
History isn't a 'useless' major, it teaches critical thinking - walterbell
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-grossman-history-major-in-decline-20160525-snap-story.html
======
meacham
These articles reinforce the imperative of thinking beyond majors. Rarely is
any major all-consuming, and students who prepare well can complement a major
in one general field (e.g., the social sciences) with a suite of technical
coursework. The ethos with which one can approach a history degree isn't
altogether different from how to confront training in computer science:
rigorous introduction to fundamentals – whether through theory or method, is
often more enduring than a skills-based view that is too anchored to the whims
of the day.

~~~
beloch
In many universities, major programs for CPSC, physics, etc. require courses
with prerequisite chains that take several years to go through. It would be
quite hard to build up to these while only taking a minor in these subjects.
There are courses for non-majors, but these are typically dumbed down to be
made more accessible and possible to jump into without much in the way of
prerequisites. For example, there is typically a vast difference between a
quantum computing course for physics majors (with a few quantum physics
courses as prereqs) and a quantum computing course for non-physics majors.

Meanwhile, talking to the prof and being willing to work a little bit can get
you into graduate level history courses even if History is not your major and
you've taken next to no History courses. An interest in the subject, time to
read, and writing skills honed by other subjects are all you really need. For
this reason, I'd argue that History is a great minor to take with a science
major, but perhaps not the other way around if you plan to work in a technical
field. It's definitely possible for a science major to dive into a senior
level undergraduate or graduate history course intended for history majors.
Arguably, this is more rewarding that taking a course intended to be an easy
option for non-majors.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> In many universities, major programs for CPSC, physics, etc. require courses
> with prerequisite chains that take several years to go through.

At my university, UCSC, math and CS courses tended to be "structured" in the
opposite way -- once you'd completed a modest suite of lower-division courses,
you tended to be qualified for almost every upper-division course. I assume
this was meant to make it easier for people to graduate on time.

The considerable downside was that nearly every class devoted a substantial
percentage of the total time to review at the beginning.

~~~
throwawaysocks
It's really useful to distinguish technical fields from engineering and
especially natural sciences fields once you get past K12. STEM is not actually
a very coherent grouping.

Almost all CS programs are relatively flat, but many science programs have
longer chains of linear or parallel pre-reqs.

Math programs differ from both because long chains of pre-reqs in Math often
correspond to required maturation rather than required knowledge (e.g. the
Calc sequence as a pre-req for algebra courses).

~~~
thaumasiotes
Math and CS professors and students complained loudly about the lack of
prerequisites. It did great harm to the curriculum. Defending it on the
grounds that math and CS don't _need_ long prerequisite chains in the way that
other fields do misses the point.

~~~
throwawaysocks
WRT CS, my comment was meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. FWIW I agree
with you, but what I said is largely true of CS curriculum in the US.

I'm not sure whether I agree with you regarding math. I think pre-requisites
should reflect required knowledge accurately, and should leave required
maturation to the student and his/her instructor. Requiring the calculus
sequence prior to courses that contain no calculus strikes me as a silly
historical accident, for example.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Requiring the calculus sequence prior to courses that contain no calculus
> strikes me as a silly historical accident, for example.

Sure, but I haven't said anything about that.

------
ThomPete
Here is the thing though. Although critical thinking is important it's
definitely not what academia lacks. What it does lack is constructive
thinking. I.e. the ability to propose new testable/semi-testable theories.

Entrepreneurs are always going to be more constructive thinkers than critical
thinkers and thats why the are valuable.

~~~
superbaconman
I feel like history isn't quite as important as we currently emphasize. The
ability to manipulate your surroundings is far more useful than the
exploration of how best to do so. I feel we would be better served to
reinforce how to change the world, than to show how others have changed the
world (a slightly different view).

~~~
untog
That only makes sense if you don't intend to learn from any of the ways other
people have tried to change the world before you try yourself.

Which seems like a bad idea.

------
toomanybeersies
When I first started university, I had the same attitude as most other STEM
majors, that history and all arts degrees were useless and a waste of time, I
used to joke that BA stands for Bugger All. The only non-stem degrees I
thought were worthwhile were law and accounting.

But then I actually met some people doing history, and how interested they
were in it, and I realised that it's perfectly valid to do a degree just out
of interest, if it's what you're interested in. Some of the people I know
doing arts degrees are more passionate about their field than I am about
programming.

The people that were wasting their time and just accruing debt at university
were the people doing commerce or criminal justice degrees. I never once
actually heard them talking about their degree, they had no interest in the
subject matter, they just wanted to live the university lifestyle, or were
told they needed to get a degree. Criminal justice was the worst for that,
because anyone actually interested in that was doing law.

So these days, I think as long as it's something you're passionate about, then
there's nothing wrong with doing an arts degree. Universities don't solely
exist for vocational training, there is validity in learning for the sake of
learning.

The fact that tuition is a lot cheaper, and interest free student loans in New
Zealand means that it's a lot more feasible to do a degree that interests you
though, without crippling you financially.

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davidw
I think I'd ask:

Is there any way you could either develop 'critical thinking' skills for less
than X thousands of dollars, or, for the same money, also obtain some more
immediately marketable skills?

~~~
nitwit005
You see this in so much commentary on education. People point out that
something has a benefit, and they're absolutely correct, but they fail to
examine if it's superior to alternatives.

If we want critical thinking skills, is a history class the most efficient way
to go about it? Maybe one of the other humanities is superior in this regard?
What about those classes we've titled "Critical Thinking"?

~~~
davidw
I loved my AP history classes in HS, and I think it's something everyone
should be familiar with... but majoring in it? Not so sure.

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gyardley
During my first startup job, I took my freshly-minted history degree and
explicitly treated the body of communications from engineering, marketing,
sales, and the customer base as 'historical sources'. This helped me figure
out what was actually going on, as opposed to what everyone was constantly
yelling about, and I suspect that's why I was able to weasel out of that
customer support gig into a product management position. In turn, that let me
eventually make the connections and get the background knowledge necessary to
start my own thing. So yes, I certainly don't consider my degree 'useless'.

Honestly, you want some humanities majors sprinkled around your organization
for the different skill sets they bring. Rands' classic 'Russian Lit major'
post says it better than I could:

[http://randsinrepose.com/archives/russian-
history/](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/russian-history/)

------
gtirloni
A degree in History is usually associated with leftist/socialist/communist
thinking in South America, usually due to indoctrination from professors. Is
it the same in US/Europe/Asia?

~~~
thescribe
In my experience yes. Any time someone holds up a major and uses terms like
'critical thinking' or 'widens horizons' and they're not talking about a logic
class they really mean hard left indoctrination.

~~~
wutbrodo
It's not clear from your comment whether you're assuming history is like this
because of your experience with other majors or whether you have experience
with history in particular being like this.

If it's the latter, can you give some concrete examples? I'm genuinely pretty
curious because all my experiences with post-secondary academic history have
been unusually non-partisan (compared to many/most other social sciences).

If it's the former...well honestly that's just silly. Just because it's a
favorite tactic of the left to claim that anything contrarian is critical
thinking doesn't mean the converse is true (i.e. that anything labeled
critical thinking is on the hard left).

I find the claim particularly dubious for history: if you really squint and
try to label it as partisan, it seems just as likely to me that it would seem
right-ish than that it would seem left-ish. The discovery students make in the
postsecondary study of history that historiography exists is one of the
linchpins of history's alignment with critical thinking: instead of reading
sources (and historians) as bearers of incontrovertible truth, you realize
that they make up a best-effort account of facts subject to things like lack
of information, blind spots, etc. This is fundamentally similar to not blindly
trusting academic and scientific authority, a view which dovetails neatly with
both the contemporary and historical right[1] (the latter case including
opposition to things like high modernism on the left). It's true that a level
of distrust of status quo knowledge exists on the left as well (e.g. post-
modernism), but that just reinforces my point that it's not fundamentally
partisan.

[1] This isn't a commentary on which approach is better, but I hardly think
it's controversial that the idea that scientific facts are set hard in stone
and you're simply flat wrong if you question them is far more common on the
left at the moment than on the right. Skepticism of academia and the
scientific establishment consists both of 1) anti-intellectual "scientists are
all scammers" and 2) a sober-minded recognition of the limitations of the
scientific method and the attendant belief that progress based on scientific
knowledge should have some brakes built in.

~~~
thescribe
Sorry, I think my statement appeared a little too broadly.

I'll try to re-state it. In my experience, outside of hard science every one
of my professors who was fond the phrase 'critical thinking' was pushing
marxism hard, including several history professors I had.

I'm not trying to state that history is hard left overall. Just that if I
heard the phrase 'critical thinking' I should prep for a long lecture on
worker alienation or class struggle.

------
projectramo
This is aimed at some of the other comments but: Any non-technical degree
comes with some ideological perspective.

Consider Shakespeare.

If you just consider him "great", and read him to appreciate him, then that is
an ideological perspective.

You could say the way he treats xyz is a product of his times, that is a
perspective.

If you say, he is over-rated and people have held him up to a high standard,
that is also a particular ideological perspective.

Having a particular ideological perspective, and arguing against others does
foster critical thinking, as long as you are arguing against another
ideological perspective.

So if someone says, hey side X was the righteous side in this particular war,
and someone else says no it was side Y, and a third person says they were all
dirty, that's probably a good thing. It doesn't mean you can find a non-
technical discipline free of ideology.

~~~
throwawaysocks
Technical fields -- especially those closer to technology than to natural
science -- can also be extraordinarily ideological. Both in curriculum and
(especially!) in culture.

For a perfect example of true ideology in action, look no further than these
comments -- from members of a field renowned for epic religiousity over such
comparatively inconsequential topics as programming languages, text editors,
and software license preferences -- decrying the proneness of other fiends to
ideological attachments!

~~~
projectramo
I do agree with that, but I consider that to be much more controversial. I
didn't want someone arguing "oh yeah? how is higher math ideological?"

It would lead us astray, I fear.

~~~
throwawaysocks
On the contrary, the answer to such a question perfectly illustrates the sort
of critical thinking that is taught in a history degree program but not
necessarily in a technicaly degree program.

After reading enough about the history of mathematics, it is nearly impossible
to arrive at the conclusion that today's mathematicians do not have their own
set of ideological beliefs. However, obtaining high scores in a mathematics
degree program is easily achievable without seeing these beliefs as
ideological ("that's just how it's done" is a profoundly common and profoundly
ideological answer to questions of the form "but why not do things this other
way" \-- especially in upper-level undergraduate mathematics).

------
bordercases
Speaking about critical thinking: has this assertion been tested? What was the
definition of critical thinking in the article? I couldn't see one that the
author gave.

So called "Critical thinking" is a collection of skills and history only maps
to some of them. The skills that I believe history fosters at the margin, i.e.
independently of any other subject, are the following:

\- For intellectual history: understanding not only that an idea might have
"prior art" that can be worth learning from (to evade errors, to find
interpretations you didn't consider), but also understanding the lineage of
how the idea was constructed and passed on, calibrates you as to both the
originality _and the level of independent confirmation you can give_ to it. If
many people come to the same conclusion from different angles, great! But in
all likelihood the idea has a few core progenitors that everyone is drawing
from. If this is the case, then you know to discount the fact that "everyone
is doing it" away from your evaluation of the idea, and focus on the original
source itself and maybe a few key proponents.

\- For societal history: too often I think we underestimate what is possible
for human beings to do or achieve, both the height of our accomplishments and
the depth of our horrors. Societal history also lets us understand what we
have precedents for, which is critical in law. I don't believe it is much use
to use history for "trend-seeking", not without some conceptual augmentation
(see below cf. economics), but it can definitely help to lower your surprise.

\- For historiography: taking the notion "primary", "secondary", "tertiary"
etc hierarchy of sources to heart, and the level of prior validity you can
expect from each one, lets you understand how difficult it is to separate bias
from an account of an experience, as well as encourage coming to your own
interpretations by seeking the original data.

However, despite these advantages, I don't think that history is the best
field for critical thinking. I believe that trophy should go to economics.
Why? The reason being that economics is a field of endeavor that is a source
of non-narrative (read: not bullshit prone) explanations of historical
phenomena, but also extends these models to the present day and even could
allow predictions of the future. Other than citing precedent and giving you
evidence to feed into your thinking, history alone doesn't directly let you do
this in a fashion I would consider acceptable.

~~~
SilasX
Agreed about the usefulness of history! It also teaches the useful skill of
inferring truth from multiple sources of varying reliability.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem optimized for drawing in the right people.
Professional/academic historian work is very different from all the "history"
you take up to that point; before that level, it's mostly "memorize a bunch of
stuff that happened, as inferred by historians doing the interesting work".

How would that draw in the people who have aptitude for real historian work?

~~~
bordercases
It overlaps with journalism closely enough to the point where great history is
just great journalism, just long-form. I imagine that aspiring journalists
head straight to some technical school when they could do well to supplement
some humanities work as well.

In hindsight, my choices in high school were probably gearing me up to become
a competent journalist. I decided to develop my aptitude for computing
instead. I don't regret it, though: the skills and models of higher-level
geography and history have been essential in keeping me based rather than
basic in 2016.

------
sverige
I received a B.A. in History thirty years ago from a second-tier school. It
included lots of coursework in history, of course, but also lots in
philosophy, economics, literature, art, law, and archaeology. My favorite
definition of history came from a professor: "History is the study of
everything."

It is not at all like a technical degree, and does not produce the same kind
of thinking. It is aimed at developing the ability to reason, make cogent
arguments, evaluate evidence and sources, and becoming aware of your own
biases.

(Edit: Yes, technical fields require many of the same skills, but the
application of those skills is to different kinds of problems which develops
habits of thought that are quite different from historical thinking.)

(Anyone who says they are unbiased has clearly not made it that far in
obtaining the historical mindset. It's not that becoming aware of your biases
makes them go away; rather, you become more attuned to your own blind spots
and so work to develop the ability to compensate for them, especially when
evaluating historical evidence.)

I have found that technical people frequently think they are highly skilled in
critical thinking regarding the "liberal arts" subjects (history, literature,
philosophy, the arts, etc.) but frankly their skills in logical thinking about
"hard science" (programming, mathematics, physics, etc.) usually far exceeds
their abilities in other areas and so they tend to rate themselves too high in
those areas.

I attribute this to the fact that while they have been challenged to defend
their findings in a hard science field, most have not had to do so in the
liberal arts, and particularly in history.

(Other than in internet forums such as this, which is very weak tea compared
to a class of people majoring in the subject and a professor with years in the
field. It's a bit like the difference between being competent to comment on
the comparison of BSD and Linux on the one hand, and being competent to submit
a diff for the kernel on the list for OpenBSD or Linux where Theo or Linus is
going to look at it and give feedback.)

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lazzlazzlazz
You could make this argument about any major.

~~~
cortesoft
Which is why I find the desire to make such a definitive connection between
'what you studied' and 'what you do for a living' so strange. Unless you are
going into a very specific field that has very strong ties to academic work, I
don't think your major is nearly as important as people make it out to be.

I have built a wonderful software development career after completing my
philosophy degree.

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fkewnfkewnf
As if there aren't other ways of teaching critical thinking...

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barney54
I agree 100% that a history major should important critical thinking skills,
but how often does that happen in the real world? My concern is that critical
thinking is frequently not taught in college.

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dkarapetyan
So does pure math.

