My name is Jaime Muñoz and I am a fourth year Economics
student minoring in Film/TV/Digital Media.
My father works in an art gallery and I always took a keen
interest in paints, clay, colors and the like (ironically I am color-blind). I
initially came into UCLA thinking that I wanted to pursue a career in Optometry
being that I was fascinated by the mechanics of the eye. However, this quickly
changed when I joined a Business Fraternity on campus and was introduced to
careers that were “coveted,” “high-paying,” and “secure.” As a first-generation
college student, I was told secure=success because the ultimate goal would be
to have a job after graduation.
In Snow’s 1959 lecture, “The Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution,” (originally called “The Rich and the Poor”) he shares this idea that
there is a clear wall between intellectual and scientific individuals and each
group lack expertise in the opposite area. On the global scale, this absence of
balance results in socioeconomic divisions – the rich and the poor.
[Image 1: Quote from C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution"]
[Image 2: from C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution"]
Similarly to Snow and Professor Vesna, I too agree that
there needs to be an urgency for more collaborative efforts to see progress in
society.
[Image 3: Quote from Professor Vesna's "Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between"]
Although it may seem as if our society is destined for
failure seeing that the education system is modeled on industrialisation and
the UC system requires focus on one area by requiring student’s to select a
major, I have personally heard of people and entities realizing (or not
intentionally realizing) and addressing the flaw of the “Two Cultures.”
Case 1: Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is extremely competitive and the admissions board meticulously selects students who would contribute to a diverse classroom environment. If we look at the educational background for MBA Class of 2016, we see that there is a balanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) representation.
[Image 4: From Harvard Business School Class of 2016 Profile]
HBS is different from the "original" education system in that it gathers professionals who are in different stages of their lives, in different professional careers and have unique perspectives.
In conclusion, Brockman's idea to close the gap between the intellectual and the scientist (allowing the Third Culture to emerge) is possible, we could model HBS and encourage students from different universes (academic fields) to collaborate, challenge each other and create impact.
[Image 5: From RSA Animation]
Works Cited:
"Admissions Class Profile."
Http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/default.aspx. Harvard
Business School, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
Changing Education Paradigms. By Ken Robinson, Sir. Youtube. Royal Society of
Arts – RSA Animate, 14 Oct. 2010. Web.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?y=zDZFcDGpL4U>.
Brockman, John. “John Brockman: Matchmaking with Science and
Art.” Interview. Wired Magazine Mar. 2011: n. pag. Print.
Snow, Charles Percy. “The Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution.“ The Rede Lecture. Cambridge University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lecture.
Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being in
Between." Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 124. JSTOR. Web. 29 June
2014.
Hi Jaime, as a first generation college student, I absolutely understand your dilemma of choosing job security and your desire major. More than often, we are forced into making decision that can better provided for our family. In Snow's article, he points out the current education system has created a polarization between the science and non-science scholars, and he also connected the two cultures concept to the division between the wealth gap of the rich and the poor. As a sociology major, I have read an article that brings out a similar idea, it's written by a Brazilian sociologist called Paulo Freire, the article is the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire criticize the way teaching is done, is reinforcing the oppression for the poor people as well as the wealth gap, he urges students to break out the constraints and critically examine the education system. To me, I think Freire and Snow both pointed out the problem of how culture, society, education, economics are all interrelated, just like science and arts, they seems separable but also correlates to each other at some point, and this is why challenging the status quo is important for students like us!
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