Oct 19·edited Oct 19Liked by Dr Ferdinand Santos III
Excellent, as usual. Thanks to your work I finally have an understanding of the issues. I too find the "cult of memorization'' and the "cult of guessing" beneath our intellectual duty. It is such like corruption that has led to the abuses we see. Perhaps idea systems have a thousand year life span, starting off as a reaction the the corruption of a previous system but becoming corrupt by orthodoxy themselves as history progresses. Yesterday I tried to find out what a fuel cell is and how a fuel cell works and do you think I did? Of course not. Plenty of stuff to memorize and guess about in multiple choice tests but no explanation. I am getting to the stage now where I question almost anything that science claims to be true simply because it does.
Thanks David. Yes the school system is built to push loads of information, force ingestion and memorisation, and regurgitation. There is no time, nor any interest in critical thinking or debate. The premise seems to be that 'everyone knows' that 'xyz' is right. So let's imbibe that and move on. Euclidean geometry is accepted as an 'axiom' or postulate for the good reason it can be proven quite quickly. That does not mean that 'axioms' in general are 'truths'. I know that some uni courses I took eons ago are still pushing the same material, when that material is wrong and irrelevant.
Re fuel cells (or the cells in our body, our 80 billion neurons, our receptors etc), if the information is relevant, it can be explained fairly simply (at least the core of the material). Yet the mandarins want to soak the students in complexity and maths (if it is science related) where obfuscation and mis-information (in the real sense of the word) can be conducted. The student is then forced to memorise without really knowing what or why. It is almost at the point where we have to (re) educate ourselves.
Indeed. Our son can solve a differential equation but has not the faintest clue what it is for or why it is important. That there no proof that the earth is moving is something you would have thought we would all have been taught first. No?
Science has become a corrupt orthodoxy where repetition and memorization replace understanding as the method of education. It's a shame. It has to change. Science has ceased to be science.
Excellent, as usual. Thanks to your work I finally have an understanding of the issues. I too find the "cult of memorization'' and the "cult of guessing" beneath our intellectual duty. It is such like corruption that has led to the abuses we see. Perhaps idea systems have a thousand year life span, starting off as a reaction the the corruption of a previous system but becoming corrupt by orthodoxy themselves as history progresses. Yesterday I tried to find out what a fuel cell is and how a fuel cell works and do you think I did? Of course not. Plenty of stuff to memorize and guess about in multiple choice tests but no explanation. I am getting to the stage now where I question almost anything that science claims to be true simply because it does.
Thanks David. Yes the school system is built to push loads of information, force ingestion and memorisation, and regurgitation. There is no time, nor any interest in critical thinking or debate. The premise seems to be that 'everyone knows' that 'xyz' is right. So let's imbibe that and move on. Euclidean geometry is accepted as an 'axiom' or postulate for the good reason it can be proven quite quickly. That does not mean that 'axioms' in general are 'truths'. I know that some uni courses I took eons ago are still pushing the same material, when that material is wrong and irrelevant.
Re fuel cells (or the cells in our body, our 80 billion neurons, our receptors etc), if the information is relevant, it can be explained fairly simply (at least the core of the material). Yet the mandarins want to soak the students in complexity and maths (if it is science related) where obfuscation and mis-information (in the real sense of the word) can be conducted. The student is then forced to memorise without really knowing what or why. It is almost at the point where we have to (re) educate ourselves.
Indeed. Our son can solve a differential equation but has not the faintest clue what it is for or why it is important. That there no proof that the earth is moving is something you would have thought we would all have been taught first. No?
Science has become a corrupt orthodoxy where repetition and memorization replace understanding as the method of education. It's a shame. It has to change. Science has ceased to be science.