Funny how folks joke about the students like me who were shunted into “Physics for Poets” classes, you know, like we couldn’t hack it with the hard stuff, and it rarely occurs to anyone that the inverse—truly remedial coursework—might also be necessary in the age of Peak STEM.

I’m not talking about “here’s some amazing ethics problem as a side dish to your p-sets.” I mean that the narrow organization around STEM for young people allows whole forms of analysis to languish and atrophy in their minds:

Namely: the work of rhetoric and argument, the language of symbols, the operations of culture, the vicissitudes of history. Professors like me are forced to start over, to start at the very beginning, with STEM-optimized young people.

Classes like: Critical Theory Toolbox for the Quantification Obsessed. The Case for Poetic Persuasion for Utilitarians. Introduction to Knowledge and Power.

And let me be perfectly clear that it's not the students' fault. These are cultural and pedagogical messages baked into their early growth, the ones they receive from a host of elders.