What ails the education system?

Well, why tell something new when somebody has told it better? Richard Feynman in his inimitable "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" says the following (Feynman was invited to speak to Brazilian teachers and to suggest measures to improve science teaching)-

Then I say, “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being taught in Brazil!”

I can see them stir, thinking, “What? No science? This is absolutely crazy! We have all these classes.”

So I tell them that one of the first things to strike me when I came to Brazil was to see elementary school kids in bookstores, buying physics books. There are so many kids learning physics in Brazil, beginning much earlier than kids do in the United States, that it’s amazing you don’t find many physicists in Brazil— why is that? So many kids working so hard, and nothing comes of it!

Then I gave the analogy of a Greek scholar who loves the Greek language, who knows that in his country there aren’t many children studying Greek. But he comes to another country, where he is delighted to find everybody studying Greek —even the smaller kids in the elementary schools. He goes to the examination of a student who is coming to get his degree in Greek, and asks him “What were Socrates’ ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty? ”— and the student can’t answer. Then he asks the student “What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third symposium?” The student lights up and goes, “Brrrrrrrrrrr-up”—and he tells you everything, word for word, that Socrates said, in beautiful Greek. But what Socrates was talking about in the Third symposium was the relationship between Truth and Beauty!

What this Greek scholar discovers is, the students in another country learn Greek by first learning to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then the sentences and paragraphs. They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually mean something. To the student they are all artificial sounds. Nobody has ever translated them into words the students can understand. I said “That’s how it looks to me, when I see you teaching the kids ‘science’ here in Brazil.”

(Big blast, right?)

Then I held up the elementary physics textbook they were using. “There are no experimental results mentioned anywhere in this book, except it one place where there is a ball, rolling down an inclined plane, in which it says how far the ball got after one second, two seconds, and so on. The numbers have ‘errors’ in them — that is, if you look at them, you think you’re looking at experimental results, because the numbers are a little above, or a little below, the theoretical values. The book even talks about having to correct experimental errors — very fine. The trouble is, when you calculate the value of the acceleration constant from these values, you get the right answer. But a ball rolling down an inclined plane,

if it is actually done, has an inertia to get it to turn, and will, if you do the experiment, produce five-sevenths of the right answer, because of the extra energy needed to go into the rotation of the ball. Therefore this single example of experimental ‘results’ is obtained from a fake experiment. Nobody had rolled such a ball, or they would never have gotten those results!

“I have discovered something else,” I continued. “By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter—how it’s not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance. Therefore, I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you.”

So I did it. “Brrrrrrrup”—I stuck my finger in, and I started to read:“Triboluminescence”. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed....”

I said,“And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of another word. You haven’t told anything about nature —what

crystals produce light when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any student go home and try it? He can’t. “But if, instead, you were to write- When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is call triboluminescence. Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.” I used that example to show them, but it didn’t make any difference where I put my finger in the book; it was like that everywhere. Finally, I said that I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self –propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.

“However, ”I said,“ I must be wrong. There were two students in my class who did very well, and one of the physicists I know was educated entirely in Brazil. Thus, it must be possible for some people to work their way through the system, bad as it is.”

Feynman couldn't have put it better. Half the problem with education system(s) is that it tries to expose the student to lot of things, all the way thinking that it is teaching them these concepts. Well, learning a name is different from understanding what lies behind it. Any hard working student can memorize Periodic table, but what he/she needs to be taught is the amazing beauty that lies in the periodic table. How incredibly it arranges, compares and predicts elements and their properties! That awesome structure, hidden in nature, shines through the rows of the table! Purpose of education, as they(?) say, is not filling up mind with facts but lighting a thousand candles of ideas in it. Sadly, for example, we prepare engineers by locking them in classrooms, armed with lofty textbooks when they should rather be - using their hands and brain- fiddling with stuffs, getting questions in mind and then taking the books' help to answer that! 

I had a wonderful opportunity to listen to Mr. Sonam Wangchuk, a renowned educationist from Ladakh (more famously, the "real" Phunsukh Wangdu of the movie '3 Idiots). He narrated the difficulties his group faced teaching students in remote villages of Ladakh. A large percentage of Ladakhi students were failing year after year in school examinations. It was perplexing, and people started inferring random reasons for it- one wierd reasoning was that lack of  oxygen at high altitudes of Ladakh slowed down the brains of young Ladakhis! Later Wangchuk (and co.) realised the real problem- the Ladakhis kids who have all their little lives lived among the remote, dry and cold, villages could not even relate to 'T for train' and 'h for horse' kind of things being taught as they had never seen them! Such little, but crucial things, escape the attention of policy makers. Or at least, there is lot more localization and individualization of education needed. Wangchuk later gained fame for opening a school exclusively meant for 'failed' students. These were kids who were not really dull, but who were incompatible with the way they were getting educated. They had to feel the objects, fiddle with them, and get intimate to start learning about them. Wangchuk's success with them gained global attention and is now touted as a model to be replicated.

These kids, I feel, are not much different from most of us in our childhood.  Haven't we observed and learnt a lot (empirically) about heat, light and sound when helping our mothers dry or cook food, wash and dry cloth, playing with agarbathhis, candles and lamps,  or look at father starting his scooter? The very same phenomenon might have bored us to death when taught in school. There is no pointing in defining a term to a young student who has hardly developed the temperament required for scholarly effort. A kid needs inspiration to study- and that starts with evoking surprise and wonder in them. With their curiosity being kindled, in no time the start focussing on the topic/object and then one can teach them step by step. Definitions of  flood or fire - or mathematical formulae depicting them- are of little use when one faces their brutal force. What is needed first is to get a feel of what they are, observe their behaviour, and know what they mean to us in real life. Formulae and definition can be introduced majestically after this much of practical and real knowledge is imparted. Finishing of with another quote-  

"The true order of learning should be first, what is necessary; second, what is useful; and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice"- George Fillimore Swain.
 (Most of us might not have heard of him right. Google (or any alternative!) his name and have a look at his quotes, each of which is a real gem! And well, his little book named "How to study"! )