Friday, February 03, 2012
Reminiscence on My Education
I can definitely say that from high school onwards, and as early as 6th grade, I was made to feel that it was my duty to come up with insights and understanding and somehow become "wise" and that there was some wisdom to be puzzled out like a grand Zen koan. Even as early as 3rd grade the "show and tell" period were we had to bring something interesting and say something interesting gave me the notion that I must succeed by saying interesting things and attracting people's attention and admiration. We were constantly being asked to explain the deeper meaning of poems and novels and to find the causes for historical events.
All the exams required extensive memorization so naturally I associated education and success with being able to cite from memory such things as the periodic table of elements, atomic weights. I still remember that the weight of an electron is .00054 atomic mass units. Avogadro's Number is 6.024 X 10 to the 24th power which is the number of atoms or molecules in one atomic weight of a chemical.
Given the fact that educators cannot forsee how culture and industry will change in future decades it is unreasonable to blame educators for taking the wrong approach in education. Many people trained as draftsmen and tool makers for the automotive industry and had no idea how industry and the financial climate would change.
I was startled when my high school voted me "class philosopher" . I did not at that time think of myself as philosophical but obviously many other people did. I thought it was an amusing joke so I posed for a photo beneath a portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson and the photographer had me imitate the pose in the portrait.
Now, at age 63, I am struck by how much we forget off all that we memorized. Everything fades from memory if not used with regularity.
During my freshman year at St. John's I actually committed to memory the first five books of Euclid's elements and I would stay alone in McDowell Hall and demonstrate each and every theorem from memory standing at the blackboard with chalk. I never bothered to tell anyone or show anyone what I could do. I did it simply because I heard that Isaac Newton studied Euclid's elements in that fashion.
I still like to write and study every day, but I no longer have the energy or ability to do the kind of study that I did in my 20's .
