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Arif Ishaq's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/arif
Bio: Have slept too long. Got woken up by the events of Genoa. Have been trying to figure out what the world is really all about ever since. May have a better idea now, but am still trying to ... (More)

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Thou shalt not reason

By Arif Ishaq at Feb 20, 2009

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While having lunch in the company mess, one of my colleagues, who is trying to get himself a degree in Psychology, commented on how annoying and boring his next exam would be. It has something to do with sociology and he has to practically cram into his head a huge amount of statistical data on things such as gender discrimination, racism, job opportunities.

Why do you need to remember these figures? Wouldn't it be enough to say there are certain trends and that you know where to get  the figures? No, it won't do. It reminds me of the excellent work "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt. He claims, and I agree, that the whole education system is designed to beat the spirit of reasoning out of you. You do what you are told to do and you don't ask questions. You even grow to support it becuase if you can do it, you go ahead and the others who can't, or refuse to, stay behind. Then you can think of yourself as the bright guy who did it and claim that it is only fair since you are smarter than others.

I commented that the exams boring and useless content was similar to what we did at work. A hefty 80% of what we did, if we were ever allowed to reason, we would never accept to do. There was a general laugh. Only 80%?

I get the same feeling when I try to help my daughter with her maths problems. She won't accept my explanations because "the teacher said it another way". On one occasion I managed to get her to reason it out. Next test in the class, she did the way I had taught her to but the teacher gave her a lower grade because "that's not the way it had been taught in school". Now she has learnt not to think for herself and just learn the "teacher's method" by heart. Incidentally, as Jeff notes in his work, the teachers insist on testing the kids with twists and tricks and not with the basic understanding.

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Amys_pic_of_me

i feel ya

By McGehee, Michael at Feb 25, 2009 07:12 AM

i have this conversation with others. a friends aunt was a teacher and a bit of a rebel and she is no longer a teacher for it. what she did to lose her job was teach kids to think; to learn how to find the facts rather than regurgitate formulas and what they are told to remember.

i had similar feelings in school. i felt there was this conditioning process via dubious rules. you are given information to remember for testing and once testing is done you could purge the information required to be remembered.

this really hurts in the sciences. it is really sad that folks like neil degrasse tyson are touring the country not to discuss science, but to explain what it is and how the scientific method works and so on.

i remember richard feynman once said in a lecture that music and poems dont sing science because the artists dont know how to read it, and that because he had to give lectures to explain it that that was proof we dont live in an scientific age.

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Amys_pic_of_me

Re: i feel ya

By McGehee, Michael at Feb 25, 2009 07:18 AM
the feynman quote: Our poets do not write about [the value of science]; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers, so you are reduced to hearing -- not a song or a poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age. Perhaps one of the reasons is that you have to know how to read the music. For instance, the scientific article says, perhaps, something like this: "The radioactive phosphorus content of the cerebrum of the rat decreases to one-half in a period of two weeks." Now, what does that mean? It means that phosphorus that is in the brain of a rat (and also in mine, and yours) is not the same phosphorus as it was two weeks ago, but that all of the atoms that are in the brain are being replaced, and the ones that were there before have gone away. So what is this mind, what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes! That is what now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago -- a mind which has long ago been replaced. This is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms, to note that the thing which I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance. The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, then go out; always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.

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Re: Thou shalt not reason

By Conroy, Mark at Feb 21, 2009 10:38 AM

I agree wholeheartedly with you. I do my best to teach students to reason problems, but it's often a losing battle. <br />

<br />
I'm going to start a "Teaching Tips" secton on my blog to encourage same. Hopefully it'll grow.

www.markconroy.net/blog

 

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Cat

By Cat, Tolstoys at Feb 20, 2009 20:52 PM

Hi Arif,

The sustainers have formed a new group to work together on site ideas, community building, and other stuff.

Z Consumer Council

Check out Jon's Blog for a project we're working on to build community.

Hope to see you there!

--Cat

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