BSTEM Students Without Fuller Liberal Arts/Humanities’ Roots Thrive Less

Education Should Not be Reduced to Trend-Sensitive Skills Training

Let There Be ALEPHS

Firstly. current distinctions between STEM (science technology, engineering & mathematics) and both the “liberal arts” and humanities are effective in educational policy and practice decisions of late. I placed the “liberal arts” in quotes because the current dichotomy with STEM is an artifact of the historically recent severing of the STEM disciplines from the classical liberal arts. The Liberal Arts were, in one coherent historical framing of education, a unity with discernable aspects or areas, before being seemingly combined and divided into the Trivium and the Quadrivium in Latin. These liberal arts are traceable back to the ancient Greeks’ educational approach of Paideia, with Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic being identified in Plato’s writings that came to be called the Trivium later. To these core critical thinking bases, the components of perceptional arts were common to and foundational to what came to be called the Quadrivium consisting of the basic kinds of perceived as enumerability of things: Arithmetic, basic to all quantifiables, Geometry, dealing with space, Music, dealing with time (and unseen order, like logos/rita/dao), and Astronomy or Cosmology, dealing with space and time. This old unity of the liberal arts, of the humanities and the sciences, distinguished from and predate the more current division of the liberal arts, generally amounting to the humanities plus the social sciences, from the STEM disciplines. This particular unity isn't the only arguable way to frame what a sound education consists of, but, with its traditional role with its more revisable, inclusive, punctuated unity, it is one such way. While the need for this is easily demonstrable and stipulated to, the current trend of keying on STEM needs, need not entail the diversion of priorities and resources away from the rest of a solid general education.

Secondly, for various reasons, other considerations combine to delimit the scope of education, not just with regard to the pursuits of truths, but also towards more instrumentally aimed priorities. The coupling of B for Business related fields onto STEM to BSTEM reflects the crucial importance of preparing our citizens for productive roles and viable means to personally, professionally and publicly survive and thrive in our communities, society and world. The need for introducing and honing specific skills and technical capabilities within domains and frameworks compels providing such tools and training to our students to be effective people beyond our classrooms. But just as the mere transmission of facts without developed critical perceiving and reasoning capabilities to think from and forward with leaves information inert – evidence without the sensibly thinking about it just “sits there” – and in fact, it isn’t even evidence – skills too, left isolated - not so much to not measure, but to prudently mean and aim at anything variously valuable beyond immediate locally-bounded priorities (that are real!) leave our students short of being generally prepared and competent people in our dynamically diverse world these days. Building upon needed, linearly tailored, focused fact and skill competency training is and has always been what post-secondary college education has aimed at: a normatively fitting, generally adaptive, critically thinking, well-rounded person. Think along the lines of the parable of the blind man and the lame man.

So, coming up with some neat acronym or initialism for this, our other vital part of an education to pair with "STEM" and “BSTEM” is hardly necessary, yet I have tried to craft one. Failing to come up with a viable one based around some catchy letters like "ROOTS", or some such construct upon which STEMs depend, I finally settled on offering up: "ALEPHS". It, ALEPH, being based on the first letter of Arabic, Hebrew and other languages, as well as being the cognate related to Greek's Alpha, captures the same sort of prior, foundational, integrative  features being aimed for here. (And STEAM is an improving expansion with Art, but it’s generally too narrowly rendered to the keys of creativity and innovation, and thus leaves out too much with respect to other defensibly vital keys outlined here.)

A - Arts, Anthropology

L - Literature, Languages, LGBTQ+ Studies

E - English, Education, Economics, Ethnic Studies                              

P - Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology

H - History

S - Sociology

ALEPHS is not perfect or explicitly inclusive of at least some other key fields, like the Classics, Civics, Cultural Studies, Communication, Religious Studies, different performative and visual Arts, etc., but these also can at least, with a generous reading, be seen as included in the ALEPHS fields. And of course, it’s a bigger lack of direct explicitness - but not an unrelated stretch – with regard to the more specifically occupational and applied field areas like Accounting, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Design, Technologies, Management, etc. But again, education is not merely training. If we only want our students to be cogs on gears on wheels – to stay in their place and just do their jobs - and to not help enable them to even dare to, let alone achieve, beyond what they enrolled thinking and feeling they could possibly reach in their lives, then we are selling them short, even ghetto-izing their prospects. To paraphrase a line, our education, then, would be too small.

Additionally, given the eroded and often toxic and flatly irrational nature of so much of our discourse in "civil" society these days, there is a plainly manifest and urgent case to be made for MUCH more emphasis on ALEPHS education. And BSTEM needs ALEPHS for, among other things, basis, manner and direction. We cannot merely tool students for work and further education. Our schooling must needs be richer than that. Hence, ...

ALEPHS & STEM!

Professor Ken Howarth

What follows are some links about the related issues.

Critics of the Liberal Arts Are Wrong: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/19/our-economy-can-still-support-liberal-arts-majors/

Why Get a Liberal Arts Degree? The Cost: http://umaine.edu/clasadvisingcenter/faqs/why-get-a-liberal-arts-degree-the-cost/

Move over, Stem: why the world needs humanities graduates:  http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/mar/19/humanities-universities-global-stem

World Economic Forum - Why teaching humanities improves innovation: https://agenda.weforum.org/2014/09/stem-education-humanities-creativity-innovation/

Liberal Arts vs. STEM: The Right Degrees, The Wrong Debate: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2015/06/19/liberal-arts-vs-stem-the-right-degrees-the-wrong-debate/

The Major Divide: Humanities vs. STEM Majors: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaina-provencio/the-major-divide-humaniti_b_6582436.html

The False STEM vs. Liberal Arts Dichotomy: http://www.artsci.com/news/item/index.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=261&ModuleID=174

Oh, The Humanities! Why STEM shouldn't take Precedence over the Arts: https://humanities.asu.edu/oh-humanities-why-stem-shouldnt-take-precedence-over-arts

Humanities vs. STEM, Redux: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/18/new-study-assesses-humanities-impact-credits-earned-not-majors-declared

At MIT, the humanities are just as important as STEM: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/04/30/mit-humanities-are-just-important-stem/ZOArg1PgEFy2wm4ptue56I/story.html#

American Academy of Arts & Sciences - Humanities Indicators Project: http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/

The Risky English Major? Not So Fast.: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/05/11/stem-fields-benefit-from-liberal-arts-skills

‘Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters’ by Michael S. Roth - Review: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/beyond-the-university-why-liberal-education-matters-by-michael-s-roth/2014/05/23/a911b3fe-cef2-11e3-937f-d3026234b51c_story.html

The employability myth of the humanities: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/03/07/employability-myth-humanities/

STEM vs. the humanities. One, the other, a combination? Students discuss: http://college.usatoday.com/2014/05/13/stem-vs-the-humanities-one-the-other-a-combination-students-discuss/

New Evidence: There is No Science-Education Crisis: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114608/stem-funding-dwarfs-humanities-only-one-crisis

The Humanities Vs. The Sciences: Who Wins Out?: http://thoughtcatalog.com/skylar-grogan/2014/02/the-humanities-vs-the-sciences-who-wins-out/

Myth: A Liberal Arts Education Is Becoming Irrelevant: http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/Myth-A-Liberal-Arts-Education-Is-Becoming-Irrelevant.aspx

The Decline of Humanities: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=7629 

Is The Distinction Between STEM And The Humanities Obsolete?: http://www.science20.com/the_conversation/is_the_distinction_between_stem_and_the_humanities_obsolete-152870

Humanities and Science Must Work Together: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/04/the-fate-of-the-humanities/humanities-and-science-must-work-together

Don’t Defund Humanities: They’re Crucial to the Economy, Too: http://www.knewton.com/blog/ceo-jose-ferreira/stem-vs-humanities/

STEM and the Humanities: Better Together: http://virginiahumanities.org/2014/07/stem-and-the-humanities-better-together/

Humanities vs. STEM: Which degree is better for a job in private equity?: http://www.carlyle.com/content/humanities-vs-stem-which-degree-better-job-private-equity

The Fate of the Humanities: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/04/the-fate-of-the-humanities

STEM Education Versus Humanities: https://eduflow.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/stem-education-versus-humanities/

Why a Liberal Arts Education Matters: http://www.inc.com/why-a-liberal-arts-education-matters.html

The Real Reason the Humanities Are 'in Crisis': http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-real-reason-the-humanities-are-in-crisis/282441/

STEM vs Humanities: Why Both are Needed for Analytics: https://www.govloop.com/community/blog/stem-vs-humanities-needed-analytics/

State of the debate. Chimes against humanities: http://gelookahead.economist.com/degree-state-of-the-debate-chimes-against-humanities/

National Endowment for the Humanities and STEM Funding Opportunities: http://informalscience.org/perspectives/blog/national-endowment-for-the-humanities-and-stem-funding-opportunities

Why STEM Should Care About the Humanities: http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/04/12/why-stem-should-care-about-the-humanities/

Troubadour or techie? The liberal arts vs. STEM debate ramps up: http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2015/03/31/troubadour-or-techie-the-liberal-arts-vs-stem-debate-ramps-up/

America Is Raising A Generation Of Kids Who Can't Think Or Write Clearly http://www.businessinsider.com/the-war-against-humanities-2013-6

Make sciences and humanities equally difficult: http://www.browndailyherald.com/2014/09/16/editorial-make-sciences-humanities-equally-difficult/

Management as a Liberal Art at Stanford: http://www.edbatista.com/2012/07/management-as-a-liberal-art-at-stanford.html