11–20 of 79 posts
When I started working with Indians, this is exactly what it reminded me of. "Yes, ftp is the file transfer protocol, used to move files" "Can you ftp the files up please?" "No, I have never used it"
Few Indians, you mean. (Though a majority of them would end up in that 'few' category)
Dropped out of the prestigious, public, academia in brazil. and after my second (failed) company got my degree from one of the smaller, less prestigious ones. Had lots of experimentation though
The problem boils down to just one thing. The teachers don't understand what they're teaching themselves, so they confuse memorization and repetition with learning. The students who are good at this are rewarded because they do better in the exams, and slowly but surely all the joy of understanding science is beaten out of a student. I can relate to this personally. Until I started college, I really understood what I…
To state the facts, a school teacher teaching 4/5th grade kids would hardly be given a $150 salary. In second tier cities, it's even lesser.
I would say, not just this, but there is also a huge difference in the line of thought and a tendency to resign oneself to fate, among Indians. That is almost always part of the upbringing. The ones landing up as teachers would resign to their fates and stop (and resist vehemently) any attempt to keep oneself up-to-date or develop their skills.
And the sad part is, even the interested ones are forcibly turned into indifferent ones, due to various socio-cultural changes presently seen in the economically shining nation.
A relevant article: http://www.hindu.com/op/2011/04/24/stories/2011042453622000....
so precise it's scary. Dropped out of the prestigious, public, academia in brazil. and after my second (failed) company got my degree from one of the smaller, less prestigious ones. Had lots of experimentation though
I study computer science and things are bad here. I'm very lucky to be able to understand english well enough to have studied most of courses MIT OCW have that are interesting to me. Teachers here "teach" in a different way, it's sad. Currently, there's much potential being lost.
People here are educated to get a job and work to buy a car, house and consume a lot, which is actually perfect how the way things are in the world right now(be careful US, we have more stupid consumers than you). They are good robots to get things done to get paid.
They need a boss basically, they are educated to be the employee. Awesome for US companies that come here.
I see a good future ahead for our economy, but who is going to get really rich here are people from the outside, the rest are basically going to beneficit from a higher salary and more power to consume crap.
So I don't think this is a very precise account of education in Brazil nowadays, but it sure does sound like education there (and almost anywhere else) in the 50s -- my mom tells me she would read out loud to herself until dawn the day before an exam, as she was taught auditory learning. This is not so common now as it was then.
But I agree that unfortunately, to this day, in any country and most schools out there, science is still taught to a large extent through dumb memorization and automatic formula application. Thus Feynman critique stands fresh and sound despite the anachronism. I feel education hasn't advanced nearly as fast as science, math, technology and society in the last century and a half.
(BTW, Feynman was infatuated with Brazil, and used to visit the country often. He even dressed up for carnival in Rio once: http://goo.gl/3p5RS -- I wish he would tell more about that in his autobiography, instead of such a broad generalization of his experience teaching there.)
Since we're on the topic of light -- despite going to a great school and taking several physics courses, I suffered from a severe misconception until about a month ago. Maybe you have it too.
Think about a light wave. You might imagine a diagram like this:
http://betterexplained.com/wp-content/uploads/graphs/Wave.pn...
Yep, you've seen it a million times. Light is a wave and wiggles up and down... right?
Oh really? Do you think the fastest thing the universe travels in a zigzag pattern? Hey, why don't we beat the speed of light by moving on a straight line! Nobel prize time!
No, the y-axis is amplitude of the field. The graph is not a Family-circus dotted line following the particle's motion! A better diagram may be this:
http://betterexplained.com/wp-content/uploads/graphs/wave_am...
It's the intensity of the wave which is varying. But we memorize the "light is a wiggling wave" diagram and wind up with a severe misconception.
(Shameless plug: I blog at http://betterexplained.com and try to hammer away at the insights that have befuddled me.)
When I started working with Indians, this is exactly what it reminded me of. "Yes, ftp is the file transfer protocol, used to move files" "Can you ftp the files up please?" "No, I have never used it"
> working with Indians Few Indians, you mean. (Though a majority of them would end up in that 'few' category)
When I started working with Indians, this is exactly what it reminded me of. "Yes, ftp is the file transfer protocol, used to move files" "Can you ftp the files up please?" "No, I have never used it"
Now you'll probably be downvoted for not being politically correct, but I agree with you. At least in my experience, most Indian-educated graduates I have worked with, were very willing to use a slew of acronyms to somehow trying to convince others that if they know the acronym, then they "understand" the concept. It is hard to describe it. You'll notice it when you encounter it.
The trouble is that their education system and culture does them such a disservice that it's hard to spot the good ones in amongst the dross.
