Statistical outliers

During Thanksgiving break, I was hanging out with a group of friends when my friend’s mom asked us all what we were studying at school. My guy friend was the first to reply, “engineering.” The parents swooned and said things to the effect of, “Wow, you must be studying all of the time.” Then it was my turn. “I’m studying history,” I said, and they replied, “Oh, that’s fun,” where fun was clearly code for “easy.”

The subtext: Once again, because my degree has a B.A. behind it, I am not smart.
There seems to be a collective understanding that science and math courses are difficult, while arts and humanities courses are easy. Perhaps it’s because math and science classes are tracked, and therefore while I can take a lot of 400-level humanities courses without prerequisites, I would be hard-pressed to find a higher-level math class that allows me to do the same.

But the fact is when pursued on a certain level, there are challenging things about each discipline – things at which only people with experience and a certain set of skills can excel. Sure, I would be lost if I swapped homework with my physics friends, but I’m positive they wouldn’t fare so well on my 20-page history papers either.

Like many humanities majors, I enjoy science, math and economics. The thing is, I learned enough about computation to be able to deduce that someone like me pursuing a career in math and science is not the socially optimal outcome. Writing is what I am good at, and it is what I love. Specialization required me to forego numbers for the humanities, and I obliged. But now I am judged for that decision.

Science is great, and we need people who are well-versed in it to make our modern world turn. But what we need just as badly are the writers, artists, historians and journalists who can tell our number-obsessed friends when they have gone too far.

For example, it took a team of engineers to formulate the incendiary bombs that would kill thousands in World Wars I and II, while it only took one writer from Indiana to tell the world in “Slaughterhouse Five” that the mass killing of civilians was wrong.

Which are more intelligent or important: the engineers of the world or the Kurt Vonneguts?

Scientists are important and deserve praise, but so often that praise translates into a belittling of all things non-computational. We should not forget that it is the students of the humanities who will be responsible for thinking critically and writing cogently about what all of this innovation means for who we are as people.

There are different types of intelligence, and we need smart people of all talents and persuasions to excel in every type of career. So why do we continue to belittle people who don’t carry a calculator with them to class? If we aren’t careful, all of the disparaging comments like, “that’s fun” are going to add up to a net loss in potential.