Re: Question for the Professor

On Dec 20, 4:37�am, "Jason Pawloski" <a679...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 20 2008 12:47 AM, Bill T wrote:





On 12/19/2008 23:19, Gareth Erskine-Jones wrote:

In the UK the education system has always tended to be biased towards
academic study and qualification (meaning the more abstract rather
than practical subjects). This starts quite early - e.g. by the time a
child is 14 years old, it's pretty easy to see if he's going to do
better in group theory or fixing cars. Unfortunately (although this
has got better recently) the practical / vocational subjects have been
treated as inferior, meaning that policy has aimed at increasing the
number of children into academic further �education, when really a lot
would benefit from moving into vocational training earlier. �I suppose
this is because the decisions are made by people with university
degrees rather than plumbers.

In general, a plumber is more valuable to society than a
group-theoretician. �We have to stop overvaluing academic pursuits over
vocational jobs. (I got 100% in my group theory class.)

You actually had a class only on group theory without rings and fields?
Was it an elective course or was it a part of a math curriculum?

I've seen many, many math curricula and never once seen a class only on
groups.

My groups, rings, and fields professor was German through college and then
emmigrated to the US. He said in his last year of high school he had an
introductory course on group theory, although he was quick to emphasize it
was not a college-level course. I was a junior in college, I think, when I
took my groups, rings and fields class. America is doomed because we can't
keep up with countries that actually try to teach their kids math.

--
"Actually, I will read Jason's posts too. �He's smart also." - Paul
Popinjay, 10/21/2007 (http://tinyurl.com/4bggyp)

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I did, in a British university in the 1970's. That was followed by
separate courses in group representations and Galois fields. I didn't
get ring theory until graduate school.
.

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