By "philosophy" I mean a broad meta study of the field: the philosophy of science, epistemology, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of language, etc. By "rhetoric" I mean both the construction and execution of persuasive argument in printed and verbal form. Everybody should have a few folks from history that they are intimately familiar with and feel that they faced similar problem in life.
Philosophy can give you a broad view of what is knowable, what is not, and how folks move from not being able to to know, to being able to know, to actually knowing -- a key component of both the advancement of science and the development of an individual. Topics like stoicism and existentialism, if presented appropriately, can provide a backstop of beliefs for any student, regardless of their religious or moral convictions. Rhetoric helps you spot when folks are trying to manipulate you, and it challenges you form coherent arguments yourself about things outside of one small area. History gives you context: every generation feels as if it is here at some kind of special and unique spot. Knowing that humans 500 years ago were the same model as the ones you meet on the street helps put your opinions and interests in context.
Unfortunately, if I hadn't defined what I mean by those three subjects my recommendation would be pointless. You can go to any college today and take courses under those headings and not receive those benefits -- perhaps this is because those who design the courses view them as introductions to a deep dive on a topic and not practical, broad, benefits-based interventions with young minds. I don't know. I understand that my advice is easier said than done: how would you introduce history to a large group of students in such a way that each student found their own historical figures that they would benefit from absorbing? How do you take topics that the students might find popular and feel-good and give them the ability to tear apart the fluff around them and find the good stuff underneath? Having a professor stand up and say something like "this is my opinion on X. I may be wrong, but we'll never know unless I give you the skills to identify and refute faulty argument" just isn't happening. Instead, classrooms are hierarchical affairs.
Instead of this discovery process, students get pre-canned little happy meals. Instead of taking charge of forming their own identity across multiple disciplines that they can describe and defend, we get these examples of kids simply being out of their depth once you stray just a little bit from their established path. An education that is both broad and self-determined is not an easy problem to solve. The system is not built for it.
I studied in India. I didn't have any teachers for 4 years while i was passing school in the 80's. We had temps who would come and leave in a week since we stayed way out in a remote place while my dad worked on some government projects. Till this day, I haven't forgotten how I studied, the discovery process was the only thing that held my interest, I got a couple of US university level books and solved through them. The discovery process made an autodidact for life, but the rewards went to the people with happy meals anyway. However, till this day, I am able to reconfigure my skills to meet the need of the hour. I am a quick hack away from happiness.
Many who could afford moving to a city did so. In the end the ones that were left were 5 girls and 4 guys. The girls got married and settled down a few years later. Thinking about it now, all of the city guys are now settled in the US.
Strangely, given the parent comment, I did study the history of science later and have a research degree to show for it. :)
The problem starts often with professors who don't want to be teaching, or at least not teaching to anyone who disagrees with them. I was quite frustrated at the tendency to try to pigeon hole my position and put a nice label on it instead of actually grappling with my arguments. (And this is at an Ivy League graduate school.)
I'd say less than half of the professors were willing to really engage in anything that wasn't squarely in the specialty. Also they seemed actively hostile to cross-subject questions like post-modernism's impact on self understanding in a psychology class discussion. That disdain of learning about multiple subjects is modeled by their undergraduate and graduate students. It sets boundaries in their thinking and in their willingness to discuss, when they see others mocked. This overall trend is the majority of the reason I decided not to continue past a master's.
Mentat, to your second point, I have had the same experience.
Even in classes and curricula that are supposed to be interdisciplinary, the boundaries are still rigid and the connections superficial. That compromises learning. And, I think one of the reasons for that is professors are afraid of being wrong and they're not trained to travel outside their domain of expertise. The ivory tower thrives on specialization. If the gatekeepers are not bold enough to cross-pollinate ideas, students are disadvantaged.
>Instead of this discovery process, students get pre-canned little happy meals.
This really seems to me the biggest problem of academia as far as i've experienced it.
In the first 8 years of school i've been very bad at school so at first it seemed impossible to me that i ever could become a student.
Therefor i just dreamed about it,taking the verb "to study" very seriously, imagining that i would be able to pull all the knowledge that i wanted just from the university shelves of knowledge and be able to built myself and my knowledge in that way. I thought i'd be working on cool projects which were driven by my ideas.
Instead when after really working hard on my discipline and other things to be able to go to university i find that all i can get, at least in germany, seems to be prepackaged happy meals. I can go and make my bachelor or masters in computer science without ever having built something that was my truly my idea. Of course i can do all those wonderful things i dreamed about when i was younger too, but i won't find many people that would help me do it and i would have a hard time doing it because i've not that much time on my hands.
To get through all those tests, all those university homework assignments(when i first heard of that i literally went "wtf") and still built up a parallel career, so you have something to show off on your CV other than "went to university", takes so much time that it seems going to university and doing the courses like they are laid out to me stands in the way of the kind of education i hoped to gain from going to university.
I'd like a university that takes "to study" seriously, allowing students to look at problems, find solutions from all angles and encouraging them to self-educate in a healthy way.
This is similar to what I was once told is the foundation of the Islamic sciences: logic, linguistics and rhetoric. These are essentially the "meta" sciences, which teach you how to think.
By "philosophy" I mean a broad meta study of the field: the philosophy of science, epistemology, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of language, etc. By "rhetoric" I mean both the construction and execution of persuasive argument in printed and verbal form. Everybody should have a few folks from history that they are intimately familiar with and feel that they faced similar problem in life.
Philosophy can give you a broad view of what is knowable, what is not, and how folks move from not being able to to know, to being able to know, to actually knowing -- a key component of both the advancement of science and the development of an individual. Topics like stoicism and existentialism, if presented appropriately, can provide a backstop of beliefs for any student, regardless of their religious or moral convictions. Rhetoric helps you spot when folks are trying to manipulate you, and it challenges you form coherent arguments yourself about things outside of one small area. History gives you context: every generation feels as if it is here at some kind of special and unique spot. Knowing that humans 500 years ago were the same model as the ones you meet on the street helps put your opinions and interests in context.
Unfortunately, if I hadn't defined what I mean by those three subjects my recommendation would be pointless. You can go to any college today and take courses under those headings and not receive those benefits -- perhaps this is because those who design the courses view them as introductions to a deep dive on a topic and not practical, broad, benefits-based interventions with young minds. I don't know. I understand that my advice is easier said than done: how would you introduce history to a large group of students in such a way that each student found their own historical figures that they would benefit from absorbing? How do you take topics that the students might find popular and feel-good and give them the ability to tear apart the fluff around them and find the good stuff underneath? Having a professor stand up and say something like "this is my opinion on X. I may be wrong, but we'll never know unless I give you the skills to identify and refute faulty argument" just isn't happening. Instead, classrooms are hierarchical affairs.
Instead of this discovery process, students get pre-canned little happy meals. Instead of taking charge of forming their own identity across multiple disciplines that they can describe and defend, we get these examples of kids simply being out of their depth once you stray just a little bit from their established path. An education that is both broad and self-determined is not an easy problem to solve. The system is not built for it.