[IAEP] food for thought...

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

I once read of a company that hired only mathematicians and musicians, on
the theory that these were the only fields in which competence could not
be faked, and with the further idea that it would be easier and cheaper to
teach competent people a business than to teach people with a business
education competence and honesty. Needless to say that everybody else
regarded this management team as complete loonies.

On Thu, August 25, 2011 7:55 pm, Alan Kay wrote:
> Hi Steve --
>
> The line you quote -- "Science and math were originally discovered
> together, and they are best learned together now"

Historically, this turns out not to be the case. Although Ionian Greeks
invented math, protoscience, and philosophy, few of them could do both
math and science, and there was only a little overlap in the subjects
outside of music, where the Pythagoreans discovered the relationship
between lengths of strings of a lyre, notes, and harmonious intervals.
Archimedes is the major exception. Aristotle was an exceptional logician
and biologist, but failed to apply mathematics to physics. There was a
greater overlap in Babylonian and Ptolemaic astronomy (and in Mayan,
Indian, and Chinese astronomy), and in medieval Arab geometric optics, but
the full connection between math and science had to wait for Galileo.

The essence of mathematics is not scientific. It is the idea of symmetries
and conservation laws, which turn out to be two views of the same thing,
with what is known as a duality mapping between them. Having multiple
structures turn out to be dual in this way provides ever deeper views of
math. To the extent that math underlies physics, these dualities,
particularly that between symmetries and conservation laws (Noether's
Theorem), also underlie physics, which is increasingly seen to be based on
symmetries and symmetry-breaking mechanisms.

The essence of science is not simply mathematics. Mathematics is an
essential component in many kinds of science, but it is also necessary to
have a mapping between mathematical ideas and experimental observables
that permits testable prediction, also known as falsifiability.

Mathematics is not falsifiable in itself. Only mappings between
mathematical models and observables give rise to falsifiability.

There have been crises in both math and science, where it seemed that the
generally-accepted methods and theories were being called into question,
but so far each such crisis has been resolved with the discovery of new
kinds of math and science. The rule during each such crisis, from Zeno

> -- is pretty much the
> only thing I agree with.
>
> They seem to be unaware of the irony of using a false parallel (between
> traditional math and Latin) to defend their position.

Educators and grammarians have been making false parallels with Latin for
centuries, because it was _the_ prestige language. See Thorstein Veblen,
The Theory of the Leisure Class. The actual discoveries were made and
recorded in Greek, but the authority of the Catholic Church and then the
(High) Church of England made such a fact irrelevant. Latin was not used
to report mathematical and scientific discoveries until Fibonacci's Liber
Abaci, on the mathematics available in Muslim North Africa.

> I hope they would be
> aware of this as a bad argument if it were in a mathematical context, and
> one wonders why they can't see it as nonsense in prose.

This is actually quite difficult to do.

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)

    It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it.

    I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN
0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109.

John Alexander Smith (1863–1939)

    Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which
will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure.
But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you
will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest
possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work
hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is
talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole,
purpose of education.

Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University. Statement
recorded in 1914.

Shakyamuni Buddha (c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE)

    Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your
religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of
your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they
have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and
analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is
conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and
live up to it.

    Kalama Sutta

This is a special case of

    The senses are on fire with the fires of Greed, Hatred, and Delusion.

    Fire Sermon Sutta

aka kleptocracy (which argues for nothing in schools but job training),
racism (which argues against fairness and for every kind of invidious
distinction), and bigotry (which argues for lies).

> One of the big differences between training and "real education" is that
> "real education" involves depth, flexibility understanding, multiple
> points of view from which to regard ideas*and*skills. Let's go to neutral
> ground for a moment and pick music. Part of playing is training, and one
> can learn how to play pieces with skills just derived from training. But a
> good "real education" in music involves an immense amount more -- this
> shows up in many ways, including in the quality of playing. Training isn't
> nearly enough.
>
> One of the practical reasons we need to care about children really
> learning how to think about a wide variety of topics is not for jobs --
> though this certainly will help most of the time -- but because we are a
> republic that has vested the "ultimate powers in the hands of the people"
> via a form of democracy. As envisioned by Jefferson and others who
> invented our system, the voting citizens have to be "invested with
> sufficient discretion" to wield these ultimate powers. And as Jefferson
> said, " ... if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their
> control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
> them, but to inform their discretion by education."
>
> Most Americans have missed "real education" so badly that they are not
> even aware of the idea of learning to be able to be citizens. In order to
> do this, the primary goal of public education in the US is supposed to be
> raising much more than a simple majority of the population to "be in and
> understand the important discourse of our time".
>
> This is deeply serious stuff.
>
>
> Back to mathematics. It is a plural because math is the process of being
> able to make and use maths to help "think and reckon".
>
> I disagree with the math traditionalists for a variety of reasons --
> including what they teach, how they teach, etc. This rarely even touches
> any kind of mathematical thinking. Seymour Papert, who was a very good
> mathematician, advocated inventing mathematics suited for children's minds
> that children could get deeply fluent in (for many reasons and in many
> ways), and that embodied and taught deep thinking in general.
>
> I have similar feelings about why science is important in general
> education. In the large, science is humanity's best invention so far of
> how to "think better than our brains want to" (cf Francis Bacon, etc.)
> Its heuristics and processes are the most important ones for all of us
> to internalize because they help us make sense of the muddle our brains
> have created over the last 200,000 years. Its relationships to our ways
> of representing (maths are among the most powerful) help us sort out
> what it means when we make claims about us and our environment.
>
> If we put this together with what citizens need to be able to do, and with
> what "real science" has brought us in new more powerful ways to think
> about important ideas, then what we should be pushing for is the
> inventions of ways for children to look at and do "real mathematics" and
> "real science" that result in "musicians of ideas" as better citizens and
> parents (and I'll be they will do OK finding work too).
>
>
> Garfunkel and Mumford miss what is important here to an embarrassing
> depth, and I'm not sure that there is enough substance in what they do say
> to be worth criticizing further.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Alan
>
>
>
>
>>________________________________
>>From: Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com>
>>To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
>>Cc: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>; iaep
>> <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 2:19 PM
>>Subject: Re: [IAEP] food for thought...
>>
>>
>>Alan,
>>
>>
>>Okay, I'll bite, I can see how you believe the "standard curriculum" is
>> way off, but what part of their proposed solution do you disagree with
>> and where do you see as the preferred paths?"
>>
>>
>>In particular in the article they state "Science and math were originally
>> discovered together, and they are best learned together now." which I
>> assume you agree with based on past writings.
>>
>>
>>I can see how you might disagree that learning Latin has no value (I have
>> learned a lot from attempting to learn smalltalk).
>>
>>
>>My fear in what the authors suggest is that the "real world" problems
>> will be like what I saw in 1902 textbook Algebra Text by Milne  which I
>> found in an ice cream shop on Cape Cod (I only go to the best ice cream
>> shoppes ;)  The book was filled with "real world" problems (and little
>> visualizations or age appropriate concrete tasks/objects kids could
>> relate to) for ex:
>>
>>
>>I look forward to your response, the destruction of my existing beliefs
>> and being freed to learn :)
>>
>>
>>Stephen
>>
>>
>>On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Hi Walter
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>As with a number of other issues in education, I strongly disagree with
> both of the main opposing sides. Both the standard curriculum, and these
> guys, are way off IMO.
>>>
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>
>>>Alan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>________________________________
>>>>From: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>>>>To: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>>>Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:47 AM
>>>>Subject: [IAEP] food for thought...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/how-to-fix-our-math-education.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
>>>>
>>>>-walter
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Walter Bender
>>>>Sugar Labs
>>>>http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>>IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>>http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>>
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep


-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks