Wait- are you telling me that those successful in business often have a business background
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My guess is the "advanced math and science classes" you claim you took aren't what a STEM person would consider advanced math and sciences. I don't think people think they can master the humanities, but they are fairly certain that if they take an upper level English course they will understand the language in which the course is taught and will be able to answer the questions. I was an econ major (which is a liberal arts major) and took some "advanced math" classes and decided to take a relatively low-level advanced math class for STEM kids. I couldn't even understand what the professor was writing on the board. It would be the equivalent of taking an English class where I first had to learn 7th century English prior to even attempting to read the texts and answering the questions. It's inconceivable that any English major would take such a class...if you actually did and did very well, then you would have switched majors or at least pursued a dual-major because you would have to really love the material to do well. |
Maybe if you go to a trash school. The average stem student would struggle in a levinas seminar, would stumble through any upper level seminar for religious studies, would fail writing an upper level history paper with proper format, wouldn’t even have the pre reqs needed to begin coursework in the classics or comparative literature, and maybe would be okay with the demanding coursework of an upper division lit class. |
“Inconceivable?” Really? I dropped physics for history, because, frankly, 3 courses in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and QED taught me that physics wasn’t going to magically become interesting to me, no matter how much I tried to lie to myself that it could. Most of my coursework involved applying knowledge from a textbook and once you learn the lingo (or really the principles of linear algebra), you could easily get at least a B in the class. |
Correct...they could stumble through the classes which means they would be able to read the books and answer the questions. This wasn't about doing well in the classes. The converse is the English lit kid or religious studies couldn't even stumble through the advanced STEM classes. They might be lucky to score 5 points out of 100...but the reality is they would drop the class on Day 1. |
No math or STEM major would call that an advanced Math class. Hence the fallacy of the argument. |
I was a philosophy major with a math minor. I'm very confident that the average math major could manage to earn a far better grade in a 400 level english or history class than the average religious studies or art history student could earn in a 400 level math class. |
This is such an unfounded bias, as another poster said- stem majors think social sciences and humanities can’t hack stem, but that they can easily handle it in the flip. Both of my kids are humanities majors and one is also pre-med (so taking hard sciences) and the other considered a double major, but has since reconsidered (they took thru calc 3 and linear algebra with As in all). Both kids find their english and history classes significantly more interesting and challenging than they do/did their math and science classes. majors |
I really don’t think the average engineering student can comprehend Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, Agamben, Hegel, Derrida, close reading of any ecclesiastical writing or the Quran or really any theology, nor could they catch up in a Ulysses seminar. Why I’m having to defend that upper division coursework is, well, upper division? I don’t know. |
Are you about to argue that linear algebra isn’t the foundation of QM right now? I’m actually baffled. And, of course, you skipped over all the upper division physics coursework. |
No, I'm telling you that the notion that some people here love to perpetuate -- that STEM/business majors are one dimensional dullards who top out at a 'staff' level while history and English majors are the ones who ACTUALLY go on to the most successful careers in "multi national companies" is not really borne out in the real world. |
DP but you seem to be the ignorant one. Stanford Quantum Field Theory course is a 330 level class: “300 and above: courses for graduate students” according to Stanford. Quantum mechanics alone is an upper division undergraduate course. |
But, I bet they could stumble through while a humanities kid taking the equivalent Math class would get a zero on the tests. They couldn't even stumble through. They wouldn't understand a single thing written on the board. |
| Personally, I think the stem superiority nonsense is mostly bs. Schools like St John prove that humanities students can learn well in stem- they study many foundational mathematicians and physicists alongside a ton of humanities coursework. It’s just different types of learning. |
Linear Algebra. Hence what was highlighted. |