Recent searches
Search options
This thread is now available as a blog post:
https://innig.net/teaching/liberal-arts-manifesto
–––
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, Cal Roetzel, 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/
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…
2/
We asked, over and over: “What do we think Paul was thinking, given that he chose those words? What do we 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?“ …etc. A theory of mind hall of mirrors!
3/
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 (from a presentation by Lenore Zuck, https://fm.csl.sri.com/UV10/slides/UV-Zuck.pdf, ht @AndrzejWasowski):
4/
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 using that skill to nip misunderstandings and hidden assumptions in the bud early.
A skill I honed in a Religious Studies course.
5/
Here’s the hidden truth of education:
You don’t know what you’re preparing for.
Your teacher doesn’t know. Your school doesn’t know. Your future employer doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Not really.
Much of what you’re preparing for doesn’t 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?
6/
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.
7/
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/
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/
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.
10/
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/
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/
If a person lives a life of servitude, if they are enslaved, don’t 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.
13/
Don’t get me wrong: I emphatically do not think absolutely everyone should go to a 4-year liberal arts college like the one where I teach. 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/
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 to the world, not to reshape it. It does not treat children as human beings who are and should be free.
15/
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 human beings, and which does it view as cut out for a life of servitude?”
The same question
16/
@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: What structures in schools let students pursue their curiosity? What structures actively thwart that? Which schools are actively oriented to the former? To the latter?
17/
Signing 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?
@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
@kellogh @jmeowmeow I’m a Montessori kid myself, then and now!
@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.
@Leisureguy @kellogh @jmeowmeow Yes. Not all education happens in school!
@kellogh Your Waldorf education must differ widely from mine - mine was everybody imitate the teacher and do the same thing, including most of the visual arts classes.
Also, critical reading or how to read non-fiction books: not taught.
I did enjoy the crafts classes though where some creativity was allowed sometimes. And it was definitely good for my foreign languages due to the early start in 1st grade.
@kellogh @inthehands @Leisureguy @jmeowmeow There is also a potential danger in Waldorf education: You can become used to the teacher knowing how the world works and being your single source of truth. This increases the chance of you becoming susceptible to populists like Donald Trump and his ilk.
Fortunately, I grew up in a secular household that counterbalanced the teacher hero worship. And of course teenagers' rebelliousness then also makes things more healthy.
@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.
@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.”
@inthehands @kellogh @jmeowmeow
Habits/skills, are acquired and retained through practice. Training a neural network (e.g., the brain) requires repeated exercises to enable it to recognize and then retain the pattern, the pattern being things seen (distinguishing dogs and cats) or things done (writing clearly).
But I agree: I was referring to skills/habits of thought and not mere mechanical skills like riding a unicycle.
I wrote a post on learning a writing skill: https://leisureguy.ca/2006/11/11/robert-graves-1895-1985/
@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.
@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.
@inthehands @jmeowmeow @kellogh
It's never "One size fits all!"
It's always "One size fits nobody!" :D
@kellogh @BillySmith @jmeowmeow
There’s a great 99pi about this too: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/
@kellogh @BillySmith @inthehands @jmeowmeow
Normal is a distribution
@inthehands @jmeowmeow @kellogh absolutely. I would have really really struggled to learn to read today using the only system permitted to be used in the UK at the moment (synthetic phonics) thankfully I'm old enough not to have had to suffer through annual standardised phonics tests etc and was able to learn to read using a system that worked for me. By secondary school I could read a typical paperback in a night, and often did!
@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.
@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.
@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 @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!
@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"
@bleistifterin @tshirtman @kellogh @jmeowmeow meh, were all friends hear, us and are tpyos
@bleistifterin @tshirtman @kellogh @inthehands @jmeowmeow
Nor in the morning before coffee!
@bleistifterin @tshirtman @kellogh @inthehands @jmeowmeow I went to a steiner school and left with zero qualifications and massive gaps in my knowledge. They suggested bingo calling as a career. My sister was told she was just thick. She is dyslexic. I'm a senior lecturer and a phd student, she is a management accountant.
@Sawherry @bleistifterin @kellogh @inthehands @jmeowmeow Glad you were both able to catch up and succeed! I cannot fathom the number of children stuck in that hole.
@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.
@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.
@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.
@inthehands @dtauvdiodr (in neither field. )
@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.
@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.
@opendna @inthehands @dtauvdiodr
Naa. Both can be true, alas.
Education is important for people.
But vocational training is important for companies and corporations.
@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!
@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.
@inthehands @bleistifterin @dtauvdiodr Federation failure. I get the context now. Nevermind!
@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
@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.
@inthehands Really love this thread! Thank you!
@ZOEconomy Thanks for reading!
@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…
@Htaggert Exactly this.
@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.
@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.
@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.
@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…
@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.
@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.
@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).
@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!
@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.
@inthehands @bennylope "stop using C and C++, they're like the cigarettes of software!" I loved that one, even when you where 'just' paraphrasing the NSA.
You say you would like to talk for 1h30 about each of your predictions. Did you ever think of producing an 8 episode series in YT about them? :)
@inthehands @bennylope another note: those using #python and wanting to learn more about composition vs inheritance, you can watch this talk in the last EuroPython: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qpW1-7TnzA
@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.
@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!
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/
@RD4Anarchy You might appreciate this if you haven’t already seen it: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf