It's idealistic but I love it. I've been thinking a lot about this.
At my alma mater they forced all of us to take a couple of humanities courses. They were actually the highlight of my senior year. I do believe it's something that's quite lacking in an number/outcome-based education that should actually strive to produce well rounded individuals that will-not-do-evil.
I studied maths & CS but my favourite course at uni was a politics course, so not a real humanity but it opened my eyes.
The course was a seminar on the 20th Century Politics of Japan with ~10 students.
Lots of great questions around the fall of imperial Japan and about what democracy means in Japan for example what would a socialist or communist Japan look like?
It was a wonderful course: great professor and a really fun small group learning and discussions.
The issue is, I don't think that university humanities courses generally contribute much to a person's moral development, and if they do, it's not always necessarily in a positive way (as anybody who has taken enough university humanities courses can tell you). Interest in the humanities is something that should be cultivated much earlier in life to really have an effect; if your first serious encounter with philosophy is in senior-year philosophy gen ed classes, it's probably not going to do much good, and might actually do harm (e.g. the person who takes psychology 101 and starts over-confidently diagnosing all their friends and family with obscure mental illnesses, the person who takes ethics 101 and decides that 20th century utilitarianism is a perfect system with no downsides, not to even mention the culture war stuff which is the not-so-subtle elephant in the room).
I loved probably 2/3rds of my gen ed courses back during my college years, but this was entirely due to an existing appreciation for the topics (history, literature, physical sciences), and around 1/3rd of them were worse than useless (I cannot remember a single positive lesson I took from them other than a sense of nihilism about the university's faculty hiring standards).
If the goal is moral development, few things will develop a person's morals than actually living and struggling in the real world, and college is NOT the real world. I have some half baked opinions about the degree to which university education produces a lot of adult children with arrested development due to an extended adolescence. If on the other hand, the goal is a classical liberal arts education, which I am quite sympathetic towards (at least in theory), I am skeptical that taking a handful of university humanities courses is the ideal way to accomplish this.
tanhle · · focus · HN ↗
At my alma mater they forced all of us to take a couple of humanities courses. They were actually the highlight of my senior year. I do believe it's something that's quite lacking in an number/outcome-based education that should actually strive to produce well rounded individuals that will-not-do-evil.
<a href="https://catalog.caltech.edu/current/information-for-undergraduate-students/graduation-requirements-all-options/core-institute-requirements-all-options/#humanities-and-social-sciences-requirements" rel="nofollow">https://catalog.caltech.edu/current/information-for-undergra...
Alas, I went on to write code for a living anyway.
chris_swart · · focus · HN ↗
The course was a seminar on the 20th Century Politics of Japan with ~10 students.
Lots of great questions around the fall of imperial Japan and about what democracy means in Japan for example what would a socialist or communist Japan look like?
It was a wonderful course: great professor and a really fun small group learning and discussions.
DanielVZ · · focus · HN ↗
But I do agree ethics is a big one.
harpersealtako · · focus · HN ↗
I loved probably 2/3rds of my gen ed courses back during my college years, but this was entirely due to an existing appreciation for the topics (history, literature, physical sciences), and around 1/3rd of them were worse than useless (I cannot remember a single positive lesson I took from them other than a sense of nihilism about the university's faculty hiring standards).
If the goal is moral development, few things will develop a person's morals than actually living and struggling in the real world, and college is NOT the real world. I have some half baked opinions about the degree to which university education produces a lot of adult children with arrested development due to an extended adolescence. If on the other hand, the goal is a classical liberal arts education, which I am quite sympathetic towards (at least in theory), I am skeptical that taking a handful of university humanities courses is the ideal way to accomplish this.