I am not denying that math and science are absolutely necessary for everyone to be exposed to, but some people just don’t “get it”.  Me being one of them.  Of course now I do, but in terms of understanding all that logic etc., I was an extremely late bloomer.  It has so much to do with your “base” too.  I froze up from 2nd grade on when someone tried to teach me anything to do with mathematics because I just always felt behind the class.  Even today if someone would ask me for an answer to an equation, I’d get a butterfly in my stomach.  My college math class was a disaster for me.  Hated it!  Just reinforced my belief to stick with the liberal arts.

Sing it, sister!

Arwen, I completely agree!  As a food scientest (chemistry, microbiology and engineering related to food) who now works in a social science/arts field (human resources in government), I find that the logic and systematic thinking I gleaned due to my scientific training benefit me on a daily basis in both my professional and personal life.  And the ability to assess situations in a logical manner has helped me be more objective and patient.

Let’s hear it for embracing learning in all areas as a vital part of personal and emotional growth!

Awesome.  I’m trained as an engineer; my husband teaches physics.  This is a passion for both of us.  The thing that irks him is that here (as at most colleges), you’re required to take the lower-division (usually MUCH easier) science and math classes but are also required to take upper-division humanities classes, sending the message that the science/math is not all that important.  And that is SO not true, as you discussed above.

I had a similar experience taking a Logic class in college—for me it was my easiest class BY FAR but the other students struggled mightily. 

You’re right; I’ve found that my engineering degree (which I’ve never used as, you know, an actual ENGINEER) has trained me to think differently than some of my colleagues and peers.

Here’s to more science and math education!

I’m sorry for anyone who has had a bad experience with math!  I think that happens to a lot of people - they get a bad math teacher or get stressed out by math early in life, and they never recover from it.  Totally not the student’s fault!  I think the unfortunate emphasis on math as training and consequently on math performance rather than on math education is to blame.

But a lot of people write off math and opt for the liberal arts *instead* of mathematics, and that’s a misunderstanding of what liberal arts is.  The classical seven liberal arts included both arithmetic and geometry, and a modern liberal arts education - by definition, although not always in practice - includes study of both math and science.  Liberal arts is meant to educate the whole brain, including the left side of it!

That’s why I think it’s truly unfortunate that modern education has split the disciplines so that people are expected to be either logical (math and science types) or artistic (literature, language, and social science types), when really, it would benefit all of us to learn something from all of those disciplines.  I’d argue just as much with an engineer who said he didn’t need literature as with a philosopher who said he didn’t need math!  Certainly it is useful to recognize our talents and specialize, but learning (for learning’s own sake, not for performance’s sake, which is where the stress comes in) is always good for all of us!

I’ve always been science- and math-minded and was a bio/pre-med major in college.  I had the opposite experience from Arwen when I joined the Great Books program at my school.  I struggled w/philosophy b/c I was so used to the concreteness of science and math—formulas and known facts that gave you a right or wrong answer.

However, the more I learned in liberal arts, the more my appreciation of them grew.  I was so thankful for the opportunity to take logic b/c it made me realize how illogical a lot of people out there are!

I agree that college students should have a more complete education, integrating both the scientific and the artistic!

I agree totally.  The logic and critical thinking skills also help one to sort through the superficial impressions and surface rhetoric when facing an important decision - whether it’s choosing a health care treatment plan (vaccine or no vaccine?), buying a house (big or small?, which neighborhood?) or choosing which candidate to vote for.  It’s easy to be swayed by what’s easy to see, and critical thinking skills help you know what questions to ask to enable you to look beyond the surface.

I majored in Math in university and have a list of three good math courses for everyone. 

Classical Algebra - for much the same reasons as taking classical history

Mathematics of finance - it’s not a bad idea to understand how compound interest works

and
Introduction to statistics -what does plus or minus 5% 19 times out of 20 mean anyway?  It’s much easier to judge statistics with a little bit of an idea of the math.

Formal logic is also good but at least at my University the math version of the course wasn’t easy.

I was never a math person; I struggled throughout HS and College with just the rudimentary requirements.  English Lit, Russian Lit, Philosophy - any day.  But math?  Yikes! For this reason, I have vowed since their conception that my children will not fear math.  It helps that I married a rocket scientist, though.  That whole opposites attract thing really does work - isn’t that a science concept?  There is a website my children love called coolmath.com.  It is a fabulous site which makes math cool, fun and exciting - even for the likes of me.

Woo-hoo!!!  I started as an accounting major, got an AS in Engineering, transfered to University to study Structural Engineering, and eventually got a BS in Math/Science.  I’m not saying this to give you my resume, but to say YES!  I love Math!  It sometimes seems (especially among women) that Math gets a bad rep.  But having your brain trained in Math really does teach you to think in a logical manner, which helps in so many different areas of real-life.  Even life as a SAHM.  Although I don’t really get a chance to do integral calculus much (I’ve thought about busting out my old book just to do some problems for fun) I do use the skills I’ve learned in other ways.

I now have Tom Paxton’s “It’s Arithmetic, Baby!” stuck in my head. I blame you.

I can’t help but find it ironic that your liberal arts classmates couldn’t imagine a use for math! I guess I’ve always been predjudiced in the other way, sure it’s nice to study liberal arts, but what are you actually going to do with it?! I’m science minded myself, and see plenty of the math that goes into it. That’s my practicality, and literature, philosophy, etc, that’s just for fun on the side. It really is good that we all have different talents and interests, isn’t it?