Purely By Chance
A puzzling anomaly presented itself when returning to the interactive digital hardware and software used to electronically access the network of related clusters of similarly engaged devices sometimes referred to as the internet. The modem displayed an indication there was a problem with the connection. A brief tour of recently visited sites resulted in evidence of a problem vanishing. As an additional check a not recently visited site was selected for which there was no likelihood of cached pages or other reference to it. Still no problem. Good.
The not recently visited site was Slashdot. As long as it was right there a review of the current offerings ensued. Purely by chance the reading of a brief request and the reaction to it was read. It seems a postgraduate student was seeking recommendations for physics texts that would be helpful with work in post author’s class on partial differential equations. This is not a story about math or physics. While it may be for the student it should not be for the rest of us. The following advice was offered to the student after expressing concern that the equations to be solved focused on physics problems and it would be good to have a better understanding of physics to deal with the math.
The commentary and other reactions to the student’s post together with the above information presents a good example of what is wrong with American education and people’s opinion of it or concern about it. The replies for this post at Slashdot offer a range of responses from what appear to be serious attempts to assist and recommend to adolescent attempts at humor or ridicule. But the entire discussion reminds this blog author of his own personal experience years ago to a similar dilemma.
The occupation, career or specific education requirements do not matter. It is sufficient for purposes of this post to explain the problem itself without benefit of distracting details. The subject matter presented in a course of study left me with a recurring concern that to fully understand the topics not only required understanding what they were and how they worked but why. When I mentioned this to a friend similarly engaged but in a different region of the country his reponse was much like the person offering advice to the student described in the Slashdot post. He said to not worry about it and just get through the classes. He went on to say the rest would take care of itself. I humbly disagreed then and still do today. Again, to understand what you are studying and how it works is necessary but so is knowing why.
Cognition, cognitive thinking, cognitive understanding or any number of other combinations possible with the word cognitve can be thought of as the ability to take what one learns and apply it to other things. Such as learning why things work the way they do so you can apply that knowledge to conditions or problems you face from that point forward. This is not presented as some sort of academic paper rather a brief explanation of this blog author’s opinion of the importance of knowing why things work the way they do and other answers related to the short question ‘why’.
To omit such pursuits in the area of education or an effort to learn seems an unfortunate contradiction to say the least.
Stanford Matthews
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