/sci/ - Science & Math

TL;DR.
basically critical thinking is an important to learn as opposed to simple rote memorization
</thread>

>OP thinks college is about learning, as opposed to getting a diploma to instantly prove to everyone you already know your shit

If you want to learn and exercise your critical thinking skills, head over to a library and read all the free books you want

I can't wrote memorize for shit. Unless I spend the time to figure out how to get complicated bits from simple bits, I am fucked on exams. Luckily, I seem to pick up how to derive it fast in physics and physics related fields at least.

I recently read a history professor's blog entry where he told of a colleague who asked his students to write an essay on Mein Kampf. 20% handed in what was nothing more than highlights of the main points in the book. No sort of criticism of what Hitler wrote, let alone displays of critical thinking.

>>3092832
and did that history professor ask for any 'critical thought'? probably not.
>lol irony

"In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester."

>mfw i am studying in england and will get 4 solid years of mathematics and come out with a masters as opposed to in the US where i would get 4 years of partial mathematics diluted by compulsory humanities and only come out with a bachelors

why would kids develop critical thinking in a school system based around memorization?

>>3092843
Hey! Bad anon! Critical thinking should factor into EVERYTHING that you think about.

>>3092847

>mfw your degree means nothing because you will have the English level of a grade 12 student making your intelligent discoveries irrelevant in comparison to someone who knows what the fuck they're doing and i realize this is a run on sentence and i will continue to go on just to say fuck you

>>3092847
>yfw your degree will cost a fortune
I wish I were scottish.jpg

(Is there a reaction image for that?)

Most students do, but this isnt new. Whenever I go to lectures, I actively participate. I've always done this, because if I dont, it gets boring as fuck.

By this I mean, if we are learning a new concept, the professor usually prefaces it with a general case and explains how to arrive at the answer. Trick is to stay one step ahead of the professor and checking your thought process with his. I find this not only a better way to "memorize" shit you have to, but just learning in general as you arrived at the answer upon your own conclusion.

I feel that most classes I've been in are set up like this and all the shit you learn could have been arrived by yourself. A good professor merely points the way at first. Its up to the students to try and figure it out themselves.

>>3092800
that's because rote memorization is a bad way to learn. Constructivist teaching methods are the future of eduction.

>>3092857
>mfw i am going to the 2nd best university in the country for maths, almost on par with cambridge & ivy league and paying 1/10th the price that you do

>>3092862
>mfw £3000 a year is nothing

>>3092854
it's like the prof was making fun of students for not putting critical though in their essays, even though they were not asked to provide any critical thought, and I have had many situations where putting in an opinion that the prof disagreed with cost me actual grade percentage

so in other words, profs silence kids, kids stay quiet, another prof makes fun of kids for being silent

cruel world

>>3092873

>mfw when I am going to the BEST (Not 2nd tier, the fuck would you brag about 2nd tier britfag?) university in canada.

>>3092877
>mfw uk 2nd tier is better than canada top tier

>>3092857
>your degree means nothing because you will have the English level of a grade 12 student
>your intelligent discoveries irrelevant in comparison to someone who knows what the fuck they're doing
>knowing what the fuck they're doing
>maths
>high level of English
>maths
>knowing what the fuck they're doing

>implying that living in England does not make one proficient in the language anyway
>Implying that speaking good English makes you good at maths

grrr... why do those students only try hard enough to meet these low standards we've set for them

>>3092873
>£3000 a year is nothing

You already said were going to university in the future. That means it costs at most £9000 p.a., and most likely all universities in the country are going to charge that.

>i am studying in england and will get 4 solid years of mathematics and come out with a masters
>will

Is it UCL btw? I'm not down with which universities are good at what.

>>3092883

Deliver your mathematical discoveries to the masses while having a piss-poor level of English.

It's better to have a balanced education.

Metaphorical description: You are a body builder who only does bicep curls.

>students study half as long as they use to in 1960
>implying this isnt more learning since a google search takes all of 10s vs the hours it would take in a library to find the same information.
>implying things such as calculus which use to be reserved for college are not now being taught in high school
>implying all the new bullshit courses like "art" and "film" are being counted as real courses in this average
>implying anyone takes a "critical thinking test" that has no effect on your grade and you can leave as soon as you are done seriously.

>>3092892
>implying that october isn't in the future

>>3092892
no, not sure where UCL is for maths or even if it's in the top 10
warwick

>>3092892
>implying that fee increase doesn't only go into place for students starting their degree course in 2012
>implying that it's not possible for OP to be starting this year

>>3092893
>piss-poor level of English
>native English speaker

The fuck are you going on about. If I was going to university in China maybe this argument would have some merit.

>It's better to have a balanced education.

Maybe at school. University is for specialisation.

>>3092892
Except that the government said 9k fees were for exceptional cases only and if lots of places tried to charge that they were going to cut their funding

>>3092923
Yeah the government says a lot of things. It says it has put on hold the NHS reforms, for example.

>>3092893
nope.jpg
look back to the best mathematicians, and 90% of them were aspies who didn't give a shit about anything else
a.k.a the kind of people who probably wouldn't even be accepted to a top US university because they didn't help out in their community, join enough societies or do other arbitrary bullshit that the selection process focuses on.

university places should, and are in some countries (such as mine) be allocated due to academic ability and potential alone

>>3092915

Congratulations. You are now a human calculator.
Humans will still be humans, and to make them interested in your works you will have to be a master of subtlety and a conjurer of emotions.

Remember, as "HARD" as you believe mathematics is, the other 90% of society will not understand it. However disappointing this may be to a young aspie, you must convince the masses and have knowledge of human behaviour.

>>3092899
>>3092914
Okay, okay. I didn't have my thinking hat on, Jesus guys. But you forgot to mention that if he was going to be paying 9k£ fees, then he would be below 18 anyway and therefore underage.

>>3092954
>I'm trying hard to defend my idiotic stance

It's okay bro. Just admit you made an error and we put all this unpleasantness behind us.

>>3092963

The aspergers is strong in this one. Do you not understand the point of socializing?

>>3092954
>Remember, as "HARD" as you believe mathematics is, the other 90% of society will not understand it
So what? You are just saying what most people know as true, most humans are retarted.

Smart people could really give a shit if stupid people do not understand them.

Math is 10000x more valuable than any other subject.

Any average joe can shove a circle block in a square hole as a quick fix, but if you dont have someone to build either part it doesnt really fucking matter.

Thats the problem, "hurr durr I can critically thing but I have nothing to think about".

>>3092954
>he thinks that calculators can do math

>>3092955
this is /sci/, where everyone will try to use every tiny mistake you make against you

>>3092892
>>3092902

General Consensus for Maths is:
Cambridge
Warwick/Oxford
Imperial
Durham/Bristol
Bath
Nottingham
UCL

There's a fair gap between Imperial and Durham/Bristol though. I could be missing some good ones but certainly none above Imperial on this list.

>>3092983
For Amerifags who don't understand, COWI (Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, Imperial) are basically the Ivy League of mathematics in the UK.

>>3092847
>he thinks a master's in math means anything!

you're going to need to spend another four or so years getting a PhD in order to be respected in your field, so the total amount of time you spend in your studies will be the same as an American student.

>never go to class
>use textbook
>do assignments

Through my experience this is the best way to learn in college. A lot of professors tailor their lectures to the homework/exams they give, but if you just take the concepts and struggle through the processing of relating them to examples, you really get to know your shit.

You get to choose how much you want to think in school

It;s

>Implying I ever need to read 40 pages a week in electrical engineering

Unless lecture slides, textbooks, and lab manuals count. Otherwise I don't read shit.

>>3092994
Sorry but this thread is clearly centred around undergraduate studies, didn't you read the OP?

Half the people in my lectures are either asleep, on facebook on their phones or just texting/playing games in that order.

Then they wonder wh they understand fuck all. Seriously why take something at university if you don't find it interesting??

I feel alittle guilty saying this because I'm here procrastinating revision but still at least I put the effort in and turn up to tutorials.

Everyone procrastinates once in a while getting past that is my next challenge.

>>3092994
Phds are 3 years

What annoys me the most is that I fall into the same bullshit the other students do. I am subject to laziness and the temptation to just make good grades without effort is often too much to pass up.

You can't blame the students for this. The fault lies solely on the university and the teachers.

The current system encourages minimal effort and in many cases punishes students who express contrary opinions.

Because the universities want more money, the vast majority have dumbed down their courses so that they can get more minorities and lower level students enrolled.

There are very few intermediate level classes. You are either in the general classes or the honors classes. Why do more work than is needed to accomplish the same goal.

The second problem is that so many professors use the classroom as their personal soap box. It is not uncommon for students to receive lower grades simply for disagreeing with the professor.

I had an extremely liberal english teacher and she would completely rip a paper apart if it didn't fall in line with her beliefs. What is the point of having "opinion" based work if you're going to shut down anyone who disagrees with you.

A guy on /sci/ last week actually posted about how his 300 lb sociology teacher failed his paper because he wrote about the negative social effects of obesity on society, stating that the paper was "biased."

TL:DR The schools brought this upon themselves.

>>3093095

This is why you study a real subject and not Humanities (or whatever you Americans call them liberal arts?).

>>3093107

The problem is that even if you're a science or math major, the universities here force you to take alot of liberal art and social "sciences" classes.

I hated my first two years of college because of this.

>>3093117

Yea, it sucks, but once you barrel through it its no more.

>>3093117
lol... a 'lot'?

Also, just do them during the summer if your uni has advanced semesters during the summer. take real courses during the proper year, and then do the stupid courses over like 3-4 weeks in the summer. I only need to take 12 non-science credits out of 120... not that bad...

>>3093095

I can just talk for the physicsfags, but it's somewhat true even for technical studies. I blame the way how examinations work. Fucking tests. Of course you just cram the few variations of the calculations that YOU KNOW will come at the test.

If I had the monies, I would design examinations more as projects, but I know that's not realistic.

>herp a derp students don't think critically anymore

Idk about other depts at other schools, but where I did undergrad and my major (molecular genetics) our exams defiantly required critical thinking. There would always be a few matching or rote memorization questions for filler points in the lower level classes and then we would be given a problem have to design experiments to solve it, and discuss implications of any results you might get. Or they would tell us an experiment and we would have to interpret the results.

>>3093133
The problem with taking the bullshit classes during the summer is that more often than not, summer tuition is fuck expensive and little financial aid is available, at least in the American system. That means you could spend thousands of dollars on a 3 credit course (for those unfamiliar with the system, 3 credits is a normal class). And since most universities mandate at least 30 credits outside your major, that's a lot of money out of your own pocket. Most people choose to take summer courses for 2 reasons: 1) they're retarded and failed, or 2) they want to graduate in 3 years and save the money they would have spent for the 4th year.

Worse, some universities (especially the private ones) don't allow students to take equivalent courses at public institutions over the summer, where tuition could be a few hundred dollars per credit, instead of a thousand.

Why are you blaming the students? The only difference between students now and 40 years ago is their stuck up baby boomer parents and teachers who failed to teach them the value of critical thinking.

Everyone wants to blame someone

but blaming wont solve the problem

the simple fact is critical thinking is a useless skill

without it, you might not learn about the true beauty of the universe but you'll probably become a religious bigot or something and find an equal amount of mystery wonder and beauty in that.

until the environment demands critical thinking and skepticism the majority will not develop either

Why are you blaming the students? The only difference between students now and 40 years ago is their stuck up baby boomer parents and teachers who failed to gain their respect and confidence and teach them the value of critical thinking.

I honestly think it's simply that the vast majority of students are not in fields that are all that challenging. I knew so many people majoring in communications, psych, and business who barely studied.

Whereas the people I knew in the sciences, particularly the engineering majors, lived in their textbooks and their labs. Yet they were outnumbered by the frisbee brigade 5 to 1.

You have that option to coast through college when you decide what your area of focus will be. Not the school's fault.

>>3093247

I took summer classes because I wanted to graduate early and they were extremely expensive.

My parents payed for them because my scholarships did in fact, not cover them.

Just taking one class for the may semester cost 3k. This was a state school too.

Two classes in june and two in july cost about 4 each, almost as much as a full time 15 credit semester costs.

It was still worth it to get out of that greedy excuse for higher education faster.

>>3093336

A journalism major once told me that his 3.75 GPA was better than my 3.2 GPA. I took Programing I/ Organic I/ Intro to Unix/ Calculus I/ Biological Science II in that semester. I hate how retards like that think that their humanities B.A can actually be compared compared to a B.S. computational biology with all the pre-reqs for an M.D and a Ph.D in computer Science (given that I am the first person at my uni to ever do such a thing).

>>3093336

The vast majority of students don't want to be in challenging fields.

This is why art, psychology, and philosophy are the largest college majors in the world.

The psychology classes would have around a hundred people, but any physics, chemistry, and physiology classes above the general level would have ~15-20 people.

Most colleges literally graduate 50 liberal arts majors to every 1 math/science major

There's been a lot of these "college is useless" articles running around the press during this recession. Sure, a majority of college degrees are fucking useless, especially now. And it has very little to do with the nature of college, but rather THE FACT THAT THESE ARE LIBERAL ARTS DEGREES. You hardly ever hear of STEM or medicine degrees being regarded as "useless."

What's new? It's that in the recession no one's hiring people with basket weaving degrees. Surprised?

>>3093389

The news also reports that large bio-med firms have a lot of trouble filling their positions.

>>3093389
>What's new? It's that in the recession no one's hiring people with physics degrees. Oh wait, that's the way it's always been.

>>3093389

I think they are meant to discourage liberal arts and social science students from going into massive debt for a degree that no longer has any demand.

It was like this before 2008, but the housing and bank crash just opened everyone's eyes to the fact that they may actually be fucked if they go 100K into debt for a useless degree

>>3093407

Nice fallacy, but that's not even close to the same thing

>>3093407
>implying any bank wouldn't immediately hire a person with a physics degree because of their math background
>implying the implication that a physics major can't get a master's degree in engineering
>inb4 homosex

>>3092902

>going to warwick
>thinks its good because 2 a*s needed
>clearly rejected by oxbridge

stay classy second tier faggot.

>>3093420
>implying any bank wouldn't immediately hire a person with a physics degree because of their math background

As a current physics student, I will be taking responsibility for calling bullshit on this one.

>>3093438
As a physics graduate student, the people I graduated with that didn't go to grad school are bankers, engineers or teachers. And I don't know any that are unemployed.

>>3093462

keep thinking that you insecure fuck. a bank would choose someone with an economics degree, maths degree, finance or whatever over someone who does physics.

>>3093506
I don't think it, I know it.

>>3093506
I agree with the other guy. I am a physics grad and my degree is close to worthless because the department had terrible teachers and the classes were pretty easy. Even then, the people who graduated with me are doing graduate studies, teaching, engineering, . Myself I am in masters in engineering. ... .Actually nvm, the people in my year were pretty smart.

>>3093506
But I am still saying that a physics degree this easy can still get you a job pretty easily in the US. So you really don't know anything.

>In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester.


Hahaha. As a math major, I avoid classes with essays like the plague. I haven't written an essay in my entire university career.

Also, 40 pages a week... that's for psych and poli sci majors. In math, you're gonna cover about 100 pages of material in the entire semester, the book/note set just eliminates the superfluous crap and each page is so dense with info. Especially when it's theorem/proof/theorem/proof/corollary/proof/etc

>>3092752
what school is this in? he went to a few, right?

blah blah blah, students seem to get dumber every decade and yet we still turn out better research than the generation before us.

>>3094831
look at all the researchers in our universities: theyre chinese!

>>3094900
I'm Chinese.

To think critically the individuals must first be capable to do so regardless of how enriched the learning environment is or how motivated they are. Spoon-feeding info only exacerbates the situation because there is no focus on even teaching these skills for the few students capable of critical thought.

>>3094721

>>3094721

100 pages a semester? Man, where you go to school at? I've never had a class where we didn't cover less than 300 pages of material a semester

pre-med students are always more interested in getting high grades than actually understanding the course material

it's called "the pre-med attitude" and it's because most of what they are learning is irrelevant to their future anyway and the competition to get into med school is fiercely dependent on grades

I always lol when I read these things.

>This fall will be my last semester
>Bout to get a BSc in Biofagging
>Skip most of my classes
>Sometimes I don't even know what the professor looks like until the final
>Do NO studying during the semester, with the exception of cramming for midterms and skimming material for what few assignments are given
>Give myself 10-20 hours of first time exposure to the entire course's material the night before the exam
>B average
>Feels ok

the most hilarious thing about this is that for how much /sci/ and 4chan laughs at philosophy it is seriously the problem here. Philosophy courses are pretty much 90% critical thinking tutorials and buy devaluing the subject built around correct and thorough thinking it has been taken out of middle and high schools and guess what we have now a bunch of people that are too stupid to make their way through college. We need informal and maybe even symbolic logic to be taught to the youth so they can have a chance a critical thinking

>>3096651
I meant by not buy

>>3093435
didn't apply to oxford or cambridge
visited a few times but not enough nightlife for me

>>3094721
>mfw you won't be able to write mathematical papers in latex

>>3096651
>philosophy can be easy mode or hell on earth
>only idiots don't realize that philosophy has the potential to be one of the most rigorous subjects

>>3096732
Yes, you could. Anyone can right a paper while wearing latex.

>>3096746
This is true. I once took as an elective a philosophy class (not phil 101, 200 level logic course). Difficult as fuck, way harder than my engineering courses.

>>3096732

Fuck man, they have these intense mathematical writing courses at my school. Part research/part explanation and that shit is fucking hard.

The writing classes I've taken helped a bit, but man, there's a lot more to it.

>>3096756

Oh and we had to write 39 pages for the entire semester in that math class.

As a eurofag I find this highly interesting, it's not something I was aware of at my institution. Usually everyone here is extremely competitive and tries to outsmart everyone else by reading advanced topics in their free time and such things. Of course there's always some lazy bastards but the majority will be highly interested (or at least behave as if, which leads to the same thing in the end) in additional knowledge in their respective field. There are obviously problems in lower education though (i.e. high school and all the rest) where the reason can be simply traced back to most pupils being fucking retards. But at my institution (which is one of the worlds top 10) I never noticed something like that.

>>3096754
>>3096746
brofists
I am a Philosophy major and I am going to make big pushes after grad school to convince local school districts to make time for middle school logic courses. It is seriously so important to a stable society that it blows my mind that we removed the course

>>3096780
Mathfag here. I agree as well that logic courses should be compulsory in middle schools. It's unbelievable how many fights break out because there was a simple misunderstanding of logic in an argument. Also it would lead to people realizing much more quickly if a discussion is fruitful or not and will thus optimize the whole process of human interaction.

>>3096824
exactly. So what do you plan on doing with your degree?

>>3096780
>>3096824
logic classes mandatory in school vote++

>>3096836
what?

>>3096827
Right now I'm writing my master's thesis (don't ask me why I hang around here then, I just find it funny, that's all). When I'm done with the thesis I definitely plan on doing a PhD, either at the university where I'm at (have very good chances of getting a position here 'cause I've impressed a few people with my bachelor's thesis) or some place else (only two options actually). After the PhD I'll either stay in academia if I like the lifestyle enough and can live with the (comparatively) miserable pay, or I'll go into the financial sector as most people with a math degree do; i.e. either work as an actuary, try to get into investment banking or start/join a private hedge fund. And yes, the non-academic plans where made with money in mind, I'm not ashamed of admitting that I'd like a good pay since I've been well raised with respect to good food and other (usually expensive) commodities. I'm not from a rich background at all though, just to make that clear.

>>3096859
yeah I'm going into grad school after this coming year and am working on several different paper ideas for my applications. I plan on going straight into academia because I love teaching and being around bright people working on new ideas. The pay thing isn't a big deal for me since I am happy with average food and my only expenses are books and games which I only buy maybe 3 times a year.

I have to ask, what the hell is wrong with your US universities forcing you to take unrelated classes? The only classes not from the School of Biology I take are 2 from the school of agriculture which are related to what I do and statistics for life sciences.

>>3097119

I assume it's so that you have to stay enrolled longer and therefor pay more money. Pretty stupid.

>>3097119
a broad education makes you as an individual a better person by helping you think outside your area for innovations in your area and it also allows you to be a much more well rounded person

>>3097433

First, education is a business. Schools only care about students until they get their first jobs, if that.

Second, employers don't want well-rounded employees. They want employees who are specializing in increasingly narrow fields of study.

>>3097514
Glad to know you are so narrow minded that you want such a narrow education.

>>3097514
whatever obviously you are just a worker drone and there is nothing to be gained from explaining to you the places you can get and ideas you can shape with a well rounded education

Hey /sci/ I'm going to the faculty of sciences next year, and I want to do a minor in philosophy (logic courses)
What do you guys think of that?

(I want to someday do a PhD in a science)

>>3097611
I'm the philosophy major from earlier and I would recommend it the scientist and philosopher had been one in the same for centuries its a shame we distance ourselves so much now. I don't think a minor will only entail logic though but that doesn't mean you won't been learning anything else applicable to your life. The study of philosophy also has a way of tempering the hardships of life while teaching you how to best search out the meaning in your life. So like I said I totally recommend it

>>3097638
The only requirement of getting a minor at my university is having X first year credits, Y second year, Z third year, W fourth year
I've already looked at all the ones I want to take.
The ones I remember are
-Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking
-Symbolic Logic I - SYMBOLIC LOGIC I
-Symbolic Logic 2 - SYMBOLC LOGIC II
-Induction and Decision - INDUCTION & DECN
And
-Metaphysics - METAPHYSICS

I THINK that's all I need for my minor... I made looked at possible courses a few weeks ago and copy pasta'd this from my word document

>>3097668
that sounds like a great list. you may also consider looking for an epistemology course to replace the metaphysics one but thats a totally personal decision I'm not saying one is better than the other

>>3097119

Yeah it's some bullshit like that. Something else that doesn't help is how they have classes structured for math/sci majors. As a math major I could only calc 2 and calc 3 in math, (well I took some other math classes but they were like financial math bullshit) before doing more classes at a time.

>inb4 BC aspies don't know that my hs didn't have BC calc and most don't

Oh well though, I took a lot of AP classes which are classes that you take in high school that can get you college credit at most universities, so I got out of most of those bullshit college courses.

>mfw I can graduate with 3 years with a bachelors from my Uni for getting so many AP credits
>mfw I'll dual enroll and graduate with a masters the year after that.

Mathfag form earlier, in reply to all those claiming a "well rounded" education is preferred:
1. Every employer I've ever talked to (industry or financial sector, all big players) have always said that people with technical specialization is where it's at.
2. Define well-roundedness. At my institution you're required to take 4 semesters of theoretical and applied physics and 2 semesters of programming (C++ mainly) and theoretical computer science. Do you have any idea how fucking broad this is already? There's a reason I've chosen mathematics and yet I'm still being forced to do relatively unrelated courses which go into quite a lot of detail (the physics lectures are always held with the physics students, so no watering down there).
3. Ask yourself this: is it better to know "a bit of everything" or to know some things in detail? Well guess what, here's the answer: knowing a little bit of everything boils down to knowing shit when shit hits the fan. What you want to know instead in such a scenario is how to turn off the god damn fan. Thus people who have specialized in fan-repair will definitely be preferred in such a job market. It's basic logic you lazy bastards.

>>3097846
And yes, I drunk.

>>3097846
This a thousand times.

I you well a "rounded education" pick up books you are interested in in your spare time.

Don't hate on Franco!

>>3097846

Depends on your field. For math people, it might be better to specialize, but what do I know. I'm going into mechatronics, and you need to be well-rounded in there. It requires mechanical knowledge, electrical knowledge, and computer science.

I just finished up my mechanical engineering degree. That said, there are some areas that are perfectly fine with being fully specialized; particularly if you're doing research in mechanical engineering (i.e. vibrations, stress/strain fracture mechanics, etc.)

As stated, it depends on what you want to do. I know of some guy that wanted to build efficient walking machines, so be learned biology, neurophysiology, and mechanical engineering + some more shit I can't remember.

Maybe it just depends on how much of a slave you are. Slaves are good at one thing. Those who are free... do not limit themselves.

>>3098023
nice. Also the difference between a technical education and a liberal arts one seems to be where you want to go and how you want to get there.

>>3098023

I don't think anyone really believes that hyper-specialization is 'better.' Only the biggest (or dumbest) gamblers put all of their eggs in one basket.

But I'm not going to pretend that anyone really gives a shit about your personal fulfillment and development.

>>3098023

There's no question those who are intellectually free tend not to limit themselves, the question is whether or not universities should mandate eduation in many areas.

If there difference between technical training and a liberal arts education is where you want to go and how you want to get there then you must recognize that the realistic goals of someone who studies the sciences are superior to those of the liberal arts students.

If education in a particular field yields few new job prospects then what's the rationale behind mandating education in that area for students in other disciplines? If they want to learn it they will. If they don't want to learn it, they'll scrape by and forget it later anyway because they didn't give a fuck to begin with.

>>3098382
the main problem with this is specializing too early, like people who get undergrad degrees in things like marine biology. specialization should be a more graduate level decision, at least with science

>>3098988

Absolutely agree with this.

An undergrad degree should be a general science degree. The Masters thesis should be replaced with the undergrad format but specialized. PhD should introduce the thesis format.

>>3098988
at least for pure sciences, undergrad should just be concentration in bio, chem, physics, or geology, possibly doing undergrad research in a specialty you're interested in if you so choose. then a masters/PhD would have more specialized education with a thesis/dissertation. this is more or less the "best" path for a core science these days, but it should be mandatory

>>3098988
>>3092854


you dont know how right you are. unfortunately critical thinking is HARD it takes a lot of time to get good at it quickly - which is why witty people get laid a lot.


and school is a worker factory, why do you think the government pays for it, they get the money on the back end via loans and taxation - FOREVER

>>3098988
you bring up marine sciences. the problem with marine sciences is that its extremely interdisciplinary. i agree that for marine biology, an undergrad in bio is the best way to go, but for physical, chemical, or biological oceanography, doing it all for a masters degree is extremely challenging. some of my classes undergrad for physical oceanography were math up to linear algebra, biology, marine biological systems, buch of stuff on algae (mostly forams), analytic chemistry, geology, geochemistry, earth systems, a bunch of physics classes, physics of motion, physics of waves, physical dynamics in ocean systems, and a bunch of law-related classes to learn how to read and understand legal stuff. the classes i took for my masters before starting my thesis were pretty much more advanced versions of these classes

tl;dr, excellent point but its situational

I would like to do more critical thinking, but most people disagree with whatever I have to say. Why should I be bothered to keep giving an opinion that nobody wants to hear? Oh well, here's hoping things change when I hit upper-level classes. (They probably won't.)

It also sucks being a person who is more well-rounded then specialized. I'm not particularly terrible at stuff, it's just that I'm not great at it, either. And it feels terrible knowing that I'll have to sacrifice my well-roundedness in order to be compatible with whatever job I get. Feels bad man.

>>3099129
Anyone actually capable of critical thinking won't simply disagree with you as much as tell you their view and argue the finer points.

>>3099153
While I agree with you, that hasn't been my experience. For the most part the majority of people I have a disagreement with simply disagree and tell me I'm wrong. Then I have the occasional friend who does JUST that. Sadly one of the few friends I have that does that is a douchebag of the highest caliber.

>>3096651
totally with you on including logic in basic education
covers everything from identifying, comprehending, and creating sound reasoning in any subject, cutting out nonsense, thinking independently and critically
it refines knowledge of what's relevant and irrelevant
reliable inferences create clarity that guides people through complex tasks, cuts down tremendously on the difficulty of understanding structured arguments and taking standardized tests
public schools are retarded not to teach it
but school teachers are horrible idiots when it comes to students proving them wrong with basic logic, which is probably why most retards now think critical thinking is reading a lot and writing in 50 pages what can be written better in 1 or 2, and anyone thinks Women's Studies is a respectable course of study

>>3092752
>mfw math majors think they are the shit
>implying anything other than calculation will make you money

Life story of a math major
>apply to a high paying job
>get beaten out by a finance major or engineer