowledge.
barrkel
@inthehands I understand where you're coming from, but lucrative careers aren't just employers' needs; they are how market economies transmit the information that a job needs doing, and there aren't enough people doing it. High prices signal that something is either very valuable to a few people, or fairly valuable to a lot of people.
Of course there are imperfections. Not all monetary value has the same moral value. Not all prices are market driven. But there's a kernel of truth there which shouldn't be simply dismissed as "employers". They're driven by markets too.
Also, algorithms - specifically, analysis of algorithms - is probably the only knowledge I use every hour of my coding life, in or out of work: space and time, resource consumption as a function of input size: it is a constant awareness for every loop, every list and string manipulation, every attempt at concurrency, every allocation, it's pervasive.
Paul Cantrell
@barrkel I don’t think we disagree on that. Yes, if markets are good for anything (in principle at least), it’s asking people to make balanced tradeoffs between their individual wishes and the needs of others. Employment markets are very much a part of that.
The thing is, education that is attuned the •current market• is inherently ephemeral — and if it’s the •whole• education, it narrows people. You’re missing what I wrote about “asking students to conform to the world, not to reshape it:”
Paul Cantrell
@barrkel
even from a strictly career-market-utilitarian perspective, education should (1) prepare students for the current job market, but also (2) prepare them for a changing job market, help them be ready to rapidly adapt to jobs that don’t exist yet, and (3) empower them to •create• those jobs that don’t exist yet. (And of course all the above extends beyond employment.) That’s what I’m saying.
Paul Cantrell
@kellogh @BillySmith @jmeowmeow
There’s a great 99pi about this too: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/
Tim Kellogg
@BillySmith @inthehands @jmeowmeow The flaw of averages? https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html
Billy Smith
@inthehands @jmeowmeow @kellogh
It's never "One size fits all!"
It's always "One size fits nobody!" :D
Christopher Pickslay
@inthehands I’m a software engineer with a BA in English. I approach projects the same way.
Paul Cantrell
@bennylope
A big part of how I teach programming is the idea that you’re •also• getting a window into other people’s minds when you write code, since all the languages and tools we use are created by humans and for humans. This was at the heart of a talk I did in April: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aw7777DS58
That is not to discount at all the unique value of learning foreign languages, just as you say! Neither substitutes for the other.
Ben Lopatin
@inthehands concisely said, and timely too. TY.
The kicker for me is having and being able to build mental models of other peoples mental models. It’s why I cringe at efforts to substitute programming for foreign language curriculum; it’s not the ability to order lunch in another country so much as the first hand exposure to a slightly different window (of human experience) for which Python/JS are no substitute.
All of which is to say nothing of the value of developing an informed imagination…
Paul Cantrell
@Specialist_Being_677
Thanks! 💙
Paul Cantrell
@rhiannonrevolts
People do get surprised, but those who know…know! I’ve worked with developers who were biology, anthropology, and philosophy majors, and one of the best graphic designers I’ve ever worked with was a computer science major. Majors are not identity, and are not destiny!
bring Rhi flowers
@inthehands Thanks for this thread. I'm someone who works at intersection of tech and business. People are often kinda bewildered by my liberal arts education (humanities major, though I know and love many fellow alums who did science and tech majors!) where I was required to take courses outside my major/minor, and that I use what I learned constantly.
Paul Cantrell
@toxtethogrady
This is 100% true, and equally true of most of what’s lately called STEM education. Honestly, my high school math and my high school choir were about equally practical for my software development career…though choir probably wins on the practicality scale, since it builds skills around maintaining healthy collegial relationships, remaining outcome-focused, and cutting scope.
toxtethogrady
@inthehands A lot of fine arts education is not much on the practicality scale, but it offers life lessons and historical perspective that provide a rationale for the practical aspects...
RD
Good thread!
For extra credit, here's more about school:
https://chez-risk.in/2023/04/05/why-are-children-forced-to-study-mathematics-at-gunpoint/
Paul Cantrell
@RD4Anarchy You might appreciate this if you haven’t already seen it: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
Paul Cantrell
@Leisureguy @kellogh @jmeowmeow Yes. Not all education happens in school!
Leisureguy
@inthehands @kellogh @jmeowmeow
I'm a latecomer. I did not hit it (in the context of formal education) until college: the "Great Books Program" at St. John's College, Annapolis MD, whose motto is "Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque" - "I make free adults out of children by means of books and a balance."
However, I realize now that during my very early years I received a good grounding for a liberal arts education from things my grandmother taught me.
Paul Cantrell
@EricLawton Yes, you’re picking up what I’m putting down.
Eric Lawton
So an alternative read of your earlier sentence: If a person lives a life of servitude, if they are enslaved, then *their enslaver* needs them to have •only• vocational education*?
A liberal arts education can illuminate their condition to the (wage-)enslaved and reveal ways to escape.
Hence the active attempts by the far-right to crush liberal education; it's not just to save money.
OpenDNA⚙️
@inthehands @bleistifterin @dtauvdiodr "of course a good vocational education is essential for anyone who wants a job" is very nearly the exact opposite of what this thread is about. You're renouncing the core of liberal education: that one should learn to learn and teach one's self whatever one wishes to learn.
Paul Cantrell
@opendna @bleistifterin @dtauvdiodr
Perhaps reading in haste, you’ve missed some of the thread. In particular, I suspect you’re missing the point that school is only a small subset of education.
Does one need to learn things to do a job? Oh course! And…duh. There you go: that’s vocational education. It has a place.
Does vocational education need to happen in •school•? Not necessarily.
Should school be focused on it? Not always.
•Centered• on it? Absolutely not!
Paul Cantrell
@opendna @bleistifterin @dtauvdiodr
There’s a naive, crappy version of my thread that is basically “Follow your bliss and everything will work out!” That’s dangerously wrong, and is a philosophy rooted in extreme privilege.
Learning to navigate the world as it exists is an important part of life. That includes learning some things out of necessity. It’s when education •stops• there that it becomes toxic.
Dan
@dtauvdiodr @inthehands as somone who predominantly chose to study STEM topics and now work in engineering I can certainly see the benifits of it. But as much as anything else STEM focused courses should be predominantly focused on teaching observation, the scientific method. The ability to make a prediction of an outcome based on already known information. To then test that, and then refine your mental model based on those observations and then use that again
Paul Cantrell
@Dasy2k1 @dtauvdiodr For software, I’d list a bunch of things related to human collaboration and communication right at the top of that list. Regardless, ideally every course is exemplifying things at the heart of its discipline that will generalize to seemingly unrelated activities.
Paul Cantrell
@mpjgregoire The way people teach them, I am worried about •math and science classes• crowing out knowledge of math and science!
mpjgregoire
@inthehands I agree about the value of a #LiberalEducation ; but rather than worrying about STEM crowding out liberal studies, I think we have a greater problem with students going to university and coming out with only paltry knowledge of mathematics and science. Our elites are skilled with words but weak with facts and analysis.
"Let none but geometers enter here."
http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/platonic-academy-geometry-nepotism/
Paul Cantrell
@chrispix This son of a retired English professor salutes you!
Paul Cantrell
@thatandromeda @mostlylurking Ha, that was my only ace in the hole looking at the Greek! The trick was that even though I could name and write them all, I had no idea what sounds they make.
Andromeda Yelton
@mostlylurking @inthehands well, I mean, I was also majoring in math. Thus rendering me spectacularly competent in Greek letters.
mostlylurking
@thatandromeda @inthehands I could definitely argue that intermediate Greek involves enough logic and coding to qualify as a STEM class...
Dan
A truly visionary educator from the early 20th century once said:
"The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system."
Although this is not his best known quote on the topic.
Extra kudos if you know who said that without looking it up
Paul Cantrell
@Dasy2k1
Maria Montessori:
“It is necessary that the child teach himself, and then the success is great.”
“The child who has never learned to work by himself, to set goals for his own acts, or to be the master of his own force of will is recognizable in the adult who lets others guide his will and feels a constant need for approval of others.”
Paul Cantrell
@betsythemuffin
Ha, I can understand the sentiment, though I do also grudgingly acknowledge that good MBA programs are actually full of rich, challenging learning, particularly the case studies they do.
Your sardonic quote touches on a deeper truth: disciplinary squabbles are a distraction; the real battle is about the underlying philosophy of education.
Betsy. (a muffin).
@inthehands Thinking of a tweet from a little while ago, something like: "forget humanities vs STEM, let's unite against our common enemy: business majors."
Paul Cantrell
@lienrag
Touché
Lien Rag
Is that why you "sing off" when at the end of a thread ?
Paul Cantrell
@Mokafish High five! I was an accidental religious studies minor, in no small part because of Cal. Hope life has been treating you well since!
Mokafish
Fantastic thread. We need to keep pointing out the value of close reading, of expansive thought, and of liberal arts education in general when so many forces are now arrayed against it.
I don't think we overlapped at Macalester, but Cal Roetzel was my advisor there, and I am also A Religious Studies major who wound up working in tech.
Paul Cantrell
@betsythemuffin That sounds…comic book villain level bad.
Betsy. (a muffin).
@inthehands AFAIK, MBA programs and undergrad-level business majors are doing pretty different things at the classroom level, also.
I may be permanently scarred by the intro-level information systems management textbook that devoted a whole chapter to why you wanted to insist on low-cost technologies that solved business needs, and another chapter to rating various countries' outsourcing potential by relative English proficiency and programmer cost.
Paul Cantrell
@Dasy2k1 oh, I found the quote’s author (not knowing it myself) and posted the Montessori as a sort of affirmative answer.
Dan
@inthehands "The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours."
Dan
@inthehands “True peace … suggests the triumph of justice and love among men; it reveals the existence of a better world where harmony reigns.” - Maria Montessori
The matching quote from this person is probably... (see next toot)
Dan
@inthehands interesting, not who I was thinking of and who the quote is from. But definitely a contemporary even though he was a couple of decades older
Although the person I'm thinking of while a great educator had very little to do with the school system itself and is more known for non formal education.
He is also a product of his time and said much that is problematic by today's standards. Although he did change significantly post ww1 with respect to colonialism
Paul Cantrell
@DoctorDNS Heh, that is a very CMU story!
Our Director of Writing argued to me that my Software Design and Development course should be designated as fulfilling one of the writing requirements, since coding is writing. I replied that she is absolutely correct, but I didn’t want the designation because our computer science majors also need to be able to communicate with humans, even if their only function in life were to write software!
Thomas Lee ✅ :patreon:
@inthehands I convinced my university (CMU) that programming language courses should count as foreign language courses. I argued that it allowed me to communicate with computers, the same way that learning German would help me communicate with, well, Germans. They bought the concept!
Paul Cantrell
@bleistifterin @tshirtman @kellogh @jmeowmeow meh, were all friends hear, us and are tpyos
Bleistifterin
@inthehands @tshirtman @kellogh @jmeowmeow
Kind of you, but I do know both words and the distinction, same difference in German (antroposophisch vs anthropologisch) - just a case of late night with a pinch of post Covid brain...
Should have checked before I clicked "Toot"
Betsy. (a muffin).
@inthehands one thing I think about a lot too is…
A lot of folks who love STEM fields love them for their beauty first and their practicality second. And sometimes — certainly in my case — there’s an acute sadness when encountering folks with bad early math educations that fucked them out of seeing beauty in the sciences.
The usual framing of STEM vs humanities misses out on that dynamic, at best, and at worst uncritically adopts a framing that only the humanities have beauty…
Paul Cantrell
@betsythemuffin This is all very true. Beauty and utility are both all around us, marbled through every field, and imagining the split between them does terrible damage.
You would probably enjoy this if you haven’t already seen it: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
Paul Cantrell
@dperkins Yes, we. Unless you exist apart from society somehow, this is the water we swim in, the air we breathe.
dperkins
@inthehands we?
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
@inthehands @AndrzejWasowski I had a class where we read TS Eliot’s The Waste Land (which, fwiw, I dislike, but not as much as some other stuff we read), then the source material he alluded to, then reread The Waste Land. Our term paper was about how our perception of what Eliot was communicating changed.
Because we knew the assignment in advance, we each came up with lists of questions we had, which taught me a lot about approaching software design.
Paul Cantrell
@DoctorDNS @idlestate We now have many students taking / majoring in both psych and CS. It’s a well-recognized power combo. You were ahead of your time.
Thomas Lee ✅ :patreon:
@idlestate @inthehands I was at CMU when they did not offer a BSc in Comp Sci. Only Grad degrees. So I created a student-defined degree in "BSc Computer Problem Solving" - a combination of psychology and comp sci. Some awesome profs, including Herb Simon. But that was back in the early 1970s, and the Interweb was in it real infancy. #Node12
rellik moo
oh, that's cool. mine was ... later.
and I meant 'first' only in the context of that program.
Thomas Lee ✅ :patreon:
@idlestate @inthehands I did it in 1971
rellik moo
as it happens, I'm pretty sure a computing language first satisfied the language requirement (for chemists) my first year of grad school
Paul Cantrell
A few follow-up thoughts:
First, please be careful. There is a naive, crappy version of this thread that goes something like, “Don’t worry about practicality! Just follow your bliss, and everything will work out!”
That’s a pleasant thought. It’s also a thought rooted in extreme privilege, and a dangerous one for anyone who doesn’t enjoy that privilege (and a fair bit of luck on top of it).
A/1
Paul Cantrell
Learning out of utility or necessity, learning to navigate the world as it exists — that’s an important part of life, and it needs to be a part of education too.
That doesn’t mean your college major determines your whole life and if you major in X you’ll never get a job so major in Y even though you’re miserable!!1! Get a grip, people. Seriously.
It just means having •no• access to vocational education is as damaging as having •only• access to vocational education. Both matter.
A/2
Paul Cantrell
Second, many replies brought up the cost of college. That’s far too long a topic for a Mastodon post, and I’m not expert enough to write it, but a few quick pointers to avoid falling into the same immediate mistakes everyone makes:
- It’s a lot more complicated than you think.
- Administrative pay is a symptom, not a cause. College would still be wildly expensive even if admins worked for free.
- Same for fancy buildings.
A/3
Paul Cantrell
- The nominal tuition cost (“sticker price”) is a red herring. Tuition is discounted for maaaany students. Who? How many? How much? What do students actually pay? •Those• are the questions to ask, and the answers can be shocking. Sticker price is not what everyone pays; it is a cap on how much a school can charge the richest student. A higher sticker price can actually be better for students who aren’t ridiculously wealthy!
A/4
Paul Cantrell
Here’s the underlying problem with the cost of college, AFAICT: There’s an ever-increasing pay gap between high-credential, high-education jobs (so-called “skilled labor;” HATE that term) and other jobs. Schools need a •lot• of people in that higher pay category, so college costs track the higher pay curve — but college is trying to stay accessible to families on that lower pay curve. Absent public subsidy or economic restructuring, that’s unsustainable. And public subsidy is on the rocks.
A/5
Paul Cantrell
Last, to bring the thread full circle:
I started this thread talking about how a religious studies course unexpectedly helped prepare me for a software career. That’s great, but!! Lest we fall into the trap of thinking that we must measure the utility of all education against career outcomes:
Software has been •excellent• liberal arts education for me, both in school (computer science), the workplace, and my own spare time adventures. It’s prepared me well for things that aren’t work.
A/6
Yeshaya Lazarevich
@inthehands I was just talking about your thread with my 8th grader today. Ran into it again, might send them a screenshot of my favorite part. Thanks!
Paul Cantrell
So much of what I know about problem-solving, creativity, how to handle frustration, how to be skeptical of my own hubris, how complex systems behave, how human relationships work, how to communicate, how to help, how to be kind — I could go on — I learned from writing software.
Programming helped prepare me to be a parent, a spouse, a musician, a citizen, a human.
Liberal arts education, including computer science: we are whole human beings, and everything’s connected to everything.
/end
Paul Cantrell
@alter_kaker I hope they find something useful in it. Send them my regards!
Paul Cantrell
Dr. Heather Etchevers
@inthehands The illiberal approach was applied in my educated but also working-class Boston suburb in 1980 with results now obvious & short-sighted. Reagan's election led to the notorious Proposition 2½ that changed property tax levies in MA and thereby how public schools were funded. It took textbooks, paper, crafts & music/theatre personnel out of our schools. Both quickly exacerbated economic inequalities; we went on food stamps but I got scholarships then that no longer exist.
Paul Cantrell
@anatecture @scott
I just had an advisee graduate with an individually designed major centered around making interactive exhibits, basically a mashup of history, CS, and media studies. And guess what she had to learn a whole bunch of to complete her honors project? GRAPHIC DESIGN
Ana
@inthehands this entire thread is so gorgeous! Thank you for posting! And thanks to @scott for sharing w/ me 💜
Ppl always try to tease me about how, as a designer, I must “never use that history degree, right??” And I look at them and tell them all the ways I use the critical thinking, the narrative voice, and the data analysis from history to inform my design work every day. Literally every day.
Andrew C. Oliver
@inthehands my issue is that frequently prerequisite classes supposedly there to give you a liberal education are actually completely information free. Memorize this and bubble the circle...forget it the next day. There should be precisely no courses like that.
Paul Cantrell
@Estrella @amphianna
I’m so sorry you’ve been sucked into that vortex. It is miserable, and you are not alone. And choosing a different area of study doesn’t solve it: my students worry about this sort of thing constantly, and they’re comp sci students! There is so much uncertainty in the world, so much attendant anxiety, and that’s just the water we all swim in now.
Estelle
@inthehands @amphianna I had this experience when I was looking for funding for uni as a humanities major. Originally I was thinking of going into psychology, but as time went on and things changed, I realized that I couldn't anymore.
Now, As a language student, I know that I have to rely on disability-specific funding to get me through all of this.
I can't tell you how many nights I've spent crying because I'm scared of going into the workforce because I've been conditioned to think I don't have marketable skills. It's like, if I'm not interested in tech or studying in a STEM field, the world simply isn't going to let me succeed. This is a societal thing. This is because we are raised to have the impression that STEM is all that's really useful. Just because I was smart enough did not mean I was interested. I'm still not. But there is a part of me that still mentally tortures myself with thoughts of what could have been.
Paul Cantrell
@Estrella
Here’s the truth of the matter. It won’t magically make the anxiety go away, but it is the truth:
You will find a path, and not by finding a job “in” your field, not by being in control, not by planning or virtue — but by trial and error, by wandering, by messing up and finding unexpected doors and just engaging with the moment you are in and rolling with the surprises. And it will all only make sense in hindsight. Only in hindsight!
M
@inthehands But … what about NULL? That was like reading a freebie Amazon book only to realize the best part is in the next book. 🤣
Loved the talk, even as a non-programmer. I was really interested to hear about NULL, though.
Paul Cantrell
@MistyAtBoulder
Ha, sorry! Glad you found the talk interesting, even if the sequel’s not available in stores.
We had a little impromptu “null talk” our in the hallway after the talk. Here are the slides, which at least give a taste of that line of thought. The very short: some languages already secretly got rid of null as we know it; Swift is the example (slide 2).
Paul Cantrell
@MistyAtBoulder Yeah, sorry, the slides aren’t much to go on — just a taste. One day I’ll do the 1-hour version and/or start a blog! In the meantime, I’m delighted that you enjoyed it.
M
@inthehands Thank you for sharing the slides! I’m still sorry that it’s not in the video because the story helps fix it in my brain, but I can follow the gist based on the rest of your talk. I really enjoyed the subject; thank you for making it available!
Paul Cantrell
@dimsumthinking Yes, of course you anticipated where I was going
dimsumthinking
@inthehands This is exactly my fear when people evaluate schools and the courses they choose from a vocational perspective - we never know (oops just saw you address that in the next post - I'm posting anyways as a +1)
Paul Cantrell
@grissallia Sounds like you gave yourself a really great education! I’m glad you came to recognize its power and value.
Allie
@inthehands I spent almost a decade living in constant fear of being fired, until the man who'd hired me finally convinced me that he wasn't going to sack me.
I finished high school in 1989, at the end of year 10. I went to work for my father in electronics repair. I have no formal qualifications. As my life changed repeatedly, until I found myself in that particular job, I felt increasingly insecure, in spite of having never been unemployed (except for three days, after one job where the company shut down unexpectedly).
It was in that almost-decade long job that I finally came to understand that one of the things I felt was my biggest weakness was potentially my greatest strength.
I have done multiple jobs, but not only that, I'd followed (and dropped) multiple special interests throughout my life.
The role I ended up in, utilised the skills I'd developed over those preceding decades, not just in the various jobs & roles, but in the special interests I'd embraced.
I never could have worked as a graphic designer, had I not decided on the spur of the moment to publish a webcomic for several years (forcing me to learn Adobe Illustrator), but also a short term obsessions with design principles a few years earlier.
I don't have a formal education, but I have boundless curiosity, and a willingness to say out loud that I don't know something, but I'm going to ask a shedload of questions to try and understand it.
Because what I've learned in life is that everything IS connected to everything, and the odd collection of skills that you pick up in one context can turn out to be wildly useful in a completely different context.
EllenInEdmonton :mstdnca:
@inthehands
Having taught in Asia, "soft skills" are what employers and employees are desperately crying for! Because everything was taught by rote and as factual and unchanging, adapting to the constant changes in the workplace can be challenging, especially with a global work team.
Paul Cantrell
@EllenInEdmonton
That kind of teaching has crept into systems all over the world. Many of the standard structures of K12 and college ed came from late 19th century industrialists trying to prepare workers for assembly line labor (and run education like it)
Paul_IPv6
i think it's tragic that we have turned college into a hugely expensive vocational education for so many and denied the true learning and possibilities of a liberal education to any that desires it.
"useful to society/capitalism" is a poor substitute for "bettering everyone".
Paul Cantrell
@fifilamoura @dtauvdiodr
(and vice versa?)
Fifi Lamoura
@dtauvdiodr @inthehands music is math anyway, just encoded differently
Paul Cantrell
@flyingtomoon Happily there’s a lot of interest in better pedagogy in STEM these days. But it’s uneven, and varies a lot between individuals, departments, and institutions.
Ju
@inthehands i am currently doing my master in mech engineering and I am so excited by my "general studies" classes, where I have to take something outside of stem. After studying engineering for 6 years already, it's so interesting to see, how other fields approach their research and the topics. But even more to their approach to teaching. In engineering, you often notice a lack of understanding regarding pedagogy and there's many lecturers that don't focus on learning but content only.
Paul Cantrell
@corstian @jmeowmeow It sounds like a great experience! I’m so glad you had that chance. So often it just takes one good teacher or good situation to make all the difference.
Corstian Boerman
@inthehands @jmeowmeow Story time! I spent about two years in high school in the Big Picture Learning project. It was a diverse group formed by all "problematic" students. That space allowed me to pursue my own curiosities, and never have I studied less and learned more.
The impact it had on my mood was astounding as well, and ever since I use that period as an aspirational benchmark for what and how I can be if the context is right. Those two years saved my life.
Paul Cantrell
@sullybiker Still us, in many places! But it feels like we have to fight pretty hard to get the word out a lot of the time.
Jim
@inthehands Your 2nd point used to be what higher education was all about back in the day.
Paul Cantrell
@LibreFaso @jmeowmeow Disinvestment and institutional rigidity are both endemic in education. And both are non-accidental policy choices.
LibreFaso
Stumbling on your post after finally ended today's initiation to computer lesson at a Dakar poor suburb school.
What is more depressing is less the abysmal language level of some kids in the teaching language used (French) or the disorganization that had me handle 14 students on three computers when I had been adamant that I couldn't have more than two pupils per computer, but the insistence of the teachers that I go back to top-down lessons sticking to the program...
Paul Cantrell
@geographile The one-size-fits-all nature of so much public education is not an accident; it is a policy choice. And its effect — perhaps intentional, certainly real — is to undermine public education as a whole.
geographile
@inthehands
This is part of why I homeschool. I don't hate school, and I think we need public schools, but my own kid was utterly failed by public school and I think it's fair that we have options for the kids we need to learn differently.
Paul Cantrell
@nellie_m I managed to dig up the text, and post is now updated with a working image!
nellie-m
unfortunately, that picture seems to be gone. It’s still an absolutely great thread, but is there any chance of you paraphrasing what was said there?
Paul Cantrell
@nellie_m Thanks for flagging it. Looks like this is a thread that is living for the long term, so good to keep it maintained and healthy.
nellie-m
@inthehands wow, thank you so much for taking the trouble!!!
Paul Cantrell
@q_aurelius
It’s all true. I should also say that CS education has not been standing still, and the kind you describe is not the universal norm anymore. In my own dept, collaboration, communication, clarity, problem-solving, careful reading, sussing out and reasoning about abstractions, being comfortable with the unfamiliar, and healthy responses to frustration (for example) are all among our intro courses’ primary learning goals.
T.C. Harris
@inthehands I have said many times that I use my humanities degree more directly in my software engineering career than my computer science degree.
My humanities classes taught me how to speak to an audience, how to craft an argument, how to spot rhetorical sleight of hand, how to work across cultural differences.
My CS degree taught me how to build data structures that I just use libs for and resource management that the VM does for me and algorithms that I have long forgotten.
T.C. Harris
@inthehands And to be clear, I don't think my education was bad or useless. That's just what would fit in a single post.
A detailed understanding of the fundamentals of computing helps me in lots of intangible ways.
And even for that era, my program was atypical. We were working in ANSI C while friends at other schools were using Java. My job in software engineering is akin to a skilled trade, and my computer science degree was organized to prepare me to do graduate research in computing.
Paul Cantrell
@q_aurelius
Totally, right there with you. There’s a big tug of war in CS ed between “undergraduate CS is for software jobs” vs “undergraduate CS is for grad school CS,” and as you gather from my thread, I’m in this weird third camp of “undergraduate CS is for people to become the best human beings they can.” But I’m not alone!
Paul Cantrell
@q_aurelius
I wish more folks in industry could see what cutting edge undergraduate CS looks like these days. So many of the “I wish my schooling had done X” things I hear professional devs talk about are things that we’re already doing. The classes I teach are very different from the ones I took 25 years ago!
Paul Cantrell
Related thoughts in this thread from @josh:
https://sciences.social/@josh/111105007130628120
I particularly appreciate the point that we should view higher education with a liberal arts philosophy as serving society, specifically democratic society, and not just the individual.
Paul Cantrell
@blogdiva @AndrzejWasowski One can’t have everything
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
@inthehands @AndrzejWasowski in Comic Sans?!?!?
brinnbelyea
@inthehands Where did liberal arts education reach its highest level? English public school to train colonial admin. No timely communication with home so they had to build thinkers.
It's never been valued as anything other than generating money and power.
Paul Cantrell
@brinnbelyea
I’d quibble with that “never:” beautiful radicals have been throwing the doors open wide to that liberal arts spirit for centuries. Look at what Maria Montessori said about access to education, for example.
But the first half of what you wrote is spot on: whenever some entity like the colonial admin has wanted to create a stratified society, they’re stratified education — and put broad education at the top.
Paul Cantrell
@OlDude82
I’m not sure you characterize my argument accurately. It sounds as though you’re perhaps reacting to the first sentence of the post to which you were replying, skipping the second paragraph, and working toward agreeing with what I wrote downthread about the “naive, crappy version:” https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/110421463451250236
Incorrigible Maker
@inthehands
I absolutely agree with your premise that LA education is getting short-shrift. I must *disagree* though about your premise that "force-pushing tech and STEM" is in some way limiting children's freedom. As children mature, they seek & need support to make decisions about the direction of their lives, and making them aware that tech/scientific study/careers are viable options - not some pipe dream - is important. But ... STEM education needs to include much more LA as it used to
Paul Cantrell
@shonin Thanks. Fwiw, one of the things I did in that fine liberal arts education I got was to read A Primer of Soto Zen, a collection of Dogen’s writings. Not sure I even scratched the surface of understanding it, but I found it thought-provoking and resonant, and your bio brought it back to me now.
shonin
@inthehands Wow, this was good. TYVM.
I got through three degrees and a library career (every quarter I taught a new crew of work study students how to staff a university reference desk) by posting this above my desk:
A paper has three parts. Assert, A=B, B=C, ∴ A=C, or refute, A=B, B≠C, ∴ A≠C.
Not always applicable, perhaps, but, armed with it, the crews gave good reference assistance. 😅
Paul Cantrell
@shonin
That is totally the vibe I got from Dogen, and I enjoyed the reading greatly! And yeah, being an improvising musician myself, I’ll say there’s a lot of that kind of stillness you’re talking about at the piano for me, so I appreciate the analogy.
shonin
@inthehands It helps to know that Dogen was a kind of jazz musician of Buddhist concepts, saying whatever he thought would be most helpful to those around at the moment, even if it contradicted what he said the day before. If you like to sit still sometimes, as Otis Redding did at the dock of the bay, you're covered. 😎 🙏
Paul Cantrell
@andrewhinton @emenel
It’s true. Something I’ve learned from my many years in industry is that employers are in fact terrible at knowing what they need, from tech employees and in general, and frequently can’t even run a job interview process that serves their own interests. The flailing incompetence of business, especially large business, is just mind-boggling.
Andrew Hinton
@inthehands @emenel Sadly it’s not even meeting employer needs even if employers think that’s what they need
Paul Cantrell
@kevinrns
I like “liberating arts” a lot.
Kevin Russell
More Empowering arts, uplifting arts you need, liberating arts.
Lets spread this like wildfire.
BibbleCo
@inthehands Stephen Fry, genius: https://youtu.be/8ZnFVSDZNgo?si=Hz0_OU9JQDiIX8q7
(Donald Trefusis was an Oxbridge don character he did, back in the day.)
Paul Cantrell
@BibbleCo Ha, there are some marvelous quotable quotes in this.
Leisureguy
@inthehands @kellogh @jmeowmeow I would add that the focus of the education that has lasted was learning "skills*, acquired only through practice. For example, the skill of close and careful reading (and listening), the skill of logical argument, the skill of writing (both handwriting and stringing words together to communicate clearly ideas, methods, and questions), and so on.
Skills stay with us if we continue to use them, and we do use essential skills. And they do require practicing them.
Paul Cantrell
@Leisureguy @kellogh @jmeowmeow
Yup. To avoid a possible point of terminology confusion: in education circles, people often the term “skills” to refer to narrowly focused learnings, the “the teacher puts knowledge in the student’s brain” mindset, in •contrast• to the sorts of things you’re describing. For the things you’re talking about, educators typically use terms like “metacognition” or “habits of thought.”
Paul Cantrell
@tofugolem @josh My 8th grade science teacher specifically and pointedly warned us against mixing household cleaners. I’m grateful to her.
Tofu Golem
@inthehands @josh
I cannot stress enough how much this topic annoys me.
To name another example, I often hear religious people talk about how "secular learning" is inherently evil and will cause a person to become less moral.
This couldn't be further from the truth. The person who is better able to anticipate outcomes has the potential to make better moral choices. Secular learning is critical to making good moral decisions, and you cannot always anticipate which is applicable.
1/5
Tofu Golem
@inthehands @josh
When I was in junior college, I worked in fast food. A regional manager was coming to visit, and the manager freaked out trying to prepare the kitchen for his visit. She announced an intention to combine different cleaners in a mop bucket to make it extra effective.
By this point, I had a class of high school chem and a class of freshman chem, and I utterly failed to apply what I learned when she announced her intention to combine cleaners in that mop bucket.
2/5
Tofu Golem
@inthehands @josh
Had I stopped and thought about it, I would have realized that some cleaners work by being acidic, some by being basic, and combining them would reduce their effectiveness.
Had I more chemistry than freshman-level, I might have anticipated that two of those cleaners would produce a noxious cloud that rendered her unconscious and required an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
I failed to make a good moral decision because I failed to apply what I learned…
3/5
David Colarusso
@inthehands I love that you editing this post alerted me to the blog post because I had re-posted it. Good tool usage. 👍
Paul Cantrell
@Colarusso
My devious plans have come to fruition!
That edit was the soft launch of a new teaching blog, which one day may have twos and threes of posts!
Paul Cantrell
@Colarusso I am fairly confident that at my writing pace I will not seriously alter the size of your reading queue.
David Colarusso
@inthehands good, I already have too much to read. ;)
Paul Cantrell
This thread as a blog post, lightly edited & rounded out:
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