Paul Cantrell
This computer science professor agrees with @dnsprincess. The humanities are crucial.
I mean, it cuts the other way too: a lot of the credulous nonsense about AI would melt away if people had a better idea how to think about software systems and mathematical models, what they really do and don’t do, how to look at them critically.
The key in my view is people having multiple ways of seeing and not narrowing themselves.
https://infosec.exchange/@dnsprincess/115140939294365490
Paul Cantrell
When we have something novel and unfamiliar like LLMs, especially something that hijacks our existing intuitions and provokes all kids of strong gut responses, seeing it as it really is requires multiple ways of seeing. And not just multiple •people• seeing it in multiple ways, but •individuals• who can have conversations across boundaries, take on multiple perspectives and synthesize them.
I am very anti-self-narrowing. Be large! Contain multitudes!
Paul Cantrell
I get immensely distressed when I see students building a little nest for themselves in just one proverbial corner of campus. Perhaps my most common advising conversations is “You do not need to take 3 classes at once in this department. What about <<category you’ve never studied>>?”
(Macalester is a liberal arts college, so our curriculum is carefully calibrated such that there is •room• for students to touch many disciplines. That’s point. Yes, there are other kinds of schools where do you have to take almost all your classes in one dept. I am leery of that.)
Paul Cantrell
The stereotype for this kind of self-narrowing is math/tech people avoiding humanities. That certainly happens, but I see it at least as often in the other direction: people avoiding anything that smells like STEM, telling themselves they can’t, building a whole identity around it. It comes out as this weird kind of shame/pride mix — “I’m not a math person” etc — which tends to hide some kind of earlier trauma: bad teacher, bad curriculum, gender role policing, who knows.
Paul Cantrell
There was a really good podcast episode from @grimalkina on “math anxiety” and what it might really be:
https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/16876929-who-s-afraid-of-math
It’s full of good info, and it’s also a great example of people using multiple disciplinary perspectives to suss out a question. Recommended!
Paul Cantrell
These forces that make people narrow themselves, avoid humanities, avoid mathematics, avoid whole ways of thinking and seeing…these forces aren’t only people being aasholes to each other (though they are that). They’re hierarchy-making and pernicious social engineering. Fight back.
okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin
@inthehands
Lol. As a Mac alum from long back, I can confirm this happened a lot. Unfortunately it was mostly humanities folks afraid of math and science. So there were "special" math and science classes designed to meet the graduation reqs. As a geology major with a lot of math classes, nothing brought my gpa down like intro to Anthropology/Old Testament/Philosophy/Econ101/English Lit/Graphic Arts-Printmaking, etc., but I wouldn't have missed those.
Paul Cantrell
I’ve said to more than one student that when I see an all-As transcript, my first thought is that this a person who doesn’t know how to get outside their own comfort zone. (In fact, I had to put a note in a letter of recommendation just yesterday emphasizing that •wasn’t• the reason this particular student had a super high GPA.)
Paul Cantrell
This is so true — one of the things I was alluding to with “trauma” —and you may be heartened to hear that many educators are keenly aware of this and actively fighting back. It’s definitely a hot conversation in education circles. Not that everybody is •participating• in that conversation, but a whole lot of folks are!
PedestrianError :vbus: :nblvt:
@inthehands Some of it is also "I'm perfectly capable of doing the work but I'll be bullied/sexually harassed if I take those classes." A female or gender nonconforming humanities or even social science major stepping into an advanced math class that is a prerequisite for other things they might be interested in knows they're likely stepping into a hostile environment and have to be twice as good/confident as most of their classmates to prove themselves. The atmosphere can be a big problem.
Paul Cantrell
@grimalkina
It brings me joy when research busts out of its walls in a way that actually preserves the substance of the research. I know this is exactly your jam, which is probably why I appreciate your account so much!
Dr. Cat Hicks
@inthehands thank you! One of my favorite things about this one is we heard it got shared around a whole community of middle school math teachers who got together to listen & talk about helping their kids with math anxiety 😭
Paul Cantrell
@mehitobel
Yeah, per my pinned post, I’m pretty hard core on the idea that everyone should get some kind of liberal arts education at some point in their life.
Tragically, Macalester did away with J-term in the late 90s back when I was a student. Apparently it was really miserable for the faculty, and now that I’m teaching, I can see why: no recovery time, no time to prepare for spring semester, not enough time to run a whole course but also too much to just wing it….
I’m always angling to bring back J-term in some form — not necessarily the “January” part, but the space for weird and experimental not-quite-course-shaped things.
Mehitobel Wilson
@inthehands (Unrelated to the rest of your thread, but related to your parenthetical: I went to Mac and the freedom, the encouragement, to try all kinds of things was wonderful. I can't get my head around the idea that other schools aren't like that. Do they still do the winter intensive month? That was a blast.)
Paul Cantrell
@PedestrianError
Oh, tell me about it.
But! It’s not all defense: in my own department, there’s a strong unity among dept faculty and admin and (I’d say) a strong majority of students about making the department a safe and inclusive place. Not that we always succeed — but it’s the ground-level assumption that it’s our job to always be trying, to keep taking those two steps forward over and over and over even if there’s also one step back. Those students you’re talking about do show up, but they do not find themselves able to stay comfortable in that mindset!
PedestrianError :vbus: :nblvt:
@inthehands Yeah I'm aware of work on the issue but right now those folks are largely playing defense and trying to deal with the Trump/Vance/Andrew Tate-ification of such a large portion of their male students. It always seems to be two steps forward, two steps back, 'won't anyone think of the poor white males who have had their academic careers so unfairly harmed by being slapped on the wrist for showing total disrespect for their classmates?'.
Paul Cantrell
@PedestrianError I have a lot of thoughts about “comfort” in the classroom that might interest you / resonate for you. I’ve been meaning of late to gather them into a blog post, but in the meantime here’s a couple of threads:
Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷
@inthehands
One of the most hated lecture series in my Engineering degree was on letter writing. I loved it! I learned skills in that course that I have used throughout both my social and professional life. (‘End the letter by pointing the way forward’ is one of the most useful pieces of advice I’ve ever received.)
Paul Cantrell
Communication-related education is just indispensable, wherever life takes you you.
davecb
@inthehands @dnsprincess I hugely agree. I took philosophy and engineering at the University of Windsor, and did my actual undergraduate degree in philosophy.
Many moons later I was _hired and employed as a philosopher_ by Sun Microsystems, the computer company. It seems they wanted a programmer who could do formal logics, and not be scared off by research folks speaking in tongues (:-))
Doing lots of things in school is difficult at the time, but wonderful once you graduate.
Paul Cantrell
@mirijb2
Every part of that is horrifying. And not entirely surprising…but utterly horrifying.
Good for you fighting for your daughter.
Real Syntactic
@inthehands I work on figuration and repetition in poetics. Have published on Wordsworth and set theory. But believe that most of my overwhelmingly female students fear math. My daughter—all girls school—was told that girls learn differently from boys and need concreteness, context, sociality. AP calc reserved for 12th grade; boys’ schools offer from 10th. Daughter is a math major now—had to fight hard to get there.
Real Syntactic
@inthehands hiya. Was only girl to take 12th grade physics in my school. Teacher told me daily: “I shouldn’t have to teach you. Girls can’t do this subject.” Govt austerity=no textbooks (late 80s.) So teacher scrounged some uni ones. You had to know calculus to work most but not all problem sets. Teacher never told us which. The school didn’t offer calculus. The boys learned at home. I’m working class; no one to learn from. Never took physics or math again. Uni prof in humanities now.
Paul Cantrell
@mirijb2
Well, maybe you think you weren’t then, but it sounds like she has a brave parent now!
Real Syntactic
@inthehands she is a brave kid. Wish I had been. Thanks for your thoughtful post.
Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)
@inthehands I’m fighting against this all the time with my daughters. The older one who is a senior now doesn’t think she’s a math person, while the younger one who is in third grade thinks math is awesome. I think it has something to do with bad teaching because there’s no freaking way it came from gender policing at home.
Paul Cantrell
@suzannealdrich
Yeah. Teachers and peers.
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