I must study politics and war ...

In a May 12, 1780 letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams wrote a little about the beauty of France, but then explained that he didn’t have time to pursue them as he wished:

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

First of all, I should point out that just because our second President wrote this, doesn’t mean his point is correct, assuming we can figure out his point at all. Nevertheless, I think it’s a pretty interesting two sentences.

The surface meaning is quite obvious. Adams must work hard in France in order to secure free and peaceful existence for the independent American colonies. This is a sacrifice he makes, not only for his own sons, but for all sons of America.

Notice how Adams originally wrote “Painting and Poetry,” but then he crossed it out because he had a better thought. Originally, he just thought to say that his sons would be able to do fun stuff. But then he probably came to his senses and realized that, even in France, only the rich got to enjoy all of the culture. In fact, his sons have to study subjects with practical commercial value so that his grandchildren have the freedom to indulge in luxury activities such as the study of painting and poetry. (Philosophy is, apparently, considered a practical subject.)

Even back in the 1700s, we see that study of art was considered a more fun thing to study than mathematics or commerce. Have times really changed all that much? I think what has changed is that Adams assumed that his grandchildren would study painting and poetry as a hobby and not because they expected to earn money doing that. Adams considered the study of painting and poetry to be a luxury, and not a way to prepare the student for employment. And that is where things are different today. There is a great sense of entitlement among our nation’s most intelligent youth. They expect to study fun stuff, and then they expect that someone will give them a job because they studied fun stuff.

I got the idea for this blog post from a recent NY Times article about how “in tough times, the humanities must justify their worth.” Someone quoted Adams in the article’s reader comments.

The comments are a very annoying to read. The majority of them are written by typical over-educated NY Times readers outraged that employers don’t value a degree in the humanities.

A lot of pro-humanities people have some notion that humanities develop “critical thinking skills,” but there is no evidence that this is so. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone could develop a test for “critical thinking skills,” and then employers could give this test to people and hire those with the highest scores? I bet the same liberals touting “critical thinking skills” would be outraged by this testing idea, for the usual reasons which liberals hate objective testing.

Comments

[sabril]

Personally, I did not learn how to think critically until I went to law school. To me, critical thinking means looking at the facts objectively, dispassionately applying one's knowledge, intelligence, and common sense to those facts, and following wherever those things take you. Even if it's to a place that's uncomfortable.

In my opinion, college humanities (generally) teaches the exact opposite of critical thinking. You start with a few basic postulates which are a matter of faith, and then you spin, twist, or ignore the facts as necessary to conform your conclusions to the dogma. You then tell yourself that you are thinking critically.

[Brandon Berg]

"...in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine."

Heh. Did anyone else catch the unintended double-entendre in "porcelaine?"

[J. Hornblower]

"(Philosophy is, apparently, considered a practical subject.)"

In the 18th century, what was called philosophy is not the same subject we would call philosophy today. Philosophy was a much more general term back then, and encompassed many more fields.

What we would consider "science" today was covered by the term "philosophy" or sometimes "natural philosophy" back then.

[Peter]

Not that anyone today would care in the least about what Adams said. That's why liberal arts colleges, including the ultimate form of liberal arts known as law schools, are bursting at the seams, even as engineering schools are empty.

[Josh]

I must be a disappointment then, as I have spent my life studying politics, war, and the law.

Joshua E. Adams, USMC, Esq.

[Ming]

I am one of the many students who go into college and was duped with all the bullshit about how studying the humanities help us gain wisdom or better understand our humanity. I still think humanities do illuminate some questions of existence, but the way classes are conducted in universities don't. Professors and students - I know I'm making an assertion here - are fooling themselves when they think that through "Great Books" classes, they can turn students into wise sages. Besides, the professors I have encountered didn't even make that an objective; the aim of such classes is usually to "educate" students what each book is about, with very little evaluation or analysis.

I think the difference is, some students go in and get infected by the dangerous humanities-is-great virus; others go in and realize that humanities departments are really the department of ponzi schemes. (But some humanities fields, most notably philosophy, do not fall under this criticism.)

I agree with sabril (9:50pm) that "college humanities (generally) teaches the exact opposite of critical thinking". My class had a reflection session at the end of last semester. Guess what reasons my classmates gave for taking the selective year-long humanities sequence? "I think we can now be more conversant and not be embarassed during cocktail parties in the future." No one, including the 6 professors there, questioned that thought! There are also people who comforted themselves with this: "I'm so glad I'm taking supposedly one of the hardest course in this university." Since when has difficulty become the measure of education value?

I switched out of the class immediately the next semester, and never looked at humanities education in the same light again. It has the potential to be really good, but that is just an ideal. Humanities classes in real life is far from the impression given in movies such as "Dead Poets Society".

I'm not sure how state universities work, but here's another thought: Americans should campaign for humanities departments in public universities be reduced to dust. Students can still take classes, but they must pay using their own funds.

Public money should be used to fund public goods, and science/engineering comes most easily to mind. It is not appropriate for common resource to be used for funding/subsidizing uncommon good that is the preserve of a select "elite" few. I might go further and say that state universities shouldn't even allow students the option to be humanities major, but there might be overriding political/"democratic" concerns.

Meanwhile, I can only wait for the end of this semester, after which I will most probably switch to engineering. Social sciences and humanities classes in general are extremely subjective, and I have suffered quite a bit from the whims and fancies of professors and graduate students. (Maybe I am fooling myself). I also doubt that some graduate students even deserve to be teaching me when I constantly spot flaws in their reasoning and had to point them out during classes in the most polite manner. (I know this is really arrogant but again I have tried to assess it from an impartial perspective.)

As much as I like to learn about philosophy and politics (I had toyed with the idea of government or public policy), and as much as I like to think that universities are the bastion of knowledge and inquiry, as a student in among the most selective of universities, I am exasperated by how much students here don't think, and how much professors here let this be. The reality is simply far, far behind their reputation.

Well, I guess I just have to accept the fact that I have to endure my next 3.5 years... =| I shouldn't even be blogging this, as it takes up my precious grade-grubbing time. When everybody around you studies hard to secure that A and not care about anything else, too bad you have to join in or risk being seen as academically-underperforming.

[CC01]

"A lot of pro-humanities people have some notion that humanities develop “critical thinking skills, but there is no evidence that this is so.” (Half Sigma)

You are absolutely correct. In fact, I find humanities people to be least likely to have critical thinking skills. People with BA's in Lesbian Literature are usually about as open minded as the most hardcore neo-Nazi.

Because of political correctness you now see more people with degrees in humanities or the social sciences working in corporate America. There are even special positions that were invented for NAMs or humanities/social science people. These positions were necessary becuase they couldn't find enough NAMs that could work in the useful fields of industry (accounting, finance, operations, marketing).

Whenever you see job titles like "Inter-organizational communications director" or "Diversity consultant" or "Equal Opportunity Representative" you know that these positions were developed to prevent lawsuits.

Firms know that these positions are a waste of money but the opportunity cost of not having them is much greater. Firms need a certain number of NAMs on board and in leadership positions so they bring in NAMs with degrees in sociology, African American studies, or Womyn's literature to fill them. These "specialists" tend to be totalitarian by nature and can barely put together their PowerPoint presentations on "Racism in the Workplace."

Anyway, this was an excellent post. Keep up the good work Half Sigma.

[michael vassar]

Conservatives and liberals both in practice fail to use objective testing.
Complain about this when banks and consulting firms start using SATs instead of career tracks. Till then, disdain for the objective is equal opportunity, but disdain for intelligence, that's uniquely for the party of Palin.

[Jim Beam]

“in tough times, the humanities must justify their worth.”

Best news I've heard all my life. I can see the humanities sticking around at the elite and ivy leagues but drastically curtailed at the lower tier schools and community colleges.

People complain about "octo-mom" living off of the taxpayer dole but what about Humanities professors?

[Steve]

I run a private equity firm now and hire employees mostly from countries other than the United States.

By the way, some other web sites have a special status for those people that donate to keep the web site going - perhaps we can consider something of the sort here - just so those of us that can afford to chip in a little are encouraged to chip in and help pay the costs of this site.

Anyway, my point is, a big part of the reason why I hire people outside the USA is that I am allowed to use IQ tests. I run a pure meritocracy - I really don't care what "caste" people are from, how educated their parents are, how light or dark their skin is, for that matter i don't care if they are in a wheelchair or are athletic. I don't care if they are male or female. I don't care if they have a degree in the humanities or in the sciences. I just don't care. The work I need them to do is 100% related to data gathering, data interpretation, critical thinking, creative thinking.

In other countries I can hire the people with the very best brains and that works out really well for me.

In fact, I have found that many of the people I wind up hiring are from groups that have historically been oppressed in their native countries.

For example, there are some countries where women are generally not allowed to work outside the home - I have some women working for my firm remotely (pretty easy with high speed internet connection) and it works fine. In other countries I hire people in wheelchairs because there is discrimination against them

The point is that I am in business to make money, and my desire to make money leads me to voluntarily hire people from under represented, oppressed groups SO LONG AS THE PERSON IN QUESTION HAS A VERY VERY HIGH IQ

I truly don't care what degree someone has. the IQ tests tell me all I need to know.

I would very much like it if there was a thread here in which we discussed groups I should target for recruiting - I want to find people with spectacular high IQ - over 160 - who have good common sense about how American business works - and who have exceptionally good english language reading comprehension (no need to be able to speak english well and no need to be able to listen to english well - only need to be able to read english)

Anyway, if I was doing hiring in the USA the government would probably sue me for making applicants take IQ tests and only for hiring the people with the highest IQ - hiring for super high IQ is legal outside the US and much much cheaper to boot.

[ckdh]

Going back to the quote, isn't it possible that what John Adams meant was

"I must study Politicks and War " => first the country must be sovereign

"...that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, " => so that my sons can build the economy

"in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine." => so that their sons can enjoy arts&culture.

It makes sense: in order to enjoy culture, you first need to have economic means which first requires freedom. So yes, he implies that literature is useless in building the economy.

But here's the problem: since to be able to study literature you first need freedom and economic means, studying it becomes a class signal, ie, you can afford to study literature. Since in US education is a strong signal to your class (by generally the college you attended), a lot of students will go towards literature. The way to solve the problem is quite the reverse of what HS suggests: let's have literature everywhere, from CC to the ivy league. At Harvard by far the 2 most popular subjects are political science and economics, which give the impression that are on the humanities side (class) and are also somewhat useful.

[ckdh]

Steve,

what is the background of the people you hire? Do you find that the people with high IQ come from humanities or science&engineering?

best,

CKDH

[Ming]

I forgot to mention. Someone has already developed "critical thinking" tests, and they have been used widely for Oxford and Cambridge admissions purposes. Search for "Thinking Skills Assessment" Not sure how different that is from LSAT though.

http://www.admissionstests.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/adt/

http://www.cie.org.uk/qualifications/academic/uppersec/alevel/subject/aleveldetails?assdef_id=765_804

From my own experience too, tests like these have to have very strict time limits so that we measure students' "thinking efficiency".

[Steve]

I am responding to DKDH here

About half the people I hire have science and engineering degrees, one quarter have humanities, and one quarter have no degrees (ie college dropouts)

I actually find no correlation at all between what someone studied in school and how good a job they do for me. Some of the art majors do a better job than engineering majors.

Since most schools in third world (developing) countries are so corrupt, I don't even look at grades. I administer my own tests of IQ, tests of creativity, tests of common business sense, and hire based on the tests. It just works so much better than the alternative

I laugh when job applicants tell me how well connected their families are, how distinguished their family is in their country, how they did x, y, or z that carries prestige in their country. I could not possibly care less.

For me it is all about the ability of a person to read hundreds or thousands of pages of business documents and come to the right conclusions about those business documents. It is 100% reading comprehension, problem solving, creativity,m common sense.

I literally don't care if the people are deaf, are amputees, heve leprosy, are male, are female, are good looking or ugly. Pure pure meritocracy. I have given up on hiring in the USA since I have no freedom here.

Anyone I hire in the USA and then decide to terminate for non performance has the power to sue me for hundreds of silly reasons. The lawyers suck out so much economic value here that I will do as little hiring as possible in the USA

[Lover of Wisdom]

Just as ckdh point out: Hasn't anyone noticed that what Adams argues for as necessary to study, so that his sons, or the sons of America, can enjoy other subjects in subsequent years, are disciplines in humanities?

There is also a problem with the economic incentives for getting an undergraduate science degree (straight up science, not engineering). You can work your ass off for four years while your humanities classmates can get drunk constantly getting a B.S. in molecular biology or biochemistry and still not be much better off than your classmates studying something like communications. Many people with undergraduate science degrees burn out from the profession because the economic compensation is little for the amount of work put in.

[Dave R]

HalfSigma asks:
'Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone could develop a test for “critical thinking skills,” and then employers could give this test to people and hire those with the highest scores?'

Ha! At first I thought you were asking with a straight face, and I rushed to google to find a cite to the Supreme Court case effectively banning employers' use of IQ tests in hiring and promotion. When I went back to cut and paste the quote above I realized you must be setting up the answer. In short, yes, that would be wonderful indeed, but the Supreme Court has precluded IQ testing, and limited job testing to questions that directly relate to job performance.

http://www.personalityplus.net/is-employment-testing-legal.htm

The unintended consequence of this is that employers, knowing or sensing that IQ correlates highly with job performance across fields and even in menial work, began to use college degrees as rough proxies for the SAT scores needed to get into a particular college. (This does not preclude other factors such as old-boy networks justifying their own degrees, of course.) A college degree is a damned expensive way to get your IQ onto your resume, but for employers its entirely rational to use it rather than hire blind for a position that requires some intelligence, if not a four year degree. Steve Sailer at least, I think among others, has explicated this.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050417_college.htm

[HS: It is an overinterpration of the Grigg case to say this. The reason why IQ testing is so rarely used is that the conventional wisdom, promoted as truth by the left, is that IQ IS MEANINGLESS. Why would companies waste time with something meaningless, especially if it's legality is in doubt?]

[SFG]

I think the influence of Duke v Griggs is overstated, personally. Sure nobody's going to want to run afoul of the Affirmative Action Police, but is a high IQ really that helpful? Or maybe it's just the nerd cliff--it's helpful up to 120 or so, which after all is 90% of the population. That means that 90% of the population benefits from a higher IQ, and the negative effects of a 140 IQ are sort of like the problems of being 7 feet tall--too much of a good thing can be bad.

Yeah, philosophy included science in Adams' time, which used to be known as 'natural philosophy'. His point was more or less that the country had to first be sovereign and then build up its economy, as prior posters have said, but it does make a nice segue into the relative merits of various subjects.

[Kudzu Bob]

Normally I find myself in agreement with most of Half Sigma’s posts, as well as may of the follow-up comments. This is not one of those times.

My apologies for the following long quote from Mortimer Adler, who sets us straight on the matter:

“Isn't a liberal arts education a luxury that we can ill afford in today's world? Shouldn't our college students be studying physics, mathematics, and other sciences instead of philosophy, literature, and music? Don't we need young men and women trained in the sciences, not people who can make interesting conversation about ‘culture’? In short, is it possible for anyone to defend the value of liberal education now?

“Let us first be clear about the meaning of the liberal arts and liberal education. The liberal arts are traditionally intended to develop the faculties of the human mind, those powers of intelligence and imagination without which no intellectual work can be accomplished. Liberal education is not tied to certain academic subjects, such as philosophy, history, literature, music, art, and other so-called ‘humanities.’ In the liberal arts tradition, scientific disciplines, such as mathematics and physics, are considered equally liberal, that is, equally able to develop the powers of the mind.

“The liberal arts tradition goes back to the medieval curriculum. It consisted of two parts. The first part, the trivium, comprised grammar, rhetoric, and logic. It taught the arts of reading and writing, of listening and speaking, and of sound thinking. The other part, the quadrivium, consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (not audible music, but music conceived as a mathematical science). It taught the arts of observation, calculation, and measurement, how to apprehend the quantitative aspect of things. Nowadays, of course, we would add many more sciences, natural and social. This is just what has been done in the various modern attempts to renew liberal education.

“Liberal education, including all the traditional arts as well as the newer sciences, is essential for the development of top-flight scientists. Without it, we can train only technicians, who cannot understand the basic principles behind the motions they perform. We can hardly expect such skilled automatons to make new discovers of any importance. A crash program of merely technical training would probably end in a crash-up for basic science.

“The connection of liberal education with scientific creativity is not mere speculation. It is a matter of historical fact that the great German scientists of the nineteenth century had a solid background in the liberal arts. They all went thorough a liberal education which embraced Greek, Latin, logic, philosophy and history, in addition to mathematics, physics and other sciences. Actually, this has been the educational preparation of European scientists down to the present time. Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, and other great modern scientists were developed not by technical schooling, but by liberal education.

“... The aim of liberal education, however, is not to produce scientists. It seeks to develop free human beings who know how to use their minds and are able to think for themselves. Its primary aim is not the development of professional competence, although a liberal education is indispensable for any intellectual profession. It produces citizens who can exercise their political liberty responsibly. It develops cultivated persons who can use their leisure fruitfully. It is an education for all free men, whether they intend to be scientists or not.

“Our educational problem is how to produce free men, not hordes of uncultivated, trained technicians. Only the best liberal schooling can accomplish this. It must include all the humanities as well as mathematics and the sciences. It must exclude all merely vocational and technical training.”

For those of you who are still with me, I hope that you paid especially close attention to the closing sentence of the fifth paragraph. Adler could have also have added that P.A.M. Dirac by his own account benefited greatly from a classics-based education that no longer really exists.

Today’s so-called “humanities” are anything but humane, given how much time and energy feminists, social constructivists, multiculturalists, and so on invest in denying the very existence of human nature. We must drive them from power and regain our Classical heritage, and with it our full measure of human worth. That is the only thing that can save what remains to us of Western civilization.

[Half Sigma]

Kudzu Bob,

Law and Literature was the most useful class I took in law school.

Hahaha, critical thinking skills, yeah, right.

Lets just assume that most humanities students are left-wing and support illegal immigration (quite presumptuous, I know, but bear with me).

So if they had critical thinking skills, they would be able to objectively look at relevant yet inclusive data and, using sound reasoning and methodology, come to a conclusion which, using the steps mentioned before, they could easily defend in a debate.

Is it like that? Or will most humanities students, when cornered on the topic, counter with not-so-subtle implications of racism, character assassination, ad hominem attacks, arguments based on obfuscated, inaccurate and incomplete data, rounded off with a shotgun blast of buzzwords which they themselves can't quite define?

The only art that modern liberal arts teaches is the art of being a politician. Sucking up to superiors (professors), never questioning their ideologies for fear of retribution, and when put on the spot having to defend opinions they do not agree with with arguments they know are unsound.

Are liberal arts necessary? Yes. But in their modern incarnation? Absolutely not, quite to the contrary: They are actively harmful.

[Randy]

The transformation of colleges and universities into vocational training programs is a necessary and inevitable result of their democratization.

[Kudzu Bob]

Re "The transformation of colleges and universities into vocational training programs is a necessary and inevitable result of their democratization."

I wish I had said that. Because we cannot admit that only a fraction of the populace has the capacity to benefit from truly liberal education, it was been ruined for everybody. At best the colleges and universities now crank out like so many sausages uncultivated technicians and managers who understand nothing of their own civilization, which in leads to more and more democratization in all facets of life. And democracy as currently practiced is inimical to freedom and excellence. It promises to strangle the West.

Well, perhaps a Greater Depression will concentrate our minds, and thereby force a return to the fundamentals of what made America and Europe work.

Otherwise, as the poet Cavafy tells us, "Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating."

[Richard H]

The reason why the humanities suck today and produce people who get things the most wrong is for the same reason that theology sucks no matter how internally consistent it is. The presuppositions its based on (interchangibility of the genders, equality of classes & races, nurture over nature) are absurd.

I'm a humanities student, and 99% of the people I engage in conversation are believers in innate, biological equality between all people. Some of them are hostile to the alternative, but the majority have never even heard it except as something people believed in the dark ages like the earth being flat.

[Svigor]

"A lot of pro-humanities people have some notion that humanities develop “critical thinking skills,”"

Hilarious. In my experience, critical thinking is a value, not a skill. Or rather, the only reason I taught myself critical thinking is I was taught to value it by my father, who valued it far more than the Ten Commandments (he was a Christian). If it had been left up to my education (private and public school), I'd have gotten what everyone else gets - nothing.

Critical thinking and curiosity are dangerous to the establishment. In my case they led directly to ethno-nationalism.

[amir]

Palestinian counterpart: "I must study Sharia and Jihad so that my sons may kill themselves in suicide mission."

[Φ]

"Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone could develop a test for “critical thinking skills,” and then employers could give this test to people and hire those with the highest scores?:

Here is another critical thinking test:

http://www.insightassessment.com/home.html

I'm partial to this one because I supposedly tied the all-time high score.

[Steve Sailer]

John Adams' great-grandson Henry Adams became America's leading literary intellectual, so old John's plan worked out about as he had hoped.

Henry, however, was sore that the public wouldn't let a literary intellectual like him carry on the family tradition of being President. (Three generations later, Gore Vidal felt much the same way.)