I do sympathise with her, she wants to learn the stuff but it seems like nobody wants to get her up to speed. It would make a lot of sense to give her the answers to the questions, tough having done such sheets it's often of little use.
This is also where I point my finger as a warning. This will sound awfully arrogant but I think it's true. You can always pick up the essay subjects on your own if you studied STEM. You can't pick up math subjects if you focused on essay subjects.
I'm no expert on history or philosophy but I did read books on those subjects on my own, cover to cover. Biology and physics, superficially I can read them, but it ends where the interesting, current topics begin, or where the math gets important.
I have an engineering degree and even with that I find it hard to pick up any old math book and just read it. Math books seem to just not work that way, the density of information is on another level. You're often asked to immediately apply a newly learned concept in the next chapter. With a history or politics text there's a lot of words but it's not building up as much as across. If you don't get something the first time, it will come again.
Reading one history or politics text is table stakes. When studying the softer disciplines at a high level, you may well be expected to go through dozens of them in any given course, and be able to refer back accurately, compare and contrast, criticize, and where feasible develop these ideas. It's not trivial work, it can be just as hard as STEM.
I don't doubt that there is real hard work involved. You might even have to learn several languages to do this kind of thing.
The thing that the article seems to point towards is that you can do humanities by using your existing tools, basically reading and writing, and grinding.
With mathy things that grind is building a house of cards, very fragile while you're building it up.
I sort of agree with you, and had the same experiences, but I think the difference is of scale and expectations.
You can bullshit your way through a 1st, 2nd, maybe even 3rd year humanities essay with layman theories, and get a C+ or even a B-.
But they're humoring you - you won't get into grad school with those marks. And you won't be able to actually work in the field without ideas backed by the same academic rigor we expect from the scientists - understanding deeply the work of all your predecessors and contemporaries, and adding your own interpretations not gleamed off twitter.
Whereas if you try to join a math or sciences class you with the same attitude, you will just fail. You can barely pass, eek out a computer science degree, or even just drop out without one, then teach yourself all the practical skills, and build a career. I don't know how long that'll last, but it's definitely the case right now.
This is also where I point my finger as a warning. This will sound awfully arrogant but I think it's true. You can always pick up the essay subjects on your own if you studied STEM. You can't pick up math subjects if you focused on essay subjects.
I'm no expert on history or philosophy but I did read books on those subjects on my own, cover to cover. Biology and physics, superficially I can read them, but it ends where the interesting, current topics begin, or where the math gets important.
I have an engineering degree and even with that I find it hard to pick up any old math book and just read it. Math books seem to just not work that way, the density of information is on another level. You're often asked to immediately apply a newly learned concept in the next chapter. With a history or politics text there's a lot of words but it's not building up as much as across. If you don't get something the first time, it will come again.