The Case for Computer Science in a Liberal Education
We both know that every department would like to have one or two courses required of all freshmen. Where would the Department of English be without English Composition, or Mathematics without Calculus? So I don’t blame you for being skeptical when you hear me, a professor of Computer Science, making the case for such a requirement for my discipline. But hear me out.
The purpose of requiring students to take a broad range of courses apparently unrelated to their major is to ensure that all students are educated in the context of their culture. The “liberal” in “liberal education” is not a political leaning, nor is it a nod towards the “liberal arts.” It is “liberal” as in “liberty,” and “liberal education” is the basis that all free men and women must share.
Originally, this was understood to be the trivium and quadrivium. The trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—made up basic education, roughly equivalent to a modern high school degree. The quadrivium—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—was the foundation for advanced study, or roughly equivalent to our college requirements. Students were then required to pursue in-depth study in their chosen discipline, or what today we call a “major.”
The world is different now, but not too much. The specific courses have changed, but we still require all students to learn basic skills composition, mathematics, science, and the arts. We have a wider choice of majors in our colleges today. In those days, majors were restricted to theology or philosophy. Other disciplines, like art and music, were learned not at a university, but in apprenticeship to a master. And more practical trades, like blacksmithing, were learned from one’s father.
The original colleges were far free men, rich men who were free from work. Without the need to learn a trade, they were free to steep themselves in their culture. The biggest difference between the colleges of today and those of yesterday is that colleges today are seen as the road to a good job. It is in college that we learn professional skills, like engineering or health care. Even today’s trades, like plumbing or auto repair, are taught in community colleges.
This expanded role has resulted in confusion at our colleges. Students who see college as nothing more than a ticket to a good job often chafe at having to take courses in history or art. What do those have to do with business or engineering? And the response of professors and administrators often misses the point: to become well-rounded, to enrich life, to learn about other people. Those are all good points, but they miss the goal of a liberal education: to steep the students in their culture, giving them a context for the rest of their education.
That is what the trivium and quadrivium were designed to do, and that is still what a liberal education does. Mathematics? It is the language of science. And science is the way we understand the world around us, the way our culture comes to grip with our universe. Art? Literature? Music? History? These are direct expressions of our culture. This is why those subjects still form the basis for a liberal education. And this is why computer science should be a part of it.
Computers today are embedded in the fabric of our culture. That is not just to say that word processors are used for everyday correspondence, or that spreadsheets are used to hold key business information. It is that computers are used to understand our world, to understand ourselves, and, increasingly, to define what’s possible. Computers, in other words, are the driving force behind our modern culture.
Take science, for example. Since Newton’s time, science has been our way to understand the world. And since his time, science has been expressed through mathematics. It is no coincidence that Newton is remembered today mostly for understanding gravity and inventing calculus. He had to invent calculus to see how his law of gravity described the movement of the moon. But today’s scientific theories are just as likely to be expressed in computer code as in mathematical formulas. Global warming is understood mostly as a result of computer models. The human genome was decoded ahead of schedule through the use of clever computer programs. Pharmaceuticals are tested on computer simulations before they are given to test animals or humans.
Or consider popular psychology. We speak of computer viruses, as if computers got sick the same way humans do. And we speak of human behavior in computer terms. Are you busy? Then you should multitask. Did you forget your anniversary? You should optimize your information store. Are you lonely? Then you should network. Do you want to to quit smoking? Then you should reprogram yourself.
Or think about what’s possible. We went to the moon largely without the help of computers. Today, we need computers to drive our cars. Try to get a loan that doesn’t fit into the bank’s computer form, and you will find how computers define what’s can and cannot be done. Computers make some things easier than others, much easier. As we let computers into more parts of our world, only those easy things will be permitted.
If you really want to understand our world, you must understand what computers can and cannot do. And you can only learn that if you study computer science. That is why computer science must be a part of liberal education. A course in basic computer literacy or history is not sufficient, but a course that teaches how computers work, how they are programmed, and what they can do should be required. That will prepare students to understand how today’s science works, how today’s news organizations process information, how our place in today’s world is defined. In other words, it will help students to understand our culture. And that is what a liberal education is meant to do.
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