Category: Education

The education system is embedded in the bigger socio-political order of the economy. To a large degree, the larger system dictates the characteristics of its subsystems. In the broadest terms, the government of India is an extractive and exploitative system created specifically for that purpose during the nearly one hundred years of its existence as a British colony before India became politically independent. The British, as a colonial power, created a system designed to control every aspect of the economy to maximize extraction. The challenge of administering such a large population required a certain small percentage of the native population to be educated in a very specific way. Therefore the total and absolute control of the education system was a necessity.
Continue reading “The Indian Education System — Part 3”

Education matters immensely when it comes to the health of an economy. There is a positive correlation between years of schooling and the GDP per capita. Let’s look at the numbers that are indicative of the generalization. In 2001, “school-life expectancy” and the ppp GDP per capita for Ethiopia were (4.3 years, and $675); for Indonesia (10, and $2,844), for China (12.4, and $4,065), for South Korea (14.6, and $17,048), Japan (14.3, and $25,559), and the US (15.2, and $32,764).
Continue reading “The Indian Education System — Part 2”

The fractal nature of the generalization that education matters holds across time and space. Irrespective of the granularity of analysis, education aids development through the intermediate step of economic growth. At the finest level of detail, an educated individual anywhere in the world is more productive than an uneducated one. At the broadest level of analysis, the modern world is more productive arguably because it is more educated compared to the world that existed before. A cross-sectional study of the world today, or at any earlier time, reveals that the general level of education of the population is a good predictor of the success of the population.
Continue reading “The Indian Education System — Part 1”

When I stumble upon something that clearly expresses how I feel about a subject, it is a sheer delight to read. Brain candy to be enjoyed and hoarded. I immediately thank the god of the world wide web (aside: I think I will nominate Ganesha as the ruling deity of the www as he represents wisdom and learning) and kiss the LCD display with gratitude. I carefully save a copy on my laptop and email a dozen people hoping they would drop everything and read the gem I discovered. The great thing about brain candy — as opposed to regular candy — is that it is a public good — you can distribute them to everyone without ever diminishing the amount available to anyone.
Continue reading “Murray on Education”

I think when it comes to education we need to go back to the basics. We have made the system needlessly complex and it has not surprisingly failed.

A few years ago, at the university, all of us in the student housing co-op were required to attend a presentation by a HIV+ man. At one point he took out a small polythene bag. It had about 70 pills and he said that he took them daily for avoiding getting sick. The pills would make a substantial snack. So why so many? Well, there was this one yellow pill which boosted his immune system. But that made him nauseous. So the red pill was to suppress that. The three green ones were to compensate for the side-effect of the red pill, though. But if you take the three green ones, you had to take the 8 white pills to give you back the vitamins that the green ones made you lose. Now the large blues pills were required for the upset stomach that the white ones gave you when you had them in combination with the yellow pill, the one that you actually needed. The story went on till about 70 pills had been accounted for.
Continue reading “Rambling on about Education”

Brand Blanshard wrote eloquently about American education in his essay “Quantity and Quality in American Education.” The essay was published nearly half a century ago but the message is universal. Thanks to Anthony Flood for making it accessible. It is a long and thoughtful essay, worth reading in its entirety. The last bits resonate most forcefully with me, and so I present this extended quote for your reading pleasure and intellectual delight.
Continue reading “Reasonableness”

Legend has it that Arthur Rubenstein was once asked on the street for directions to Carnegie Hall. “Pardon me sir, but how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” He said, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Here’s something you may enjoy listening to. A Scientific American podcast (mp3 download ~9.5 MB) on what it takes to become an expert. Anyone can provided one puts sufficient sweat into it and does so smartly over an extended period of time. So all of you who have small children, pay special attention.

The Expert Mind and the Interplanetary Bicycle Ride

In this episode, Phil Ross talks about what scientists have learned is necessary to achieve expertise in virtually any field. Ross’s article on the subject, The Expert Mind, is in the August issue of Scientific American. And Sheldon Schafer, who sports the title of Curator of the Solar System (a huge model of the solar system centered in Peoria, Illinois) discusses the Interplanetary Bicycle Ride, coming up on August 12 and 13. Plus we’ll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this podcast include Spectrum.IEEE.org; http://www.lakeview-museum.org; and the Scientific American Digital Archive, http://www.sciamdigital.com.

Liked this email I got from Uday. With his permission here it is:
Continue reading “Feynman Rocks”

I worry about the kids. The kids I know hardly have any time for themselves. They are always busy with school, homework, tuitions, tennis lessons, tabla lessons, and preparing for this or that exam. There is no unstructured time for them to just do what they feel like doing, or for just doing nothing. I suspect (just a hunch, no proof) that it could be causing these kids to be unimaginative, non-creative and dull. They need to take a time out. But that means they have to reduce the “academic” load on the kids. They are being burdened with too much stuff to learn, and in the end, they end up missing the essential bits. But that is an entire different tirade that I will not go into right now.
Continue reading “Take a Time Out”