Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jun 9, 2009 18:00:57 GMT
As someone who believes the book to be man's greatest invention, and someone for whom books are his most treasured material possessions, this makes me distinctly uneasy:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8090450.stm
Governor Schwarzenegger describes text books as outdated and antiquated. The implication seems to be that school children have to be learning material that is being constantly updated. This worries me somewhat, because what I valued most about my secondary education was that they deliberately - and sensibly, in my view - didn't try to teach us the latest thinking on subjects, but rather the works and theories that stood the test of time, understanding of which - even if they are no longer cutting edge - is more essential to getting a grasp of the principles of a subject than knowing what's going on in the 21st Century - at least at pre-GCSE level.
In science, we were not taught about the latest fashionable theories favoured by contemporary experts in the field, but rather we were taught how theories developed from the earliest assumptions, gradually being superseded as new experiments suggested improved models. When it comes to atomic theory, cosmology, natural history and the like, I believe it is far more important to learn how the major theories have grown up, to be replaced by better theories as new data came in and new experiments were attempted, than to learn what is the current theory (which may well not stand the test of time) - at least when at school age.
In history, better not to teach a specific current view of what happened in the past, which may be skewed by the biases of our society and may not be entirely objective, but expose children (as I was) to original sources from those alive at the time, which give multiple, contradictory perspectives, so that they are made aware of the inevitability of bias, propaganda and spin in any disputed account of events. Let children read first-hand what was written at the time, and what other primary evidence came to light later on, rather than the filtered opinions of modern-day experts - at least when at school age.
Yes, I suppose you can get all this delivered over the Internet just as well as through books. However, my impression is that the Internet is primarily filled with the fashionable, not particularly objective or well-informed opinions of the people that live in the age of the Internet, opinions that children should avoid until they've learnt how to intelligently form their own opinions - by doing their own scientific experiments, gathering their own data and learning how the most intelligent minds of the past came to quite reasonable but erroneous conclusions and then through experiment improved upon them; and by weighing up the merits of various first-hand historical sources.
Later on, expose them to the Internet, and they will be equipped with a healthy scepticism, an awareness of the lack of permanence in most ideas, and a knowledge of the truly great ideas that - even if partially flawed - have made a lasting contribution to human civilisation - something which is unlikely to be said of most of the content of today's Internet.
But maybe I'm just being sentimental because I like the feel and look of a book. My bookshelves are filled with the greatest of all human writings while the Internet is mostly filled with crap, but text books can also be crap if filled with spurious modern theories, and you can deliver the greatest of all human writings via a computer if you want to.
What do you think?
Note: Obviously, as neither my opinions nor yours have been background-checked for bias or stood the test of time by surviving through the centuries, my own argument requires them all to be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Martin
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8090450.stm
Governor Schwarzenegger describes text books as outdated and antiquated. The implication seems to be that school children have to be learning material that is being constantly updated. This worries me somewhat, because what I valued most about my secondary education was that they deliberately - and sensibly, in my view - didn't try to teach us the latest thinking on subjects, but rather the works and theories that stood the test of time, understanding of which - even if they are no longer cutting edge - is more essential to getting a grasp of the principles of a subject than knowing what's going on in the 21st Century - at least at pre-GCSE level.
In science, we were not taught about the latest fashionable theories favoured by contemporary experts in the field, but rather we were taught how theories developed from the earliest assumptions, gradually being superseded as new experiments suggested improved models. When it comes to atomic theory, cosmology, natural history and the like, I believe it is far more important to learn how the major theories have grown up, to be replaced by better theories as new data came in and new experiments were attempted, than to learn what is the current theory (which may well not stand the test of time) - at least when at school age.
In history, better not to teach a specific current view of what happened in the past, which may be skewed by the biases of our society and may not be entirely objective, but expose children (as I was) to original sources from those alive at the time, which give multiple, contradictory perspectives, so that they are made aware of the inevitability of bias, propaganda and spin in any disputed account of events. Let children read first-hand what was written at the time, and what other primary evidence came to light later on, rather than the filtered opinions of modern-day experts - at least when at school age.
Yes, I suppose you can get all this delivered over the Internet just as well as through books. However, my impression is that the Internet is primarily filled with the fashionable, not particularly objective or well-informed opinions of the people that live in the age of the Internet, opinions that children should avoid until they've learnt how to intelligently form their own opinions - by doing their own scientific experiments, gathering their own data and learning how the most intelligent minds of the past came to quite reasonable but erroneous conclusions and then through experiment improved upon them; and by weighing up the merits of various first-hand historical sources.
Later on, expose them to the Internet, and they will be equipped with a healthy scepticism, an awareness of the lack of permanence in most ideas, and a knowledge of the truly great ideas that - even if partially flawed - have made a lasting contribution to human civilisation - something which is unlikely to be said of most of the content of today's Internet.
But maybe I'm just being sentimental because I like the feel and look of a book. My bookshelves are filled with the greatest of all human writings while the Internet is mostly filled with crap, but text books can also be crap if filled with spurious modern theories, and you can deliver the greatest of all human writings via a computer if you want to.
What do you think?
Note: Obviously, as neither my opinions nor yours have been background-checked for bias or stood the test of time by surviving through the centuries, my own argument requires them all to be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Martin
