To: gnu-arch-users@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] OT: trained dependency
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Organization: The XEmacs Project
From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:39:12 +0900
In-Reply-To: <20041110191419.GA5978@suffields.me.uk> (Andrew Suffield's
	message of "Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:14:20 +0000")
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>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> writes:

    Andrew> On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 02:28:49PM +0900, Stephen
    Andrew> J. Turnbull wrote:

    >> "Can't sing, can't dance, can't act, they're no fun."

    >> They're not underprepared; they're overprepared.  In fact,
    >> they're cooked to the point where all the juice has evaporated.
    >> Japanese students know how to sit at desks, look at books, and
    >> memorize huge amounts of material.  They have huge amounts of
    >> information stored, but no concept of how to wrap that
    >> expressive material around original thoughts.

    Andrew> This is the normal perception of graduate students by
    Andrew> industries everywhere.

Actually, the tag line is from a quite original student skit, and
lampoons one of the best (though not most original) economists I know.

    Andrew> Probably deservedly; most people have no more than a
    Andrew> handful of original thoughts in their entire lives.

I doubt that.  I would agree that most people have no more than a
handful of _useful_ original thoughts, and that as they get older
their patterns of thought become more and more habitual.  But any six-
year-old can produce a double handful of original thoughts, suitable
for driving parents to hard drink, in a matter of an hour or less.

    Andrew> I have never seen any education system which performed
    Andrew> appreciably better at this.

Obviously you didn't go to the schools I did, then, and have failed to
notice the loud sucking sound from the general direction of Boston and
San Francisco (although the brain drain that trashed Britain's science
occurred before you were born, I would guess, so you're just used to
living in a desert).

The point is that your characterization of the U.S. education system
(all 50,000 of them) on average is correct.  However, there are
individual organizations that _systematically_ do well on any of the
various scales people seem to care about, including fostering
originality.  Partly it's a matter of selection, of course---smart
people going in means productive graduates.  But that's by no means
the whole story.

    Andrew> As best I can tell, it's normally left to natural
    Andrew> aptitude. I've never seen any evidence that there is a
    Andrew> practical way to teach this sort of thing.

You're not looking, I guess.

The teacher's side is called "mentoring", the student's side is
"apprenticeship".  If you mean "can I [== Steve] lead a horse to
calculus and then make him think?", you're right: I can't.  But if I
watch a student and find out what interests her and what she's good
at, I certainly can foster originality.  Can, and do.  It may not be
productive from the point of view of society; productive originality
requires other skills that I'm not good at teaching, though I've seen
teachers who are good at it.  However, I've _never_ seen a teacher who
could do any of this effortlessly.  (Sorry, Zen!)  You are correct
that it is not possible to simply employ credentialed individuals and
get the desired effect systematically.

On the other hand, the Japanese school system shows that it's possible
to entirely stamp out "natural aptitude" from the public behavior of
99% of the population.

So it's as my professor said: to foster higher-order education, for
_most_ teachers _most_ of the time, what they should do is get out of
the students' way but not so far as to be unavailable when the
students have questions.  However, I won't go so self-servingly far as
he did; it is certainly possible to systematically improve originality
in thinking, but it's very expensive, and currently such teaching
requires talents that are even harder to teach than "mere"
originality.  It also requires management which is sympathetic to that
goal and robust to demands (eg from parents and employers) to achieve
myopic goals like "better standardized exam scores".

    Andrew> I would say this is a cultural effect rather than the
    Andrew> result of the education system. It's what Japanese culture
    Andrew> expects people to do, so it's what they do. (I expect
    Andrew> you're familiar with what I'm referring to).

Partly, yes, and yes.  The point is that as with its government, the
Japanese people has gotten the education system it deserves.
(Recognize that paraphrase?)  And it is a similarly cruel fate.

    Andrew> In essence, a highly effective education system is
    Andrew> spectacularly let down by cultural constraints that
    Andrew> inhibit people from doing anything useful at the highest
    Andrew> levels with their education.

Highly effective, yes.  So is DDT.  Neither is something you
particularly want left loose in the environment.

    Andrew> Summarising information is a learned skill, and a fairly
    Andrew> mechanical one. It's not a particularly good measure of
    Andrew> anything else (despite a number of popular testing systems
    Andrew> which are based on it).

Nonsense.  The mechanical aspect is what I mean by "sed".  However, to
effectively summarize information, ie compress it beyond what can be
done with bzip2, one must start by choosing an audience and
abstracting with that audience in mind.  (Cf. MP3 and JPEG, but they
have _much_ more standard audiences.)  This is a highly social,
creative activity---unless you live in a society that confuses
"conventional wisdom" with "common (aka 'uncommon') sense" (you know
the concept of jôshiki, I suppose).  Keynes's "beauty contest" as a
metaphor for all of society, and not just financial bubbles.  :-(


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.


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