It’s a phrase I think I heard often when I was in school. It was the reason I was expected to take courses I had no interest in and couldn’t imagine how they’d benefit my career. It was the reason I didn’t have the time to pursue other courses I might have liked to…

The “well-rounded student”.

This might seem strange or hypocritical to anyone who knows me. I love reading and primarily focus on educational works of non-fiction. I love science and technology in all it’s forms and have an appreciation for a number of the humanities. So where is the disconnect?

Maybe it’s just poor execution of a good idea. Or maybe it’s a problem of the motivation behind the requirement. Or maybe anything. I’m not sure it’s worth speculating how we got here. What I know is simple: I knew I was going into a STEM field and found myself taking courses about art and politics. I think instead I should have been learning the philosophy and history of science. I’m just one example.

How is it possible we have so many “well-rounded students” who don’t know the history of their field? There are people who spend their entire careers (and who are successful in their profession) without knowing the names of the people whose shoulders they stand on. How can anyone be confident in their work if they aren’t familiar with the work they are building on? How can anyone learn from the mistakes of a past they don’t know?

Perhaps if the history of science were a requirement for STEM fields people would be more aware of how stubborn and irrational a field it can be. It makes sense. Science is a human pursuit and people are often stubborn and irrational. That isn’t the picture painted of it though. Perhaps if it were, we’d be more able to resist this natural affliction and more ready to doubt ourselves. Maybe we’d be better prepared to constantly reimagine our world in the pursuit of truth.

If only people knew how hard Joseph Lister had to work to convince his colleagues that microscopic organisms were the cause of disease. If only they knew how he put as much effort into that as into the discovery itself. If only they knew the difficulty he faced for standing outside the popular beliefs of his field (surgery) at the time.

… Maybe they would be more ready today to accept that fish don’t exist as a scientific concept. Its something we’ve known for some time. Yet few are aware and the news is often ill received. The lungfish is more closely related to the cow than the salmon. What we call fish are a collection of often barely related species that converged on the same adaptive traits.

Maybe the well-rounded student doesn’t need to take art or politics if they’re in a STEM field. Maybe the well-rounded STEM student needs to be aware of the humanities counterparts in their field? Maybe humanities students need more familiarity with the practical application of their field in their STEM counterparts?

Why is it that I heard more “answers” in my STEM courses than I did questions? Question is the heart of scientific inquiry. We know much less about the world, the universe than most people seem willing to admit. I can hardly blame them when science is so often presented as a collection of facts instead of a rapidly changing discipline founded on wonder and curiosity.

The more I read and learn the less I’m convinced I know. That seems a healthy place to be intellectually. I’m not even sure if objectivity or empirical measurement is truly possible. That’s where I’m at right now and it’s exhilarating. Facts are boring, aren’t guaranteed to be facts forever and might just be forcing the brightest minds we have a bit dimmer.

I am desperately afraid the well-rounded student doesn’t think this way. I’m even more afraid that’s because they have well-rounded professors and mentors.

I think I’d like to propose retiring the “well-rounded student” as a phrase, a concept. We could replace it instead with “breadth-focused education” or something similar, and focus on uniting STEM and humanities studies within a field. While the two might seem the same at a glance, I think the first lacks direction and practicality.

I don’t want to be well-rounded. I want to be, perhaps paradoxically, pointed and wide-ranging. I want to exalt in the rough edges of my field.