Spet0789 wrote:Lootman wrote:Having a B.A. myself I would dispute that you can pick up the same skills simply by reading books. I think you could probably do better learning science from books than the humanities.
Just look at the way science is taught. You sit in a large lecture theatre and listen to the lecturer as he talks. You take notes, try to remember it and buy the textbook that he wrote. Compare that to a humanities degree which, at least in my case, involved sitting in a small'ish room with a dozen other students, being asked to offer a view, and than getting ripped apart by everyone else in the room.
Arts tend to be taught by the Socratic method and is much more demanding than passively absorbing "facts". In fact in my discipline, there were no real "facts". Rather you learned how to think by constant debate and criticism.
As for being "idle" at university, it is true that I only had 4 lectures a week. And missed a fair few of them. But there were essays to research and write, and debate seminars to prepare for. Most of the science/tech students I knew could not have handled that. They needed more discipline and structure.
As for switching discipline, note that government ministers do that all the time, moving from transport to health, or from finance to foreign policy. For that it helps to have a broad education rather than a deep but narrow one. There is a reason that there are few science or technology specialists in government.
Perhaps your lack of knowledge on this point stems from a lack of experience of studying science. As I said, I did both essays and practicals in labs when I was at University so can express that informed view.
Sorry to disappoint you but I started out doing a joint honours degree, so I had experience of both a technical subject and a humanities subject. I then switched part way through the degree to a single honours B.A. Part of my reason for switching was that I much preferred the teaching method on the arts side, more reason and less rote. I also found the arts students and teachers more interesting.
Sure some technical subjects require lab work but, again, a lot of that is routine and designed to reach the "right" answer. Such an approach is less helpful when there are a lot of unknowns and multiple possible solutions.
This reminds me of fights back at Uni and even in the sixth form between the arts kids and the science kids. They were very different from each other. But to the topic I do not think that most voters want narrow specialists giving orders and making decisions. It is rare to find them having the breadth of knowledge and reasoning skills needed. Thatcher as always being the exception that proves the rule.
The government may not have got every decision spot on. But then it is easy to criticise after the fact based on factors that were not clear in the fog of war at the time. And the UK stats are similar to many other comparable countries which reflects the balanced response it took.
