Why the traditional liberal arts are still relevant to engineering education

Summary form only given as follows. “Everyone in society should develop, learn, discover, create, and invent the most effective and beneficial [problem solving techniques]. In the end, the engineering method is related in fundamental ways to human problem solving at its best.” Thus Billy Vaughn Koen, arguing that everyone is at least potentially an engineer. Without denying this claim-or the similar claim that nonengineers in our society would benefit greatly from learning something, even something technical, about engineering-I argue here that the traditional liberal arts, if taught rightly as a basis for lifelong learning, are still the best way to begin the education of creative young would-be engineers. The reason is that engineers, and all other creative problem solvers, need to know how to write, think, and speak clearly; how to use mathematics, including the old techniques of theorem proving as well as new computer techniques, to do so; how to influence or persuade others (especially those with whom they disagree on controversial issues); how to “get carried away” (appropriately but effectively) by the passions and emotions that persuade others; and, finally, how to see the relationship between their studies and what traditional humanists have called “the order of the universe”. Since, unfortunately, almost no one in our high schools or colleges today is doing any of this effectively, engineering programs may have to devise their own courses and techniques for doing so