Learning the subject or just learning to pass exams ?
I never let my education interfere with my learning.
- Albert Einstein
Most of school education comes across as a little bit of a waste of time to me. For long I did not have a concrete example to substantiate this thought. Here is one I came across recently : Raoult's law. Students are supposed to learn about this law in chemistry about partial vapor presssures of solvents in class 11 or 12 of CBSE. What they learn is a formula which defines how vapor pressure is related to the mole fraction of the solvent. In all of this there is absolutely no mention of
things that are very important from the point of view of seeing the concept as something organic, i.e natural and real, rather than an abstract concept in the air with no connection to real life other than to pass exams.
These things are :
1. What is vapor pressure ? Why is it even important ? Can we see its effects anywhere in real life ?
2. Who studied and discovered this law ? How much time was spent on the topic before this law was discovered (In this case a good 20 years)? What kind of a person was Francois-Marie Raoult ? What was his childhood like ? Why was he interested in liquids and their vapor pressures ?
3. How can vapor pressure even be measured ? Can we not try to measure vapor pressure in the lab ? Can we see the effect of dissolving more quantity of solute on the vapor pressure of the
solvent in real time.
4. What is mole fraction ? How is it even possible to measure the number of moles in a given quantity of a particular compound ? What is this concept of mole ? Who came up with it ?
And possibly more such questions
Without such questions getting answered, it is very unfair to expect anyone to assimilate the law as a part of his / her knowledge. It is only natural that post exams the student does not remember anything about Raoult's law. This then for me is a humongous waste of effort. The student puts in all his effort to memorize the law which is akin to forcefully pushing stuff inside till the exams and completely regurgitate it from the system once the only apparent purpose of the knowledge is served, i.e exams.
Other than reading and writing, there is really very little that is retained by the student in the whole 12 odd years of schooling. If the only takeaway from around 8 odd years (discounting the first 4 - 5 odd years of schooling) of bone breaking effort is reading and writing and some basic social skill which would be hard to learn being only the apple of your parent's eyes, I think it is a colossal waste of time and effort.
It should not then be hard to see that there is very little connection between learning and school education as the great Einstein once pointed out. What is beyond comprehension is that this gap exists in spite of the fact that it is not really insurmountable. It does not need much more than interested teachers and a change in the outlook from expecting acceptance from the student to expecting genuine curiosity from him / her.
I never let my education interfere with my learning.
- Albert Einstein
Most of school education comes across as a little bit of a waste of time to me. For long I did not have a concrete example to substantiate this thought. Here is one I came across recently : Raoult's law. Students are supposed to learn about this law in chemistry about partial vapor presssures of solvents in class 11 or 12 of CBSE. What they learn is a formula which defines how vapor pressure is related to the mole fraction of the solvent. In all of this there is absolutely no mention of
things that are very important from the point of view of seeing the concept as something organic, i.e natural and real, rather than an abstract concept in the air with no connection to real life other than to pass exams.
These things are :
1. What is vapor pressure ? Why is it even important ? Can we see its effects anywhere in real life ?
2. Who studied and discovered this law ? How much time was spent on the topic before this law was discovered (In this case a good 20 years)? What kind of a person was Francois-Marie Raoult ? What was his childhood like ? Why was he interested in liquids and their vapor pressures ?
3. How can vapor pressure even be measured ? Can we not try to measure vapor pressure in the lab ? Can we see the effect of dissolving more quantity of solute on the vapor pressure of the
solvent in real time.
4. What is mole fraction ? How is it even possible to measure the number of moles in a given quantity of a particular compound ? What is this concept of mole ? Who came up with it ?
And possibly more such questions
Without such questions getting answered, it is very unfair to expect anyone to assimilate the law as a part of his / her knowledge. It is only natural that post exams the student does not remember anything about Raoult's law. This then for me is a humongous waste of effort. The student puts in all his effort to memorize the law which is akin to forcefully pushing stuff inside till the exams and completely regurgitate it from the system once the only apparent purpose of the knowledge is served, i.e exams.
Other than reading and writing, there is really very little that is retained by the student in the whole 12 odd years of schooling. If the only takeaway from around 8 odd years (discounting the first 4 - 5 odd years of schooling) of bone breaking effort is reading and writing and some basic social skill which would be hard to learn being only the apple of your parent's eyes, I think it is a colossal waste of time and effort.
It should not then be hard to see that there is very little connection between learning and school education as the great Einstein once pointed out. What is beyond comprehension is that this gap exists in spite of the fact that it is not really insurmountable. It does not need much more than interested teachers and a change in the outlook from expecting acceptance from the student to expecting genuine curiosity from him / her.
posted by Ghondan @ 7:03 AM
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