AnAcademicResponse

Below I reproduce a letter received from Brad, an educator in the States. It is in response to my article yesterday in this column about the way forward for our education systems.

By way of explanation I was trying to make the point that we needed the hard subjects to be taught with rigor, I was arguing against pointless creative degrees that don’t help either the students or society. I wholeheartedly support and participate in higher education for meaningful creative degrees that result in fulfillment and jobs.

There is a very real advantage in higher education for its own sake, and we should all treasure and protect it. However, to survive and prosper as successful countries in every sense, we must re-learn some very basic lessons. One of these is that we have to manufacture for ourselves, grow more and sell more. To achieve this we must educate our young to these ends; perhaps not instead of entirely, but as well as.

Now over to Brad: -

“As you can well imagine, I am on board with your column on education.

One caveat: you can't build a math/science culture by freaking out about foreign competition. There has to be a "pure" interest in science in the culture at large--as there was in physics and logic at the beginning of
this century, the space race later on, etc.

The most revolutionary ideas emerge from pure research and this is what is disappearing e.g.—the supercollider, kyboshed in Texas some years ago. Very few people could explain what that is all about; therefore, the money dries up. This was less of a problem with the moon shot. That's why the humanities are not trivial--science cannot situate itself as a narrative, metaphor or cultural vector--you need writers, thinkers, and moviemakers--but literate ones.

I'm struck in reading math bios how many got into the field because of George Gamow's "1,2,3...infinity." That little book sent a lot of
people on their way--as did science fiction, the very lucid philosophical,
Pop sci books of Einstein (Einstein and Infeld's Evolution of Physics),
Asimov, Raymond Smullyan...there's just no hook right now. The kids don't
care about outer space, which is fine and understandable, they care about inner space.

O.k., but innovations in computing require a background in
Math and mathematical logic--so the hook as to be elsewhere than
gadgets--e.g. --What exactly is a non-classical logic? Are we made of?
logic--or something else--is that "something else" writable in logic, or
does it show up as a barrier (we get knowledge of it negatively)? Why
does group theory explain so much at the level of particle physics--did
God make the world from group theory, or again, is there a "something
else" we will never get our hands on, but that keeps reinventing itself as
new paradigms? I would say there is even a mystical-religious hook
there for some--which is not a bad place for religion-- The "answers" to
these questions, open-ended as they are, are in the actual math and
science--that should be the hook.

Just putting a kid on a computer is not solving anything--though that is
much of the budget in education nowadays--building enormous computer labs.

I would slash way back on that and hire math science people at top dollar who actually know how to teach--a rare combination. Those people need a chalkboard and textbooks--that's about it really, at least in math/logic, which is the pedestal on which it all rests. Mostly they need money to make it worth their while--which will never happen as long as teacher's unions are in charge.”