CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who has one of the most thoughtful programs on TV (CNN Sunday mornings!), has just published a new book, “In Defense of Liberal Education”.
His main fear is that the current trend away from the 4-year liberal arts college education (set in motion by the Great Recession, and rationally supported by the ballooning college price tag), will create a nation of graduates who cannot quite think, write, or speak with clarity and conviction.
(See: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/24/why-the-liberal-arts-matter/)
The counterpoint, of course, is that the country needs engineers and scientists urgently and in numbers. So, if highschoolers keep choosing history, English, and arts majors, where will the STEM competency come from?
I completely agree with the point. And with the counterpoint. And when that happens, I know that we must not be asking the right questions…
Is the problem really that high school graduates choose liberal arts over science? Is this the reason that we don’t have STEM-competent employees in the workplace?
Or is it, that given the level of high-school math and science our students get, it is mostly impossible to get into an engineering or science major, or even, to be excited about math and physics?!
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