Re: Dear Metoos

On Mar 30, 3:40 pm, "Chris Guynn" <chris.gu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"JOF" <jofran...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:a464d234-5af5-493e-87b5-1a3192b568c4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Mar 29, 1:55 pm, "Chris Guynn" <chris.gu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





<janus...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:320219c3-c495-49ca-aeb1-c02cf7ee5139@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Have a nice reading
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html

I really enjoyed the comments

Janusz

Well, that was interesting, I guess. Mostly, it just strikes me as more
American bashing, only this time it seems to be coming from within. I lose
how they use a segment from "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader" to prove
their point when, I'd wager, most countrtries probably have similar
"stupid
people" shows.

Personally, I was always taught that the facts only matter in so far as
they
can be used for the problem at hand. What that means is that while I was
in
school, I was basically instructed in how to digest facts to regurgitate
on
the exams I would need but not to be concerned about remembering all of
those facts after they were no longer useful (for my grade). Facts can be
looked up. There's no real reason to fill up valuable memory space with
stuff that you can easily find like what country Budapest is the capitol
of.
I was taught that it is much more important to think for yourself than it
is
to be able to spew useless facts. Of course, I didn't listen to that
teaching very well and can still spew any number of useless facts, but the
sentiment remains the same. Also, I've sincec learned that, without regard
to nationality, race, color, creed, sex, etc..., only about 2% of the
population ever reaches the stage of development where they actually *do*
think for themselves. Empirical evidence tends to make me believe that the
percentage is much lower than that, but I'll defer to the people who did
the
studies.

-----------------------------------------------
It's too bad that your education was only centred around what you
needed to know for the exams rather than actually preparing you for a
career and life generally. Sounds like you attended a diploma mill.
Seems to me that's exactly what the article was about. Hopefully your
doctors and other professionals who provide services for you got a
more retention based education.

And I'm pretty sure there are more than a few of your fellows here
who'd argue with you relegating Pearl Harbor to "useless fact".
Admittedly the compendium of wolrd knowledge has grown too large for
any one person to know it all, but surely there are some moments in
history that should stick, if only out of national pride and loyalty.
I think the point of the article is that there's something inherently
lacking in the education or at least the knowledge of presumably
intelligent Americans who aren't even aware of the significance of
Pearl Harbor. That's the "solipsism" thing in microcosm.

I'm not suggesting that America's alone in that failing. We have our
share of self-absorbed empty-headed clowns up here in the frozen north
who are like the human baby mentioned.

JF
-----------------------------------------------

I think that I was not clear in expressing my point.

The circumstances surrounding "Pearl Harbor" are obviously not "useless
fact".  The fact that it happened on December 7, 1941 *is* useless fact.

How often do you imagine that, while I'm diagnosing a network communication
error, I'll be like "Hey, this would sure be a lot easier if I could only
remember the exact date of the attack on Pearl Harbor"?

In history, many schools tend to focus on the dates, but I find it much more
interesting (as well as important) to focus on the circumstances, including,
but not limited to, causal effect.  The dates, at least in my opinion, are
mostly irrelevant.

The same thing si true for just about every field.  There are important
concepts that should be learned and remembered, but there are also useless
pieces of information that can be easily found if they are needed.  For
instance, is it really that important from a general standpoint to remember
that Pi can be represented by 22/7?  Obviously, if it's something that you
work with on a regualr basis, it is, but generally, do you really think it
is?  How important is it from a general standpoint to remember that the
conversion from degrees F to Degrees C is (f-32)*5/9?  For those people who
do this conversion on a regular basis, they will remember it.  Those of us
who only do it occasionally, can look it up just as easily (if not more so)
than remembering it.

That's what I'm talking about in regards to "useless facts".  I'd also like
to point out that there are a lot of people who will find many facts to be
very important that I tend to view as useless.  I'm sure that the facts are,
in fact, usefull to those people, but they (the facts) are still useless to
me.-

So it doesn't matter to you that modern Americans might think it was
part of the war in Viet Nam?

JF

.

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