Here’s Feynman criticizing the Brazilian educational system (in the late 1940s
and early 1950s), but
I get the impression from his writing that he thought this was a widespread
problem that was particularly bad in Brazil. (See for instance the stuff about
American textbooks later “Surely You’re Joking”.)
Then I held up the elementary physics textbook they were using. “There are no
experimental results mentioned anywhere in this book, except in 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, three 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 the 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!
After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant. … So you see, they could pass the examinations, and “learn” all this stuff, and not know anything at all, except what they had memorized.
He gives several examples relating to the physics of light and torque. The students give great definitions but have no idea how to apply the terms to any real objects, even when the objects are pointed out to them.
I’ve never seen or heard of such a school, at least not in my country. Maybe vocational schools grade like that, but in high schools I know, there’s no fitting togetger, sanding, or measuring anything. It’s just memorizing theory and solving exercises.
In both 10th grade chemistry and AP chem we had some degree of grading based on how close our values were to the correct values. I’m not actually sure this helps that much in practice though because I’m pretty sure that some kids fudged their data.
Well, that means that at least they knew what data they would have expected to get if they had done the experiment right, which takes more understanding than just memorizing the teacher’s passwords.
(exercising necromancy again to raise the thread from the dead)
We had this situation on CS studies in numerical methods class and in metrology class. In both cases, most of the students fudged the data in the reports and/or just plainly copied stuff from what the previous year did.
Eliezer,
School is all about words?
In shop class if the pieces didn’t fit together, weren’t sanded down smooth, or the contraption didn’t work, you flunked the course.
In chemistry lab, if you didn’t measure the pH right, same problem.
In physics if your measurements of waves or acceleration down the inclined plane were wrong down went your grade.
Guess we must have gone to different schools.
John
(Thread necromancy courtesy of TeMPOraL’s comment.)
Here’s Feynman criticizing the Brazilian educational system (in the late 1940s and early 1950s), but I get the impression from his writing that he thought this was a widespread problem that was particularly bad in Brazil. (See for instance the stuff about American textbooks later “Surely You’re Joking”.)
-- “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”, Richard Feynman (p. 217)
Page 212-213 is even more on point.
He gives several examples relating to the physics of light and torque. The students give great definitions but have no idea how to apply the terms to any real objects, even when the objects are pointed out to them.
Not to mention all the 20th-century textbooks mentioning the tongue map thing...
I’ve never seen or heard of such a school, at least not in my country. Maybe vocational schools grade like that, but in high schools I know, there’s no fitting togetger, sanding, or measuring anything. It’s just memorizing theory and solving exercises.
In both 10th grade chemistry and AP chem we had some degree of grading based on how close our values were to the correct values. I’m not actually sure this helps that much in practice though because I’m pretty sure that some kids fudged their data.
Well, that means that at least they knew what data they would have expected to get if they had done the experiment right, which takes more understanding than just memorizing the teacher’s passwords.
(exercising necromancy again to raise the thread from the dead)
We had this situation on CS studies in numerical methods class and in metrology class. In both cases, most of the students fudged the data in the reports and/or just plainly copied stuff from what the previous year did.