Our smart friend vs. anonymous racists
Intrepid commenter Saheli wrote something really really smart about myths and facts of “well-rounded educations.” Go read it. The crux of her argument in case you’re not in the mood to click: Liberal arts types like to complain that math and science folks just do math and science, while we liberal artsies are well-rounded and learn everything. Back in reality, artsies (myself included) squeak through our undergraduate years without anyone requiring us to take a college-level math class; many of us don’t even know statistics. We “gleefully” take “dumbed-down” classes. Scientists, meanwhile, often have to take full-strength humanities courses. So who is really the well-rounded thinker?
Meanwhile, Daniel Gross points us to a Wall St Journal article in which white parents complain that majority-Asian-immigrant schools “are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.” It sounds like these parents need to have a nice sit-down conversation with Saheli. But they might not do that, as her ancestry on the Asian land mass apparently makes her one of those “majority-Asian-immigrant”s who are “too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science.” Whatever.
posted by hedgehog in Uncategorized | 12 Comments
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