This boston.com article goes back to 2009, but makes an excellent case for the necessity of "soft skills" in the business world, even for engineering and technology students. It's probably as effective as any article I've seen in explaining why the Ameribotics' mission includes a broad range of arts, humanities, business and people skills rather than simple STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills.
What do you think? Does our education of youth need to be more specialized and targeted to meet the demands of the 21st century, like education systems in India and China? Or does it need to be more broad and diverse and focused on the whole person? Certainly, there are strong arguments on either side of that discussion.
I don't think there's anything wrong with specialization -- We all have God-given talents that it would be stupid to waste... But, I also think it's important that students are given every possible chance to develop their weaker skills -- at least to make them not a liability. So an artist learns how to balance her books, an engineer learns how to speak in front of an audience, etc. Very often a child who is naturally strong in art is literally "afraid" of math; and vice-versa, a good math student hates/is "afraid" of language arts. A good education should balance these things out -- at least as much as they can be.
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