From: cedman@714-725-3177.nts.uci.edu (Carl Edman)
Subject: Re: Duty to graduate ?
Newsgroups: misc.education
Reply-To: cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman)
Date: 7 Apr 92 16:38:36 GMT
Distribution: na

Lee Story writes
> [...]        What I find wholly objectionable about Carl's
> statement is the notion that education is (and should be)
> instituted and formalized so that the student can
> provide a "service to society".  And that the number of
> PhDs (presumably shorthand for "the number of people who
> have PhD-level knowledge in some subject-matter") is to
> be determined by some unspecified, and I think
> unspecifiable, measure of how many "are needed in this
> society".  Even if I accept the fantastically
> unreasonable premise that each of us exists merely for
> the greater good of all the others (like a hive of bees,
> unindividuated, personless), yet would the society be
> the worse if each and every auto mechanic had a design
> engineer's knowledge of the machine's construction?

Ah...... please, Mr Story, you should know me better. Over the years I  
probably have spent most of my thousand or so posts refuting the idea  
that individuals exist for the benefit of "society" in all its various  
forms. It is this which caused me to be quite horrified when you  
brought up North Korea as a positive example of economic development in  
Asia in another thread in another group - there probably is in history  
no better example for the beehive state than North Korea.

However not even this strongly held belief of mine completely blinds me  
to the facts. Only so many Professors of Mathematics can be gainfully  
employed. As there are more people who wish to become professors of  
mathematics than can be gainfully employed, it only seems rational that  
those which have shown the greatest talent and promise should be  
choosen. 

Does this mean that anybody should be discouraged from learning  
mathematics ? By no means. It just means that you should not organize  
university level education on the level of those probably won't make it  
anyway.

And - yes, there is a problem with a society in which every auto  
mechanic had a design engineers knowledge of the machines construction.  
Much fewer design engineers can be gainfully employed than auto  
mechanics, but the talents of each design engineer have far greater  
effect the talents of each auto mechanic. So again it would seem  
rational to have a process which results in those with the greatest  
talent for mechanical design ending up as design engineers and those  
with less talent as auto mechanics. If the knowledge about car  
construction of design engineers was as small as that of the average  
auto mechanic that would mean that either design engineers are not  
working at full capacity or that the wrong people are design engineers.

> [ ... ]
> Also, I really, actively FEAR the wholehearted
> implementation of Carl Edman's point of view.  When I
> entered college, my freshman roommate had already
> performed the Mozart K.466 Piano Concerto with a
> regional symphony.  I am 47 years old, have played the
> piano since I was seven, and only now can perform that
> concerto (mostly) satisfactorily. (Of course I did a few
> other things in the meantime, and don't intend to be the
> slightest bit apologetic about my slow technical
> development at the keyboard.)  Carl seems to suggest
> that, in the interest of social efficiency, I should be
> busy screwing widgets into boreholes (or coding our
> object management server, or whatever) and leaving the
> piano playing and music study to those quick learners who
> can be ready for concert careers at twenty-one.

I myself am quite a dillettante in some fields outside of my  
professional field and am quite happy with that status. By no means  
should you or I be discouraged from learning music or mathematics.  
However neither of us should expect to be accepted to the best  
universities in those topics which are not our main interest or demand  
that those universities are forced to make their curricula so simple  
that we could pass as after all they have a "duty to graduate" us. That  
would cause (possibly permanent) harm to the education of professional  
e.g. musicians whose talents and education will have a far greater  
effect than ours.

> Sure, this is a parody of Carl's comments, and no more
> direct an implication from his position than "giving a
> PhD in mathematics to any one who enters kindergarten"
> follows from Carla Ann Greis's stance. [ ... ]

No, my argument was not a parody. Ms Greis claims that one should never  
drop a student out of school under any circumstances as that would mean  
that the "system has failed the child". So I guess that any  
kindergartner can get a PhD in mathematics simply by passing from  
school to school each of which has a "duty to graduate" him.

> I believe that the major differences expressed in this
> and other education newsgroups are differences of ends,
> not just of means. That's probably why the educational
> theorists who occasionally post here seem so annoyed
> that the discussion is not deep enough, or formal enough,
> or strays from what they consider its purpose.  And they
> may have a very good point.  Perhaps it's time for a
> "misc.education.tech" which will really focus on
> means---which will discuss serious research on
> hierarchies of understanding, whole-language
> reading, motivational effects of grading, and many
> other such topics in such precise technical terms and
> with all the critical apparatus in place. 

Well, maybe we should really give the educationists their own little  
moderated group - that might help. On the other hand, it didn't in the  
case of m.a.p either.

	Carl Edman