Pants-of-dog wrote:So people who are arguing that only STEM degrees are important enough for college degrees are not looking at it realistically.
Julian658 wrote:POD
You can have a major in political bullshit and do well in life if you are smart, hard worker, motivated, and conscientious. Nevertheless, most mothers want their kids to study a STEM profession.
I should caveat what I'm about to say by stating that I'm not anti-STEM subjects by any stretch of the imagination, indeed I watch a lot of science and engineering programmes on TV and online and despite my core professional skill-set as a nurse and educator, I have some modest talents in automotive engineering (cars and motorcycles), that has saved me thousands in garage fees over the years.
In a wider socio-political context therefore, the issue I have is not with STEM subjects themselves, but with the notion that they are, 'the only game in town'.
Acknowledging the generalisation, most people who take a STEM focus at school and progress onto a STEM subject at university unconsciously develop a very logical, rigid, right/wrong, black/white, binary thinking process that fits with their subject matter expertise, but fits less effectively with the subtleties and nuances of human experience and the governance of societies.
Thus a society whose ruling elites are STEM-orientated by educational default (i.e. by prioritising STEM education over everything else) risks becoming one in which 'machine logic' rather than the very human blend of reason, emotion and instinct governs our collective decision-making. In such a potential society, the meeting of human emotional and psychological needs could be ruthlessly subordinated to physical priorities and, to some extent, that already happens. Look, for example, at the number of people taking a 'machine logic' approach to the COVID pandemic. I can only comment on the UK, but here there are people insisting that COVID only kills old people, who were going to die anyway, so why bother with all these restrictive, authoritarian control measures? But old people are usually someone's life partner, parent, grandparent, brother or sister and so their premature (even if only by months or a year or two) death doesn't only affect them, but potentially dozens of other people whose contribution to feeding the socio-economic machine would be impacted by their grief and their anger at society's apparent callous disdain for their mental wellbeing. "Never mind bleating about grandma dying - get back to f**king work!!"
That doesn't look like the recipe for a healthy, happy and productive society to me but it seems to be what many people want, hence the perennial denigration of social sciences, psychology and even subjects like literature and the arts. All derided as worthless by the more ardent STEM advocates because they don't overtly make money and feed the machine.