Recent Comments

Less than 5 minutes ago: Excellent summation. I agree, and would add that talking in the abstract for 12 minutes didn't work for my freshman year History prof, and it didn't work for this guy.

Throw in examples, for Christ's sake!

20 minutes ago: To assert that creativity relies on literacy is to say that children under the age of 5 or so are not creative. Have you never seen a 4 year old play or construct a fort? No one has to teach children that pillows blankets = play house but they will all get there if given the opportunity to play with the furniture. Creativity comes before literacy in children, just as it did in early humans. There was no written language when people decided to control the way plants grow in order to feed themselves. Literacy is simply a tool to allow us to communicate and glean information quickly. But literacy without creativity is useless, at least in terms of the forwarding of knowledge. Original ideas are quite highly valued by this cruel society you portray -- agriculture, industry, internet. These things which make the world what it is, for better or worse, would never have moved forward if it weren't for a creative leap. So why is it OK that we are educating against creativity?

20 minutes ago: design process IS like a circle, you repeat things come back to ideas, re-do ideas in different modes etc. He know's what he's talking about, even if he adds other references to 'ground it'

30 minutes ago: Looking for web stats and semantic analysis i've found this presentation and (this community) - its just amazing. love the stats, humor, the whole message... indeed beauty

40 minutes ago: great lecture. loved it. considering the download. 10/10

40 minutes ago: Jodi, sorry for that statement: there is definitely creativity in performance. I was trying to make more of a comparison than an absolute statement. Everything we do has various levels of creativity, and what I was trying to say (but failed) was that we shouldn't fall for the all-too-common misconception that everything related to the arts is extremely creative, whereas everything related to science or math is just rote memorization. My point was that an average piano player uses less creativity during a performance than a biologist does when tackling a research problem. Thinking about it this way should allow people to understand that teaching creativity doesn't require teaching more arts, nor does teaching arts necessarily imply a boost in creativity. What we need to change is the way we teach school subjects, not so much the subjects themselves.

40 minutes ago: you should look for "a universe from nothing" by lawrence krauss and "imagining the tenth dimension" on youtube. actually, scratch that, here are the links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo and http://tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

40 minutes ago: well to start with, loop quantum gravity hasn't built a massive experiment in geneva. and unfortunately it is that kind of thing and not the science that attracts the media. on the other hand, i don't see why TED doesn't have any videos on it. totally off topic a very good lecture to see (not a TED lecture though) is "a universe from nothing" by lawrence krauss.

45 minutes ago: Agree. The talk is very persuasive and captivating, though after letting it settle down, you realize the findings and conclusions have been said many times before, and not as surprising as he may have made it sound. Still, food for thought

45 minutes ago: Bruce, education *cannot* be just about exposition, for the simple (though sad) reason that there's too much to show. Maybe ideally you'd show everything we know to the kids, with absolutely no hierarchy or emphasis, and allow them to pick. Unfortunately, we can't do that.

This reminds me of my history professor from college. He made the excellent point that history is not about dates and places, it's not just a collection of facts, as many would think. It is instead a selection process, in which you choose *which* facts are relevant. Otherwise, the amount of information is overwhelming.

I think the same holds for education. The challenge is to select the right topics to teach. I think this selection process is unavoidable. We just have to decide which factors to take into account, and I'm arguing that one particularly important factor is how useful for society a specific topic is.

50 minutes ago: Yancario, I never said people shouldn't have hobbies. Of course they should. That's different from learning two things equally, though. Tennis is one of my hobbies, but I'm definitely not as good at it as I am at my job.

As for the soccer player example, I agree it sounded overly dramatic, but the point still stands: you should encourage children to do what they like, KEEPING AN EYE on how useful it is, and how likely it is to get a job. Being realistic is not bad. If you want to play professional soccer but you're not that good at it, maybe it's good to just give up and do something else. That's what I'm arguing you should teach children.

A regular soccer player gets exercise, but I hope you realize the amount of strain he puts on his body is much more harmful than it is good. Many of them have leg problems, and besides they're out of a job by the age of 35 or so.

1 hour ago: the talk is interesting, but has so many abstruse references too quickly explained that there is no way i could even show it to a university audience

1 hour ago: My main point is that science, math, egineering... they are more useful for people: they allow them to live better, longer and healthier lives. Not emphasizing these subjects would be genocidal. It would just make no sense. Not teaching your children that some subjects are more important than others would mean lying to them, and it would also be irresponsible. Again, we don't live in the ideal world where we have plenty of doctors, and all we're missing is more Britney Spears's. Quite the contrary. I feel the need to repeat that I'm not saying to turn somebody who hates math into a physicist. All I'm saying is, if a child likes both music and math about equally, it's probably best to encourage her to do maybe engineering as a profession, and keep music as a hobby. This way, she would be more useful for the people around her, and she would have better chances to get a good job, and thus live a better life. Would you really not want that for your child?

1 hour ago: Diana, you misunderstood me. I'm not really feeling responsible to take on jobs that are useful. In particular, the field I'm studying is not going to be useful at least in the next century or so. However, I do think I *should* feel responsible to do a useful job. I am part of a society that helped me survive and shaped who I am, and as such, I have a responsibility to give something back to it. This is the same kind of feeling that makes people do voluntary work, make donations, or simply not take advantage of "the system" even when they could.

Also, very importantly, I'm not talking here about "my" values. Again, please realize that so many things in the world just are (pretty much) absolutely true. I'm trying to convince you of a reality, I'm not trying to impose a subjective and arbitrary view on you. When Galileo said "eppur si muove", he didn't mean "that's what I believe, you should do the same"; he meant--it's a fact, be aware of it! This is what I am trying to do here.

1 hour ago: Richard, there are so many true things: the Earth is turning, the Sun is burning, animals get born, live, and die, people have feelings, people have intellect and creativity... should I go on? The list is very-very long. And please don't tell me none of these things is 100% certain--I know that very well, but adopting such a view is completely pointless. There are so many facts that we know beyond any reasonable doubt, that I'm actually wondering: why did you ask that question?

As for Mozart, he himself emphasized how important the study of composition was for him. Besides, do you really think it's a good idea to teach all our children as if they were geniuses? How many kids could compose music when they're 5? Most children aren't geniuses, they aren't mentally disabled either; they're just plain, average kids, and education is--and should be--aimed at them.

1 hour ago: Diana, it's not hard to understand *roughly* what normal is. Of course there are a lot of borderline cases, but there are many obvious ones. That said, during primary, elementary, and high school, I must have met and known well something like 70-80 kids... and I think all of them were normal. None of them needed medication, all of them were able to do usual things, like talk, and read, and write, socialize etc. Of course some were better at school, and some worse, but there was absolutely nothing to warrant calling any of them not normal. So I think 1-2% might not be a bad estimate... (it's true I grew up in Romania, not in the US, but I'm sure the percentage of kids with disabilities is comparable between the two countries).

So, yes, people should overemphasize science and math, but no, I never said one shouldn't bother about the kids who aren't normal. However, we should cater education firstly at normal kids, and then of course do our best to help the ones with problems.

1 hour ago: Drums Sivamani is the famous Indian drumer and he is the active supporter of Chennai super kings

1 hour ago: The Blue Brain project is based on Michael Hines's NEURON software http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/

2 hours ago: Your sense of right is callous and scary.

2 hours ago: I agree with Mr. Brown' speech. His words are full of good intentions. But I guess that all of us here have enough and beyond awareness about the situation we live in. But how far are they - he and others politicians - putting all cards over the table? Since global organizations like the UN have been founded we noticed wars concerning land, religion, gender and so on. Have not they had the chance of running all of this? Why did they wait so long? But the real thing is what are we waiting? We can do this. Sure the communication devices today help a lot but we are more important. What about starting help sons, family, neighbours and on? For so long we live jailed by the system, financial power. However we can and should use the open white power of internet and make contact. Internet explain itself: the net! What side is the power of? Have you ever imagine if only one day workers stopped? It would be a public demonstration of collaboration, commitment and power. Do not?