---

title: Education vs Entertainment created_at: 2019-01-25T14:52:16.823Z updated_at: 2019-01-25T14:52:16.823Z tldr: its not good is_published: 1 star: true category: Fundemental Truths share_type: add

Note!

This article talks of most Indian and Indian-like education systems.

Before the cinema days, there were dramas, there was a script of scenes that were supposed to happen in certain events and the curtains closed. If the audience liked it they would clap or throw rotten tomatoes. No where in between the play there was questioning about why things happen a certain way. It's for fun take it lightly said the critiques.

Now replay the same scene in a classroom with a teacher...

We were all boys in school, and our biology teacher narrated the entire human reproduction chapter looking at the door. Seriously? Our entire civilization depends on this not dipping below some percentage and this. Everyone reads it word for word but, that's not the issue, I am talking about how we are taught.

A math problem can be solved in quite several ways, but we need to follow the exact same steps shown in our textbook, or else we are losing marks. Why? In the board evaluations, the correct steps will be handed out, and they need to see the same pattern when my paper comes onto the table. So... I just need to remember and repeat... on a math paper?

Preparing for competitive exams, we got coaching centers. Outright they promise - "You pay us so that we show you a way to score good marks in the exam, It's not our objective to make concepts understood by the students"

In my engineering computer labs, we need to reproduce the program that has been handed over to us in the syllabus. No funny alternative solutions...

This is just entertainment.

The understanding

Anybody can learn anything. If they are interested, they can go deep into the subject and make amazing discoveries. The real value of education is making it a perfectly free and open case to ask why things happen, and what would have happened if things had worked differently. With self and others. It should create a sense of amusement in discovering things.

Education should be about answering unknown questions. It should be about finding happiness. Teaching the values of life.

Things change every day. There is a new discovery every minute. Our old way of entertaining is not going to scale unless factory workers are all we need.

We live in an age of exponential growth in knowledge, and it is increasingly futile to teach only polished theorems and proofs. We must abandon the guided tour through the art gallery of mathematics and instead teach how to create the mathematics we need. In my opinion, there is no long-term practical alternative.
- Richard Hamming

Further reading

• The art of doing Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming