Absolutely. Critical thinkers rock too many boats. They make both their superiors and their peers uncomfortable. They put lasting benefits and long-run strategies ahead of next quarter’s numbers and pleasing the front office.
Like the heart, the organization wants what it wants. It pays lip service to out-of-the-box thinking, but does not encourage or develop it as such.
At best, we let it have some freedom among senior people who have proved that they can play the game. We make it a privilege earned by many years of not exercising it.
The problem, I suspect, is that science and engineering types have lower social status than their pocketbooks suggest. Nobody wants to be a nerd, and the undue respect we give even mediocre artists and “intellectuals” is the scientist’s loss.
Yes, obviously that’s true. But isn’t upward mobility more likely amongst engineers than Bankers? The upper echelons of banking make more money, but there are fewer positions?
Don’t buy it. Scientists and Engineers are looked at very highly in our culture. One doesn’t need to be incapable socially in order to be a Scientist. No Scientist who has good social skills will be looked down upon. If people can’t outgrow their fear of being nerds in HS then they are probably not cut out to be a scientist.
See, it depends what you define as a “banker.” I’m guessing that by “banker” you’re only including the upper echelons of investment banking professionals (with an emphasis on those who work in Manhattan, where you live) and by “engineers” you mean “everyone who is employed in an engineering capacity.”
If you use the same definition for both - thereby incorporating everyone who works in banking, which would include front line mortgage sales, tellers, and the like, working in places like Altoona and Fort Wayne - I’ll bet the numbers are about the same. Most bankers aren’t rich, which of course is true of most professions.
I don’t think m’s counting the kind of bankers with tan suits and Buick SUVs. He’s concerned with the Masters of the Universe, and probably doesn’t see anyone close to their earning power or influence with the title “engineer.”
The anti-vaccination thing alluded to earlier is one indication that science and critical thinking education is failing in much of the western world.
(This has nothing to do with STEM employment of course.)
Many people think of scientists as people who sit around patting each other on the back about how clever they all are. And that “experiments” are just some demo intended to support someone’s opinion i.e. scientists do not try to falsify their own ideas.
Of course I’m not implying that science is 100% squeeky-clean, just that public health could be served by people understanding the methodologies better.
Falling implies that it was higher in the past. That is doubtful. There has always been plenty of superstition to go around. Looking at new superstitions that crop up as evidence that its falling isn’t very critical itself. Lets think about it critically. If people previously had science and math education, why would they lose it? Why wouldn’t they teach it to their children?
Heh, are you projecting what you think other people think here?
Yes, of course. But it’s not evidence of a fall in scientific standards. It’s simply evidence that scientific standards haven’t penetrated more fully.
There is an old insult: “He is a bookcase, not a scholar” that describes the latter quite well. I’ve known many bookcases and a handful of scholars.
Certainly we need to teach STEM better. We need to teach the habits of mind.
When a large segment of the American population believes creationism over evolution you know we are doing something wrong. As a population we are not very scientifically literate and as a consequence our citizens make some pretty dumb ass choices from public policy to being vaccine refusers. That education is a before college bit and in the real world you learn critical thinking by applying it to the acquisition of real facts of importance. You learn both at the same time as you determine which facts and tools you might need to answer the question and gather them by research and experimentation. Often of course schools try to teach the facts and the critical thinking as separate items and that never works.
Do we need more college level math majors and engineers and chemists? I’d argue more for liberal arts with occasional minors in those subjects. We need critical thinking and creativity. Narrow education doesn’t make for that.
We need people who know how to approach problems and solve them. We don’t need more “intellectuals” arguing philosophical bullshit about subjects they don’t really understand.
You are greatly mistaken if you don’t think engineers think critically and creatively or that an engineering major is a “narrow discipline”. I have an engineering degree but I also studied electives in english, history, economics, psychology, political science, and the arts. The electives help to provide a well-rounded education, however it is my background in engineering and business and understanding how things actually work that allows me to contribute to society. The liberal arts stuff just helps to provide context.
It doesn’t matter if that is factually true (which it probably isn’t). The perception is based on public stories of bankers making six figure bonuses while engineers get laid off as their companies outsource or go out of business. So if you are one of the best and brightest students from one of the top schools, you go to where you think the money is.
When I graduated college in the mid-90s, a significant number of people in my engineering program did not go into engineering. Engineering jobs were though to come by and they didn’t pay all that well. So they used their quantitative skills to go work for tech or consulting firms like Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) or investment banks or they went to law or business school.
“Intellectuals”, arguing philosophical bullshit is itself more evidence of a need for better education in critical thinking and formal logic.
Helps you to communicate with other people also. The other bits would be useless if you couldn’t use grammar properly. Or rather you couldn’t be an effective part of a team.
Yeah, but how many bankers are getting bonuses like that? Bankers are being laid off too. So it’s as much about what we choose to hype as it is about the actual reality.
Yes, your contribution to society uses your maths and engineering training. But as pointed out your ability to place it in context, and your ability to communicate ideas to others depended on those well rounded electives.
I just said they had facts, not that they had a clue. And teaching a person to do a Google search involves a lot more than typing words into a text box or showing what “AND” means.
Being Jewish, and thus in another over-represented minority in this, I understand. We need a combination of both better education and better social rewards for this kind of thing.
I agree that the heavy delivery format is awful - we’ll get better son with technology. But a good textbook provides the framework for linking facts together, which is far more important than memorization - though you still need a good set of facts to link. The text my wife worked on was bad because there was only room for facts. When my daughter was a senior, she was in AP History. While her grades were fine, she didn’t really get it. Remembering that when I was in high school we all learned plenty from reading Morrison and Commager to pass the AP History test, leaving class time for interesting discussions, we went to the bookstore and got a good non-textbook on American History. This gave the background, not just the facts, and she got a 5 on the test.
Today understanding the connections between things is even more important, because you can get the facts about something specific from the Web very quickly. But the bite size chunks of information you find on-line are not good in linking things together. The understanding of the big picture, and the ability to convey it, takes a lot of skill.
I’m curious - have you ever worked for a large organization?
I’ll note that Kernighan and Richie invented UNIX while working for the largest corporation in the world. They weren’t senior people at the time - just smart ones. And I personally had a whole bunch of freedom right out of grad school when I started working for Western Electric - more than I had as a manager, because of less baggage.
A small number of people in both the humanities and engineering can do innovative work. People who can’t, and who do the day to day work to make things run smoothly, shouldn’t be sneered at the way you’re doing. Though engineers seem to get more money than the low level editor at a publishing house. Science and engineering education treat the innovators, the entrepreneurs, as heroes, just as humanities education does.
Do you think Silicon Valley happened because all engineers just looked at numbers? Our dreams are riskier than yours, and more likely to get slapped in the face by reality.