Subject: Re: Comments on Ania's paper
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Sun 16 Apr 2000 - 09:49:25 MEST
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 17:49:25 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: Comments on Ania's paper
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On Sun, 16 Apr 2000, Scheidlinger Zygmunt wrote:
> It is imperative, therefore, to have
> an idea how the world will look like at the time when graduates of the
> prevailing educational system will appear at the work market.
If we were to translate this need to some practical contexts, the
following concerns come to my mind:
(a) do we know the picture of today sufficiently to offer education which
would meet the needs of the world of today? Can we truly give to people
what they need for them to become (re)employed? Is the world fixed
sufficiently for us to claim that we can give students what will be
required from them? Should we then bet on detail or on things of a greater
scope. If you go for the latter than my discussion paper has been written
with that very purpose in mind.
(b) this is to assume that the market is to drive the shape of education.
We may though explore some ethical components of this assumption and
wonder whether the task of education is to reduce human beings to
spare-parts of the market machinery. What about if our predictions are not
sufficient? The end result will be a generation of misfits
ready to take on the world that does not exist.... Adjusting the world to
their needs won't be an easy task either. We had experienced entire
systems trying to do just that: reject history.
> In order to guess intelligently how this future world will look like
> we may extrapolate from previous experience and analyze the factors
> acting now.
> Among the main acting factors one may list the following:
> 1. The overall R&D yearly budget in electronics, telecommunications
> and computers (ETC) is close to 200 billion USD.This figure was
> obtained on the assumption that 10% of the gross revenue of the firms
> engaged in ETC is directed to Research & Development. Several leading
> companies ( IBM, HP, AT&T, NEC, Philips, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola )
> spend much more than 10 % of their revenue on R&D.
There may well be a difference between what companies do and what people
should do with that stuff. One day they tell us: eat eggs, next day we
hear, do not eat them!, The sam egoes about vitamins, celular phones, ou
name it. We may not necessarily argue that people should not use
electronics, but we may need to stress that whatever people do. they
should do things intelligently. This is a harder thing to solve for
education than just tell people to see how to use computers. None of the
members on ths very list uses computers in the same way. There is no one
way to do it. All there is are needs, their assessment and their
management.
> 2. Electronic mail makes the communications between scientists and
> engineers much easier, this enables fruitful exchange of information
> and prevents duplication of efforts.
I have already mentioned on this list that my very close freindship with
people from medical science tells a completely different story: computers
do not facilitate honesty. Fruitfulness, quality exchanges etc. are not a
function of computers, but of the system which is VERY SICK.
>3.
> Retrieval of the relevant information, that in the past was the main
> task of the scientists/engineers has been made fast and easy, access
> to sources of information, patents, guidelines, Recommendations of
> national and international bodies became easily available and the
> precious time of talented scientists/ engineers is devoted to finding
> solutions to problems instead of inventing the wheel.
talented scientists do not have an easy life just like talented painters
never got rich: just those who could manage the system. How do you ensure
that your discovery gets to people if companies just spent bilions on a
completely different and useless product that MUST sell to get returns?
Anyhow, retrival made easy (even if it was truly so) does not yet ensure
that education facilitates conditions which enable an intelligent
retrieving. Intelligence is more than an ability to read what is out
there. There is just simply too much.
4. Most of the
> scientific/technical instruments that serve for measurement of all the
> physical values such as time, length, mass, velocity, acceleration,
> pressure, temperature, radiation, electrical and magnetic field
> intensity, and many others, have improved their accuracy and
> sensitivity thousand times during the last century (accuracy of time
> measurement improved million times or more).
so we have machines... great! And as a result nowadays it is not an
intelligent conclusion that is awaited impatiently but a piece of an
equation that a machine spits out (as in the recent genome research
reports). Let's run....
> 6.For the first time in the history of mankind the
> idea that science is one of the most important elements of the economy
> and military might of the modern state has been widely accepted.
I think in the past people's sophistication had to grow first in
order to free the way for sciences. This is not to say that there was no
science before Newton: I will bet Newton was not the first person who
dicovered his laws... Discovery is not a matter of the product but of
the time. Conclusion: it truly does not matter what we have accepted as
important. What matters is to explore why we have not accepted things
before and how can we tehrefore make room for posotive changes which free
way for creative thinking without its reduction to a dogma of the times.
> 7.Personal contact between scientist/engineers of the whole world has
> decisively improved, the number of international encounters, seminars,
> congresses, workshops, exhibitions has increased tens of times during
> the last century.
it could be bad for the science too, if you see my point. I scratch your
back policy is becoming easier to implement. As for the exchange, again,
copyright problems put a dark cloud over any encounters.
8. Establishment of
> English as lingua franca of modern science/technology together with
> variety of means supporting the world wide acceptance and learning of
> this language, especially by employing suitable computer programs,
> contributes immensely to fruitful cooperation between
> scientists/engineers on the whole planet (and beyond ...).
The very encyclopedia of inventions that says that the English world gave
us everything we needed in fact may look differently in other cultures.
The world so far looks as if people in England, US, sometimes Germany and
negligibly a bit in France were a busy crowd. As for the rest, well, is
there a rest??? Lingua Franca, like computers facilitates NOTHING if it,
at the same time, preempts the discussion.
> 9.Enhanced education for
whom? Enhanced education is a true misnoma in most contexts.
What would that mean? I often wonder why people think that we provide
enhanced learning? What makes it enhanced?
with best wishes
Ania Lian
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