Seth Godin says in his book "Linchpin
": "School expects that our best students will graduate to become trained trigonometricians. They'll be hired by people to compute the length of the hypotenuse of a certain right triangle. What a waste. The only reason to learn trigonometry is because of a momentarily interesting question, one worth sorting out. But then we should move on, relentlessly seeking out new problems, ones even more interesting than that one. The idea of doing it by rote, of relentlessly driving the method home, is a total waste of time."
I completely agree that schools (and colleges) are way off the mark to create trained trigonometricians. This why there is so much angst when these "trained trigonometricians" reach the industry.
Using trigonometry as a place holder for varied kinds of school learning, it should be learnt not as an end in itself but as a technique, a way of approaching a certain kind of problem. School should be able to make clear that neither is trigonometry the only problem, nor the only solution. In other words, the job of a school is NOT to teach subject matter, but to equip a child with solution-discovery tools. As the child grows older and faces the world, s/he will encounter problems that school cannot realistically even BEGIN to anticipate -- therefore it becomes vitally important to equip the child to be able to find solutions to such issues. The real success of a school is if it manages to teach the child "how to learn" to solve -- any given problem, i.e., the purpose of education is NOT subject matter but "learning/problem solving/solution finding techniques". This is a much broader mandate than even the most loaded curriculum today aims to fulfill.
Having said that, there is also some merit in solving lots and lots of "trigonometry" problems. This gives children the confidence that after having discovered a problem solving method or a solution, it *is* possible to master it by practice. In fact, the ONLY way to master *any* skill is to relentlessly practice it till it becomes a way of life -- whether the skill is finding the length of a hypotenuse or playing an instrument. This may at times be repetitive or boring -- but it is absolutely true that success is 99% perspiration.
In my opinion, the issue is not repetition but the way subject matter is introduced in the first place. I am not an educator, but in my experience as a student, I learnt to "learn" only when I was doing a post graduate course in a reputed institute with teachers who were knowledgeable and passionate about the subject enough to be able to encourage inquiry-based learning and a fantastically equipped library to enable research was about 15 steps away from the classroom.
My experience as a parent tells me that children are born with the spirit of inquiry and logical thinking. They are amazingly good at being able to reason through even extremely complex scenarios, leading to questions that sometimes stump us adults because WE have not taken the logical thought process as far as them.
All that school needs to do is design a curriculum that makes use of this innate childhood ability. Easier said than done?
": "School expects that our best students will graduate to become trained trigonometricians. They'll be hired by people to compute the length of the hypotenuse of a certain right triangle. What a waste. The only reason to learn trigonometry is because of a momentarily interesting question, one worth sorting out. But then we should move on, relentlessly seeking out new problems, ones even more interesting than that one. The idea of doing it by rote, of relentlessly driving the method home, is a total waste of time."I completely agree that schools (and colleges) are way off the mark to create trained trigonometricians. This why there is so much angst when these "trained trigonometricians" reach the industry.
Using trigonometry as a place holder for varied kinds of school learning, it should be learnt not as an end in itself but as a technique, a way of approaching a certain kind of problem. School should be able to make clear that neither is trigonometry the only problem, nor the only solution. In other words, the job of a school is NOT to teach subject matter, but to equip a child with solution-discovery tools. As the child grows older and faces the world, s/he will encounter problems that school cannot realistically even BEGIN to anticipate -- therefore it becomes vitally important to equip the child to be able to find solutions to such issues. The real success of a school is if it manages to teach the child "how to learn" to solve -- any given problem, i.e., the purpose of education is NOT subject matter but "learning/problem solving/solution finding techniques". This is a much broader mandate than even the most loaded curriculum today aims to fulfill.
Having said that, there is also some merit in solving lots and lots of "trigonometry" problems. This gives children the confidence that after having discovered a problem solving method or a solution, it *is* possible to master it by practice. In fact, the ONLY way to master *any* skill is to relentlessly practice it till it becomes a way of life -- whether the skill is finding the length of a hypotenuse or playing an instrument. This may at times be repetitive or boring -- but it is absolutely true that success is 99% perspiration.
In my opinion, the issue is not repetition but the way subject matter is introduced in the first place. I am not an educator, but in my experience as a student, I learnt to "learn" only when I was doing a post graduate course in a reputed institute with teachers who were knowledgeable and passionate about the subject enough to be able to encourage inquiry-based learning and a fantastically equipped library to enable research was about 15 steps away from the classroom.
My experience as a parent tells me that children are born with the spirit of inquiry and logical thinking. They are amazingly good at being able to reason through even extremely complex scenarios, leading to questions that sometimes stump us adults because WE have not taken the logical thought process as far as them.
All that school needs to do is design a curriculum that makes use of this innate childhood ability. Easier said than done?
No comments:
Post a Comment