The Soft Issue
August 2017
Story from Outside
no argument for the fact that that trend
continues almost ad infinitum.
You’re taught to remember that 1+1 is 2,
taught to cram the multiplication table, and
eventually, you’re taught to cram whole notes
and regurgitate them when needed. It’s so
bad, that by the time you get to university,
the odd lecturer that decides to give an open
book test, or asks applied questions is such
an anomaly that we decide that such people
are “wicked.” You get so comfortable with
seeing the words “list,” “define,” “explain” in our
exams and not much more.
All through our lives, we are taught to
remember stuff!
The problem with that is that a good
education is not really about how good your
memory is, it is more about the ability to think
critically and make real-life decisions with the
knowledge at your disposal.
At this point, it’s weird that I remember the
words of one of the few professors back in
university that peppered us with open book
tests, made us summarize whole books
into three paragraphs, and asked us applied
questions all the time.
“The models you are struggling to grasp
today, toddlers have been playing with them
from their cradle in developed countries. At
this rate, when do you think you will catch
up?”
I also vividly remember my friend, a chemical
engineer I had gone to university with, calling
me at an odd time of the day screaming “I
finally get it” over the phone from many miles
away in Houston. A professor in his graduate
class had just explained differentiation in
relation to the flow of substance in a pipe and
it made so much sense to him. Before he left
the country, we had joked countless times
about how seemingly useless our knowledge
of “d/dx and dy/dx” was. Make no mistake,
we both got As in our advance mathematics
class. We just had no idea why we were doing
what we were doing. (I still don ’t).
I also vividly remember my friend,
a chemical engineer I had gone
to university with, calling me at an
odd time of the day screaming “I
finally get it” over the phone from
many miles away in Houston. A
professor in his graduate class
had just explained differentiation
in relation to the flow of substance
in a pipe and it made so much
sense to him.
of the most educated people here are scared of one.
Considering that no one teaches you how to use
a phone in these parts, there’s nothing to refer to.
Figuring phones or anything really is too hard for most
adults here, thanks to the way we learn. It’s the reason
your parents probably call you from across the world
to help them figure out what’s wrong with the TV,
when the only thing different is that the input source
has mistakenly been changed. It’s probably why like
sheep, we do the very same things our parents did,
without asking questions or thinking them through
for ourselves but call it “culture.” It explains our
disorderliness, our general near permanent state of
confusion and indecision. I can go on.
I can’t say I have a solution to this problem right now,
but the one common denominator that I have found
with people that critically think in these parts — and
they are unsurprisingly few, if you doubt this, scroll
through your Twitter and Facebook timeline for a few
minutes, then remember that the conversations you
are seeing are written by some of the top 30% — is
that they didn’t learn it in school. They found hobbies
or passions that they figured out for themselves
and that helped them develop their critical thinking.
From cooking to books to computer games, to music
instruments to programming languages.
They found something, and figured it out.
After this realization, a lot of the other things
started to make sense to me. Like how the
average street seller in Bangkok owns and
uses a smartphone to its fullest, while some
Super Sanusi is the founder and
editor in chief at TechSuplex.
Twitter/Medium: @supersanusi
64
the
LENS