On 09/12/05, Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Would somebody forward this to the usual places? LI-*, etc. > > BTW - I missed most of Simon's talk yesterday, but we had a very > interesting conversation about the educational system in India, the UK > and the US. > > I think Biju, who did much of the talking, is a better person to > summarise it than I. :)
Actually, Udhay, who did much of the listening, is the right person. But, heck, I know a lojack when I see one... Simon is quite concerned about the decline of Science education in the UK. He contrasted that with India where *everybody*, it seemed to him, studied sciences until at least the 12th grade. We rather disagreed with that. To summarise, we argued that while India does not have a quantitative problem in science education it has a serious qualitative problem. We explained that science education in India is less about learning to think skeptically and analytically and more about ingesting voluminous lists of facts, theorems and laws followed by regurgitation on to the examination paper. An unspoken undercurrent of the conversation was the fact that sciences is just the generic case for the issues facing open source that many of us we discussing at foss.in last week. Of course, Simon depressed us by telling us a little about the UK. To paraphrase my CEO, Science Education in the UK is like teenage sex: there's a lot less of it going on than you'd expect and what there is is done quite badly. The conversation continued onto the sheer idiocy of the "Intelligent Design vs Evolution" debate. Simon had to leave for a reception at this point, but after a short detour into an analysis of our respective work environments (ie we bitched about work) we resumed the earlier topic on the drive home. We realised that the lack of scientific understanding in the general public compounded by a (good) modern culture of non-discrimination confuses the right to hold and express an opinion with the validity of an opinion. That is, being judgmental of a opinion on science because it is unscientific is as bad as being judgemental because is expressed by a black or a woman. The principle of fairness requires that we listen to both sides of the argument no matter how absurd they are. All-in-all, it was a fairly interesting conversation marred only by a significant lack of alcohol. :-) -- b PS: In next week's episode, I shall enthrall you with a scholarly discourse on "What I did on my vacation." ;-)
