On Further Education

"
The student's biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built
into him by years of carrot-and- whip grading, a mule mentality which said,
``If you don't whip me, I won't work.'' He didn't get whipped. He didn't
work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to
pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.

The hypothetical student, still a mule, would drift around for a while. He would get another kind of education quite as valuable as the one he'd abandoned, in what used to be called the ``school of hard knocks.'' Instead of wasting money and time as a high-status mule, he would now have to get a job as a low-status mule, maybe as a mechanic. Actually his real status
would go up. He would be making a contribution for a change. Maybe that's what he would do for the rest of his life. Maybe he'd found his level. But don't count on it. In time...six months; five years, perhaps...a change could easily begin to take place. He would become less and less satisfied with a kind of dumb, day-to-day shop work. His creative intelligence, stifled by too much theory and too many grades in college, would now become reawakened by the boredom of the shop. Thousands of hours of frustrating mechanical problems would have made him more interested in machine design. He would like to design machinery himself. He'd think he could do a better job. He would try modifying a few engines, meet with success, look for more success, but feel blocked because he didn't have the theoretical information. He would discover that when before he felt stupid because of his lack of interest in theoretical information, he'd now find a brand of theoretical information which he'd have a lot of respect for, namely, mechanical engineering.

So he would come back to our degreeless and gradeless school, but with a difference. He'd no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors assigned him were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they'd better come up with it.

Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldn't stop with rote engineering information. Physics and mathematics were going to come within his sphere of interest because he'd see he needed them. Metallurgy and electrical engineering would come up for attention. And, in the process of intellectual maturing that these abstract studies gave
him, he would he likely to branch out into other theoretical areas that weren't directly related to machines but had become a part of a newer larger goal. This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing. "
- Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The above excerpt is an awesome direction , if some one is thinking of further education like Masters , MBA or a Doctoral Programme after having couple of years of Industrial experience !

Every Engineering aspect has a Science form behind it ( and an art form too which I wont talk about it here ) . A typical example would be to "build a Rocket" (Engineering ) we need "Netwon's laws" (Science ) , analogously in Software too , every aspect of building a product ( Design , Coding , Testing , Management ) has a science form behind it . Only when we abstract out our daily tasks as an engineer and look at the science form beneath it and see if we can apply any latest developments from scientific research ( theoretically advanced algorithms , testing methodologies , management lessons etc ) ( and practising such thing is an art in itself !) we can excel in making better products and better world !

We have got cancer too, Mr Feynman !

Happen to read this book , Surely you are joking Mr Feynman, by brilliant physicist Richard Feynman , Could not resist to share a transcripts from a chapter from this book.

"At the end of the academic year, the students asked me to give a talk about my experiences of teaching in Brazil. At the talk there would be not only students, but professors and government officials, so I made them promise that I could say whatever I wanted. They said,

"Sure. Of course. It's a free country."

So I came in, carrying the elementary physics textbook that they used in the first year of college. They thought this book was especially good because it had different kinds of typeface--bold black for the most important things to remember, lighter for less important things, and so on.


Right away somebody said, "You're not going to say anything bad about the textbook, are you? The man who wrote it is here, and everybody
thinks it's a good textbook."


"You promised I could say whatever I wanted."


The lecture hall was full. I started out by defining science as an understanding of the behavior of nature. Then I asked, "What is a good reason for teaching science? Of course, no country can consider itself civilized unless . . . yak, yak, yak." They were all sitting there nodding, because I know that's the way they think.

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 are 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 own 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, "Brrrrrrrrr-up"--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 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?)


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 other words. 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 called "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 would have put my finger in the book; it was
like that everywhere.


Finally, I said that I couldn't see how anyone could he educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. "


Well, after I gave the talk, the head of the science education department got up and said, "Mr. Feynman has told us some things that are very hard for us to hear, but it appears to he that he really loves science, and is sincere in his criticism. Therefore, I think we should listen to him. I came here knowing we have some sickness in our system of education; what I have learned is that we have a cancer!"--and he sat down."


No wonder , its not the state of Brazil , in 1950's or so when this book is written , its true even now in India , We have Got Cancer too, Mr Feynman !