Do we have a culture of celebrating academic failure?
If I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase 'I failed maths back in school and I turned out all right', I'd probably be almost as wealthy as if I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase 'if I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase.'
Underachievement in academics, especially in the areas of maths and science, has attained this strange cultural status of being one of the very few things that is perfectly socially acceptable for someone to brag about. And I don't mean in a self aware, ironic, self deprecating sort of way like how you might boast about how long you've had the same lucky condom in your wallet. No, we live in a society where war heroes who've thrown themselves onto live grenades to protect their team are still expected to comport themselves with a level of humility, yet it is completely fine, even encouraged, for the guy who gave up learning his 2 times tables when he ran out of fingers, to announce loudly and proudly that google has rendered long division redundant, and sincerely mean it from the bottom of his heart.
'What good did trigonometry ever do in the real world?' these people would say with a derisive glance at the rest of us who didn't have to stay down a year in elementary school to grasp the basics of fractions and decimals. Maybe they have a point, maybe trigonometry is useless - most of us certainly aren't building pyramids or working for Toblerone.
By stealthily removing computers, engineering, telecommunications, space travel, smartphones and, well, every notable technological endeavor of our species, they're able to clearly show the futility of mathematics and science in 'real life'. And we're all sort of suppose to nod along in agreement, lest we appear, god forbid, elitist.
I am not proposing to deny a crumb of comfort to those, for whatever reason, didn't attain the highest levels of academic success. You're certainly not destined for failure; being a perfectly competent real estate developer wouldn't require you to be an expert in calculus any more than it'll need you to master break dancing. I myself would not be able to show a derivation of general relativity, provide a clear explanation of the standard model of physics or prove Fermat's last theorem. The difference is I'm not proud of it. I don't think any of us should be proud of ignorance.
The strength of our civilization rests on our ability to absorb the accumulated knowledge of our forefathers, and in turn building upon that knowledge to pass on to our descendant. A democracy is only as good as the education of its people, and from how that's turning out lately, perhaps a little more cultural emphasis on academic achievement wouldn't hurt? After all, I failed failing maths back in school, and I turned out all right too.
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Very good post my man. I can find myself in your posts and you have an amazing sense of humor. But I don't think that there is any need to get mad at the people not liking math. If someone finds math useless, you can see where they're coming from and just have compassion for their capacity.
"The strength of our civilization rests on our ability to absorb the accumulated knowledge of our forefathers, and in turn building upon that knowledge to pass on to our descendant. A democracy is only as good as the education of its people, and from how that's turning out lately, perhaps a little more cultural emphasis on academic achievement wouldn't hurt?"
I especially liked this one, and actually recommended the invention of "Democracy 2.0" in the yesterday's tireless political discussion.
My vision of this democracy is to restrict the voting power of those who are less-educated and not intelectually capable of estimating what do they want to vote for. This would be done by the some form of qualification tests.
Would like to hear your thoughts on this idea!!
haha a lot of it is exaggerated for comedic effect :)
I'm not sure, a very well thought out improvement in governance is very difficult, but I think technology can play a big role here in the future
thanks for taking a look at one of my older posts
My own thoughts, I think a lot of people failed at arithmetic but may find out they are good at using math without realizing it. The math taught in highschool for the most part is outdated so I can agree with people who complain about that. At the same time programming is math, logic is the basis of all math, math is everywhere. Arithmetic is a specific kind of math which appeals to certain kinds of people, but for people who don't like arithmetic there are other kinds of math which don't deal with numbers.
If a person can handle propositional logic, then they can communicate with computers. Computational thinking relies on propositional logic, and basic algebra. Programming languages are all about abstraction. So if I were to talk to a younger version of myself or to a modern student I would tell them primarily to focus on learning logic and on computational thinking (particularly using abstraction). And of course this is all coming from a person who is a pedestrian level programmer to be honest.
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I agree, and I want to add onto that thought. The schooling system here in America doesn't teach one how to think, only what to think (borrowed, second hand conclusions). There is no emphasis on the Trivium or Quadrivium, and so without imparting these invaluable tools to young minds in our country there is no gain in learning. Without knowing how to reason or how to apply logic and rhetoric on top of correct grammar what can one hope to learn. First we have to address the need for these basic skills and their absence in our schooling system.
We also have to focus our attention on reading comprehension as it continues to drop by leaps and bounds with every passing year. The kids these days refer to present tense and past tense as active voice and passive voice, and in math there are numerous examples of concepts being obstruficated in an very successful way in order to divide the parents and their schooling from the kids as well, and this is not isolated to math and literature, but goes over to sciences and social studies.
Therefore addressing symptoms such as praising ignorance won't alert the mind to the cause of those symptoms, as the root of these things lies in the continuous dumbing down indoctrination that has been happening for over 100 years through compulsory education at the watch of the educators of educators and their founding, who enjoy immovable positions, unchallenged and therefore secured in their salary year after year and the perceived obsolescence that is created with each new edition of school books that renders the old ones automatically useless, while driving the market for redundancy and printing of useless books. Until these educators and their nefarious deeds are exposed we will be left scratching our heads about problems such as the applauding of ignorance.
Yes I agree that there are broader educational failures entrenched and they need to be addressed as well. I just focused on one aspect of this in my satirical piece as I felt I could write a few pedantic jokes about it lol. This honestly makes it far more difficult for me to write and often comes at the cost of intellectual depth and clarity, and I hope smart readers such as yourself and @dana-edwards don't mind.
No, it creates the position to bring about a flurry of other topics to discuss and enriches everyone in that aspect, so don't take it as devaluing your post at all, it's still very pertinent and eyeopening.
The math in school might be outdated, but they are doing a much better job now of teaching toward different learning styles. I think that was a problem in the past. When I was in school, I never was very good at math, but I discovered that if I took extra time and a methodical approach, then I was able to understand it well enough to pass. And you're right about logic for sure.
Thanks for reading, I just realized I didn't have you followed despite voting a lot of your stuff when I come across it
Rectified =)
Thanks. I have reciprocated. :)
I agree Dana, that due to a plethora of social reasons maths is often taught in a very unpalatable way causing a considerable proportion of people who would other have been very competent in the field of abstract reasoning to develop a general distaste for it. I don't know if there's a simple solution to this problem, but my guess is it'll require education reform that better utilizes mediums like the internet.
My groundless estimate is that while there are some gifted programmers and computer scientists who shunned traditional maths at school, they wouldn't be overly representative of either group. My annoyance is with both those who proudly boast about failure in these areas and our general social consensus in accepting this as a norm. I fear that the true extent of the deleterious effects of this are being overlooked: it discourages younger people to try by building an image of coolness around underachievement.
I feel this is predominantly a Western value, and while it has the benefit of encouraging a wider pursuance of endeavors as well being more considerate to the feelings of those ill suited to abstract reasoning, I don't know if these benefits outweigh the costs or if there doesn't exist a better overall approach that can retain the best of both worlds.
x=5. I spent 9 years building furniture and cabinetry, and never once met anyone, other than myself, who even knew what the Pythagorean theorem is, let alone how to apply it in wood work. Geometry matters. Trigonometry matters. Anyone who says they don't should be driven out to the middle of the wilderness, and left there, naked.
I will never understand how we make heroes out of people who can do whatever with a ball or a puck, yet Isaac Newton is mistaken for a cookie.
I completely agree with everything you've just said =)
Great points. I'll laugh at a good joke about underachievement, but if someone uses it as a badge or identity, then it should not be glorified. I agree with you that we should move more in the direction of encouraging good performance and achievement.
haha yes there's certainly an unfounded reverence to this attitude which is sometimes expressed absent humor
Up voted and followed you love the content you make.
I'm already a follower, I hope you're in talks with steemit inc about a steem version of twitter you're working on, that should be very exciting, keep me posted.
Oh their fully aware of it since nate started the projects which is how he joined the steem team. So there isnt really an issue with that being a thing im just working on a redesign for the project. But still thanks x3
Going off at a bit of a tangent to the main point, although I haven't used very advanced maths for years, I did LIKE things like calculus in my distant youth. I remember doing Stage 1 Mathematics at University and the last class of the year was a summary of all the Stage 2 classes available. I remember sitting there with a big grin on my face the whole class, wanting to do all of them. Maybe that makes me a little strange.
The next time I had that feeling was in an Intro to Reactive Muscle Kinesiology. I had the same big grin from end to end. I didn't have the anatomy knowledge to do the course, but managed to persuade the tutor to let me do it if I learned a bunch of bones and muscles. Ok, so that even more of a tangent...
Following you now - @sift666 recommended you and I see you checked out my recent post. Look forward to reading more of your posts.
Ya I know exactly what you mean, it can be a pleasure discovering something so elegant and complex as a mathematical theory
Mathematics is always an abstract in the classroom, with little practical application. Trig made far more sense when I was using it to analyze a truss load than it did as nebulous numbers.
I also support poking fun at authority figures, and that is often the purpose of these memes and jokes.
Yes, every time you're dealing with angles in the physical world, trig is just a great way of expressing and calculating these things. And angles are, well, no small part of the physical world
I'm glad you're finding a use for trig =)
A thoughtful and engaging post @trafalgar. I agree with @baah that this is symptomatic of the dumbing down process that has been going on for years. Here in the UK the majority of children and young adults that go through the state education system seem unable to think for themselves. They are spoon fed everything, not allowed to fail (no life lessons there then!) and sent out into the world expecting things to come their way without effort. The whole system needs a complete overhaul.
Yeah I don't know if our entire educational system should be dumbed down to that children's card game where everyone's a winner. It simultaneously fosters ignorance and a sense of unjustified entitlement to not having one's feelings hurt. This can be very problematic down the road.
I agree with so many comments in here. This is so good. We should not be celebrating academic failure at all. I myself am one that did not succeed in Algebra or Trig and I ignored Calculus altogether because I couldn't comprehend it. My brother is a mathematical genius. He can do crazy calculations in his head. He blew his university professors away. So, I'm ok not having comprehended higher levels of math. I don't consider it a failure and I don't celebrate it as a failure. I'm a very successful event planner, so I'll happily stay in my lane and let my geeky brother do the math. :) Upvoted and followed.
haha thanks a lot. It's good to see that you have an open mind and see that although it's perfectly fine to not excel at maths (none of us are good at everything), creating a culture that encourages underachievement is not always desirable. Thanks for reading my post
This post is music to my ears. I am a special education teacher and am currently teaching Algebra to students with learning disabilities. Nearly every day I stress that my class is pushups for their brains. I gave told them if anyone ever comes up to the m on the street and asks them to factor a trinomial... they should turn and run because that would just be crazy. However, they will need to know how to use the logical part of their brain every day for the rest of their lives. Math helps them to exercise that part of the brain. I have yet to see a football player do a pushup during a game... but they do a ton of them in practice to strengthen the muscles needed in the game.
I salute you for your efforts sir. I definitely agree that learning mathematics can have far reaching indirect benefits like being a more rational thinker. No individual or society suffers if their people are too logical, rational and intelligent.
Well put! I may have to drop that one on them next week.