We need more engineers and scientists. That has become the mantra of promoters of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in education. There is nothing wrong with such a rallying cry, except that investment in STEM education usually comes at the expense of HAS (humanities, arts, and social sciences).
There is no arguing that inadequate science and mathematics education threatens the economic competitiveness of the United States.
It is no less true, however, that the neglect and systematic defunding of education in fields such as history, sociology and art history can have even more damaging repercussions. Damages include the creation of an uninformed citizenry and a concomitant erosion of democracy, and of a workforce unable to understand, communicate, and collaborate with people of different cultures in an increasingly diverse America and globalized world…
I am a PhD student in Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas-Denton. I began my vocation through a nine year apprenticeship with my mentor, Richard M. Owsley. I can be found around Denton troubling students and professors about this and that. A fringe scholar wandering the borderlands between the Academy and the World, I love the hell out of Socrates and Yoda while tending to act like William S. Burroughs and Jaba the Hut. My current projects include studies of the Dào Dé Jing, the intersection of Karl Jaspers’ periechontology with Tarot, and the challenge of queering existential hermeneutics.
I mostly agree with Mr. Martinez-Fernandez’s analysis of the situation, except where he says “There is nothing wrong with such a rallying cry… that inadequate science and mathematics education threatens the economic competitiveness of the United States.” I think there is something wrong with the rallying cry: it concedes to the terms of the debate set by those advocating a corporatist model of what it means to be an educated citizen, and generally to have an educated citizen in a democratic republic. Those terms ignorantly couch the problem as STEM vs. HASS, whereas the real issue is between a society of mere laborers vs. a society of critically-engaged (historically, what was meant by ‘enlightened’) citizens.
[…] good sister & colleague Kelli Barr responded to the ARTSblog piece to which I posted a link the other day. Besides a response here at Reason & Existenz, she also wrote a longer reaction at […]
CALL ME MAGGIE 
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