Scott Adams Should Take a History Course

Scott Adams is famous for writing a satirical cartoon that makes a number of astute, funny observations about life in the modern office environment. He also now has a rather well-read blog, which I've enjoyed reading on occasion. A post of his from last week though caught my eye for its particular obtuseness, a characteristic I hadn't often associated with Adams.

h/t andrew sullivan

The post is about what Adams calls the "Education Complexity Shift," which is short-hand for his observation that life in the modern world has become very quickly very complex, too quickly for the U.S's education system to keep up. Thus our education system is failing most of our students (the "B Students" Adams calls them) by not providing the kinds of basic practical education that they're really going to need in life to help them succeed, and is instead focusing on topics that most students will forget quickly like history, calculus, trigonometry, etc. Adams wants schools to focus on more "practical" topics like teaching students how to start a business, or how to compare financial documents, because presumably these are the kinds of skills that businesses are looking for. Adams doesn't have a problem with history or trigonometry per se, he thinks they're certainly better than teaching nothing, just not better than practical subjects that teach "marketable" skills. But lets take his argument piece by piece. Here is Adams first point

I'll begin by stipulating that any field of study is helpful in training a student's mind to become more of a learning machine. Two hundred years ago, when life itself was simple (feed the horse, plant the corn) you needed to make school artificially complicated to stretch a student's mind. Once a student's mind was expanded, stressed, stretched and challenged, it became a powerful tool when released back into the relatively simple "real world."

What's interesting is that Adams while maligning history's practical value in today's "complex" society decides to begin his post by just making up his own history to justify his argument for why history is not particularly valuable for most people to know in the modern world. Yes, back in the good old days in early 19th century America when life was so simple, when feeding horses and picking corn were our only concerns. It's totally reductionist. The early 19th Century wasn't really less complex than our lives today. We were fighting wars in Libiya just like today. America was expanding rapidly westward and usurping land from Native Americans as they went. Not what one would consider an uncomplicated endeavor. Slavery was a very present evil in American society, which of course did not complicate society at all (wink wink). Women were denied equal standing with men, again not a complication at all. Oh, and I almost forgot, the U.S. was trying out this little known experiment called representative democracy, which had never succeeded before, except in some tiny Greek city states 2000 years ago, and that could really only be considered a minor complication, I mean James Madison just made slight mention in the Federalist Papers of the fact that what the U.S. was doing was totally revolutionary in every sense of the word and might very well fail, though he was optimistic. Basically early 19th Century America was pretty freaking complicated, and there was a lot for a person to learn to succeed in it (imagine being an ambitious woman in 1811, just imagine it for a second, and basically every thing that Scott Adams says in this paragraph turns to dust), so this idea that all of a sudden we've arrived in 2011 in an uncomplicated world is a total reductionist invention that has no support from the real world that Adams presumes to know so much about. The world has always been full of complications, lets just accept that as our base reality as human beings. It's why we're so lucky to be an adaptable species. Our systems of education are to my mind best when they enhance our abilities to adapt, but we'll get to that more as we move further into Adam's argument. On to his second point.

The Education Complexity Shift observes that the real world has become more complicated than school. Imagine trying to teach a young child how to do the routine adult task of planning the most efficient trip by plane, or getting a mortgage, or investing. How about planning a wedding? How many pieces of software do you use for your job?

His point here is clearly that these are all important things that kids need to know how to do but which are never (or at least very rarely) actually taught in school, and it would be better if they were taught them because unlike history or calculus these things will actually be used in almost every person's day to day life with measurable consequences if not used correctly (e.g. lost time, money etc.). But while I'd agree that it's useful to know each of these things, I still think that it's much more important to learn how to think clearly and learn how to reason well and learn how to learn well, and learn to treat others with respect and dignity, which is what education is supposed to teach us. So these things that Adams mentioned like finding the most efficient flight seem trivial by comparison as each one can be overcome if the prerequisites of clear, critical thinking, learning to learn, and treating others with respect are first met. Let's move on to Adams closing argument

Today, life is more complicated than school. That means the best way to expand a student's mind is by teaching more about the practical complexities of the real world and less about, for example, the history of Europe, or trigonometry.

I'll pause here to acknowledge that both history and trigonometry are useful for students who plan to become historians or rocket scientists. For the other 99.9% of the world, little from those classes will be retained. The only benefit from much of what is taught in school is generic training of the mind, and for that we now have a better and more complicated option: the real world.

Some of you will argue that learning history is important on a number of levels, including creating a shared culture, understanding other countries, and avoiding the mistakes of the past. I agree. And if the question was teaching history versus teaching nothing, history would be the best choice every time. But if you compare teaching history with, for example, teaching a kid how to compare complicated financial alternatives, I'd always choose the skill that has the most practical value. You get all the benefit of generic mental training plus some real world benefits if any of it is retained.

I'd still teach history in school. But I think the world will survive if some of the details are skipped to make room for more relevant coursework.

Well you see it's interesting because in college I majored in History and German Literature and now I work as a budget analyst (go figure) and yet I've still maintained the ability to pull apart and critique reductionist historical arguments (which by the way comes in very handy in analyzing budgets).

I see Adams' point about the added benefits of teaching kids how to do things like compare complex financial alternatives, and I think that such lessons can and should be made a greater part of current curriculum, but I am absolutely not a believer in dismantling our liberal arts education system in favor of a dramatically greater emphasis on practical education. You see, this goes back to my point about adaptability. I think that school should focus on developing skills like critical thinking, reading comprehension, logical reasoning, verbal communication, written communication, etc. that would be applicable to any job. There should be practical elements to each of those skills that are taught, but by providing a good general base of skills to our students we can ensure that they have the ability to change careers both when its suits their interests and when its a necessity. I got the job I have now because I could write clearly, think clearly, and communicate clearly. I happened to learn that studying history and German literature and a whole lot of other stuff. Those were the things that interested me, and that made acquiring the skills I just mentioned a whole lot easier to stomach. You have to provide kids with enough opportunities to spark their imagination, and that includes teaching them a lot of different things, not just practical things, in order to teach them the core skills you know they'll need. In an op ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, Adams mentions that for him in college that meant having the opportunity to try his hand at entrepreneurship. For some other kid it might be learning trigonometry, or it might be physics, or it might be music, or basketball, or whatever. The point is there are a lot of different ways for a person to learn. We shouldn't be too focused on practical application from the start. We need to get kids attention first. I don't presume to think that that's easy, but I do know many people have tried this before, and perhaps the best place to start is by taking a look at history, the repository of all our mistakes, a pretty good place to learn about literally anything you want to know.