
Richard Feynman on education in Brazil - btmorex
http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education
======
microarchitect
The problem boils down to just one thing. The teachers don't understand what
they're teaching themselves, so they confuse memorization and repetition with
learning. The students who are good at this are rewarded because they do
better in the exams, and slowly but surely all the joy of understanding
science is beaten out of a student.

I can relate to this personally. Until I started college, I really understood
what I was learning. I enjoyed doing science and reading about. But then I
made the biggest mistake of my life - I didn't put enough effort into
preparing for the IIT entrance examinations and didn't make it in.

I started at the second-tier college that I went to and I realized that my
teachers didn't know what they were teaching. We were supposed to be learning
all this stuff about Fourier series and Laplace transforms, and I couldn't
figure out where we were going with all this. I couldn't understand why
certain assumptions were made and where they mattered in the proofs. It was
all going above my head. When I asked my lecturers, I was branded as a
disruptive student. I simply got insulted until I learned to keep my mouth
shut.

I didn't do very well in my examinations either. The most marks were given to
the students who could reproduce what the teacher said in the cleanest
handwriting with the best figures. My writing sucked and my figures were
dirty, and I wrote what I understood not what I remembered. I simply had no
hope.

A few years later I started a master's degree at a top-tier institution. Man,
was this a different experience! I realized I could ask questions and get
intelligent answers. I realized my professors actually knew what these proofs
were going to useful for! I was finally back in an environment where
understanding was valued.

Unfortunately, I still haven't recovered fully. I can see myself understanding
more stuff than in the past, but it's something I have to force myself to do.
I use tricks I learned from Feynman and others - I try to build a visual model
in my head as I'm hearing something and then I ask questions to the model to
see if I'm really understanding stuff. I force myself to think about stuff all
time. But this process is not automatic, and I can't help but think my
undergraduate lecturers beat it out of me.

~~~
raghava
In India, usually people who could not land a plum corporate job would resort
to teaching (UG level) and they are entrusted with the job of shaping the next
batch of engineers/artists. Also, teaching as a job is not greatly rewarding
financially, hence it is not a popular choice. One could only imagine the
outcome.

To state the facts, a school teacher teaching 4/5th grade kids would hardly be
given a $150 salary. In second tier cities, it's even lesser.

I would say, not just this, but there is also a huge difference in the line of
thought and a tendency to resign oneself to fate, among Indians. That is
almost always part of the upbringing. The ones landing up as teachers would
resign to their fates and stop (and resist vehemently) any attempt to keep
oneself up-to-date or develop their skills.

And the sad part is, even the interested ones are forcibly turned into
indifferent ones, due to various socio-cultural changes presently seen in the
economically shining nation.

A relevant article:
[http://www.hindu.com/op/2011/04/24/stories/2011042453622000....](http://www.hindu.com/op/2011/04/24/stories/2011042453622000.htm)

~~~
gnosis
$150 an hour? A day? A week? A month? A year?

~~~
microarchitect
I think he means a month. FWIW, I know primary school teachers making half
that much in Bangalore.

------
ojosilva
Just for clarification: Richard Feynman, Nobel physicist wrote this piece
about his experiences teaching in Brazil in... 1950.

So I don't think this is a very precise account of education in Brazil
nowadays, but it sure does sound like education there (and almost anywhere
else) in the 50s -- my mom tells me she would read out loud to herself until
dawn the day before an exam, as she was taught auditory learning. This is not
so common now as it was then.

But I agree that unfortunately, to this day, in any country and most schools
out there, science is still taught to a large extent through dumb memorization
and automatic formula application. Thus Feynman critique stands fresh and
sound despite the anachronism. I feel education hasn't advanced nearly as fast
as science, math, technology and society in the last century and a half.

(BTW, Feynman was infatuated with Brazil, and used to visit the country often.
He even dressed up for carnival in Rio once: <http://goo.gl/3p5RS> \-- I wish
he would tell more about that in his autobiography, instead of such a broad
generalization of his experience teaching there.)

~~~
rbanffy
It's soul-crushing to read this, isn't it?

Every day I am confronted with former students who have been taught like this.
I took fluid dynamics 3 times, until I found a teacher willing to teach it
instead of just letting us memorize the whole thing. When you really
understand a subject, it's like hitting the light switch and realizing you
were in a dark room.

I feel for those who live their professional lives in dark rooms.

OTOH, I am sure Mr. Feynman was no ordinary teacher himself. His students were
very, very lucky. His bar was unusually high, impossibly high for many
teachers.

~~~
palish
See for yourself.

Richard Feynman - The Relation of Mathematics & Physics:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SrHzSGn-I8>

Richard Feynman - The Distinction of Past and Future:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kab9dkDZJY&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kab9dkDZJY&feature=related)

Richard Feynman - Law of Gravitation:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s-wfpsmtyU&feature=mfu_i...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s-wfpsmtyU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL)

There are about 7 lectures total. They are all amazing.

(EDIT: Looks like they aren't all on Youtube. Watch them here:
<http://www.fotuva.org/news/project_tuva.html> )

------
kalid
I love this story because as Feynman puts it, there's a difference between
knowing the name of something and really knowing it.

Since we're on the topic of light -- despite going to a great school and
taking several physics courses, I suffered from a severe misconception until
about a month ago. Maybe you have it too.

Think about a light wave. You might imagine a diagram like this:

[http://betterexplained.com/wp-
content/uploads/graphs/Wave.pn...](http://betterexplained.com/wp-
content/uploads/graphs/Wave.png)

Yep, you've seen it a million times. Light is a wave and wiggles up and
down... right?

Oh really? Do you think the fastest thing the universe travels in a _zigzag_
pattern? Hey, why don't we beat the speed of light by moving on a straight
line! Nobel prize time!

No, the y-axis is _amplitude_ of the field. The graph is not a Family-circus
dotted line following the particle's motion! A better diagram may be this:

[http://betterexplained.com/wp-
content/uploads/graphs/wave_am...](http://betterexplained.com/wp-
content/uploads/graphs/wave_amplitude_line.png)

It's the _intensity_ of the wave which is varying. But we memorize the "light
is a wiggling wave" diagram and wind up with a severe misconception.

(Shameless plug: I blog at <http://betterexplained.com> and try to hammer away
at the insights that have befuddled me.)

~~~
Jach
Personally I think the whole wave-particle business shouldn't be touched upon
until the student understands that _in reality_ those things are just complex
vectors in a configuration space, not a little ball bouncing around.
Equivalently you can think of them as outlined in Feynman's QED (which anyone
interested in physics should read), as arrows. The word "wave" shouldn't ever
be mentioned in introductory quantum mechanics.

Then once that's over, you explain to the students this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7OEzyEfzgg> it's a duality of interpretation,
not reality, we use wave mathematics for simplified calculations. Plus if you
interpret it as a wave (as Feynman shows) you run into problems with
experimental results not coming out as expected that a particle interpretation
doesn't have problems with. (And for some reason I can't think of color in
terms of waves, it makes much more sense if I think of it in terms of the
energy of a photon with the brightness as a function of how many photons there
are, which then ties back to a probability point of view where it's obvious
that it's brighter where there's probabilistically more photons.)

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/> remains for me the
best introduction to thinking sanely about the subject without becoming
confused from the get-go as you start talking about waves vs. particles.

~~~
madcaptenor
But if you tell students "sometimes light looks like it's a wave and sometimes
it looks like it's a particle" then they can parrot that back to you and sound
smart. This is despite them not understanding the meaning of the words "looks
like", "wave", "particle", or "sometimes".

------
thiagofm
First of all, I'm brazilian.

I study computer science and things are bad here. I'm very lucky to be able to
understand english well enough to have studied most of courses MIT OCW have
that are interesting to me. Teachers here "teach" in a different way, it's
sad. Currently, there's much potential being lost.

People here are educated to get a job and work to buy a car, house and consume
a lot, which is actually perfect how the way things are in the world right
now(be careful US, we have more stupid consumers than you). They are good
robots to get things done to get paid.

They need a boss basically, they are educated to be the employee. Awesome for
US companies that come here.

I see a good future ahead for our economy, but who is going to get really rich
here are people from the outside, the rest are basically going to beneficit
from a higher salary and more power to consume crap.

~~~
dguaraglia
Well, I lived in Brazil for 7 years, and only recently (like, a couple weeks
ago) moved back to the US. What I could never understand is how you could
trust a programmer that doesn't speak (and read) fluent English. Not being
facetious here, but the fact is _most good documentation is in English_. I was
the lucky exception while back in Argentina, but I feel that's still a
widespread problem in Brazil.

A pity though, because I know for a fact there's plenty of great talent there.

~~~
thiagofm
There's talent everywhere. Every human is talented but the environment that is
around that human kills it.

I feel lucky to have my english to the level that is right now and still live
here. But I believe you are right, most of brazilian programmers are into
java/c# because you can learn it in portuguese(books)... no problem. But try
to learn some node.js or anything new not being able to speak english... It's
impossible. There's barely doc in english...

The education system sucks.

------
zwischenzug
When I started working with Indians, this is exactly what it reminded me of.
"Yes, ftp is the file transfer protocol, used to move files" "Can you ftp the
files up please?" "No, I have never used it"

~~~
rdtsc
Now you'll probably be downvoted for not being politically correct, but I
agree with you. At least in my experience, most Indian-educated graduates I
have worked with, were very willing to use a slew of acronyms to somehow
trying to convince others that if they know the acronym, then they
"understand" the concept. It is hard to describe it. You'll notice it when you
encounter it.

~~~
zwischenzug
It's the lack of education in the broader sense. I weed so many out in
interview with simple comprehension questions.

The trouble is that their education system and culture does them such a
disservice that it's hard to spot the good ones in amongst the dross.

~~~
microarchitect
I'm not sure why you think it's question of culture. There are plenty of
people of Indian origin in the US who have fairly strong ties to Indian
culture, but I've never heard any complaints about them being unable to
understand stuff.

~~~
raghava
Culture does matter. In India, boasting about ranks/marks of one's kids is
pretty much a cultural thing, everyone does that, with an enormous pride. This
breeds a batch of kids who want marks and not the knowledge or understanding
of things. Almost everything is a darned 1/2/5/10 marks question. Even the
interested ones are forced to conform and be one in the herd. Indian social
framework by large kills creativity and promotes rote learning, and the
effects thus seen are quite well known and obvious.

~~~
microarchitect

      Culture does matter. In India, boasting about ranks/marks of one's kids is 
      pretty much a cultural thing, everyone does that, with an enormous pride. 
      This breeds a batch of kids who want marks and not the knowledge or 
      understanding of things.
    

Fair enough. I agree with this.

    
    
      Almost everything is a darned 1/2/5/10 marks question. Even the 
      interested ones are forced to conform and be one in the herd. 
    

This maybe true, but I'm also not completely convinced. I don't think we lack
creativity - there are any number of stories of 'jugaad' I could bring up here
to make my point. We do attempt to conform a lot though - but even the
Japanese do that and they don't seem to lack any creativity.

    
    
      Indian social framework by large kills creativity and promotes rote 
      learning, and the effects thus seen are quite well known and obvious.
    

Perhaps, I'm misunderstanding you, but the claim that the Indian social
framework kills creativity is not at all obvious to me.

My thinking is that the middle class promotes rote learning because it values
education and doesn't know the difference between real understanding and rote
learning.

I once heard a really well-known American professor say "most people don't
like thinking" and sometimes I think is true pretty much everywhere in the
world. If you look at the Americans and kind of dumb ideas a significant
minority of them have about any number of issues (evolution, Islam, Obama's
birth, Saddam, the Iraq War) it's quite clear they lack some basic reasoning
skills.

Therefore, I suggest the following (intentionally controversial) hypothesis.
Only the smartest 25% of people are actually capable of thinking. Perhaps, in
the US, it turns out that this set is a superset of those employed in
technology companies. In India, through an accident of economic circumstances,
this is not the case. This is probably why we see so many instances of "dumb
Indian software developers".

~~~
raghava
> I don't think we lack creativity

Yes, I am not saying that Indian's lack creativity. I am just saying that
Indian societal/familial framework by large kills and curbs creativity, right
from the tender age; and forces one to conform with practices of the herd and
accept rote learning. We have lost many young minds in this mindless pursuit
of that promised IT/iBank job.

> stories of 'jugaad'

I was about to speak of it. :) We have the 'jugaad#' culture. And at times, it
causes us to overlook the importance of solutions and settle down with
workarounds. We see that in everything and everywhere,
administration/education/infrastructure/social practices/anything else. We
will have a workaround but never invest in finding and putting in place a
proper solution. And slowly, we have become so fiercely proud of this jugaad
culture that we resist any attempt in implementing a proper solution but would
gladly accept a workaround. (The greatest trouble for India, bribery and
corruption, is a form of our 'jugaad'. Push in some money and get things done;
but never implement accountability/transparent practices/strict punishments,
cause they are quite difficult to adopt. We spent 60 years post independence
using those workarounds, and we would continue to do so for eternity)

#a quick hack; not the solution, but a workaround.

------
iaskwhy
It does sound familiar maybe because I'm from Portugal. One day at school, at
some physics class about Newton's laws of motion, my colleagues weren't
understanding it so I tried to explain them how that would be helpful by using
a very stupid example: let's pretend you are at the window of your room, say
on the 5th floor, and you want to spit on someone who is walking towards the
direction of the window. If you drop some saliva it will reach the floor in x
seconds. So how many seconds before should you spit to hit that person on the
head if he's y meters away from the position of your window at the ground
level? Oh, remeber it's a sunny day with no wind at all.

So there I was with the most stupid example I could think of and what was
their reaction? They were absolutely amazed by it and some minutes later I had
a correct answer.

------
gnosis
_"One other thing I could never get them to do was to ask questions. Finally,
a student explained it to me: “If I ask you a question during the lecture,
afterwards everybody will be telling me, ‘What are you wasting our time for in
the class? We’re trying to learn something. And you’re stopping him by asking
a question’.”"_

This is not just a Brazilian problem. Much of the university education in the
US is the same. Very few students ask questions and consider question asking
to be a waste of time.

Rote memorization just to pass tests is sadly all too prevalent in US
universities as well.

~~~
zwischenzug
I remember sitting in a class at Columbia and wondering why students were
asking so many pointless questions, designed to show how much they knew rather
than establish anything useful.

In my university (Oxford, Modern History) you feared looking stupid by asking
questions at lectures, and instead asked your friends afterwards and read up
yourself.

Different cultures, none are perfect, I guess.

I imagine Feynman's lectures would have made me feel "too stupid to ask".
Probably says more about me than him :)

------
olh
Brazilian CS undergrad here. Although this is a 50's view, some aspects are
still valid.

I study in a technical park inside one of the biggest hydroelectric dams in
the world. Some of my professors are renowned engineers working in the dam;
but many others are unqualified and became professors just by passing an
admission test.

The thing is: my university is public and once you are in, as a professor or
student, you will only get out if you decide so or if you do something
seriously unethical.

So, as a professor, if you are in, you can do almost whatever you want: you
won't be fired. You can produce shitty research papers because you do not need
to have "results" like in the private sector; and it's the same for the
teaching.

~~~
Symbiont
Another brazilian CS undergrad here. Sadly, I can vouch for what olh said.. In
some worst cases, teachers at public universities decide not to show up at
classes.

------
rdtsc
I think a lot of this starts with developing and maintaining a healthy
curiosity and a love of learning. Perhaps all the children are naturally
curious and want to learn different things about the world but eventually they
go through education systems that beat that out of them.

The education systems of many countries are based on rote learning. It is
unfortunate and a cheap shortcut to take for both the students and the
teacher. The student doesn't have to waste time understanding and the teacher
doesn't have to waste time making sure every student understood. "Did they
repeat what was said to them? Good" -- Check. Move on to the next grade. "Not
my problem anymore".

------
tybris
Ouch, if they don't learn science, how will they ever appreciate the enormous
wealth and beauty that is right in their backyard?

~~~
rbanffy
Most of us don't :-(

But don't feel too good about it. Science teaching is, for all I can gather,
going down the drain just about everywhere.

------
guelo
so have they figured out what triboluminescence is yet?

~~~
amesign
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence#Mechanism_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence#Mechanism_of_action)

------
r0s
Most interesting thing I read today, thanks!

~~~
farnsworth
Then this will be the most interesting book you've read this year:
[http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-
Char...](http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-
Character/dp/0393316041)

------
gcb
so precise it's scary.

Dropped out of the prestigious, public, academia in brazil. and after my
second (failed) company got my degree from one of the smaller, less
prestigious ones. Had lots of experimentation though

~~~
zalew
I don't know if it's too much offtopic, because it's about elementary school,
but hey, let's go: I went to first 2 classes of a private school in Sao Paulo
in '89-'90. I was a smart kid and had 9.5-10.0 average (0-10.0 scale) despite
I had to learn the language at first. One day in class, the teacher of biology
(or sth like that) started talking about fish and stated that a dolphin is a
fish. I argued with her saying it's a mammal, she said I was wrong, I didn't
give up, but for the moment it was case closed. After a few days on the next
lesson with her, she raised the topic once again to say that I was _partly_
correct, because a dolphin is a "mammal-fish". We've had a laugh with my
parents to this day, and I was always wondering how high school and college
education works around there if a science teacher in elementary school can be
so dumb. Our education system in Poland is far from perfect, not to say
completely broken, but I must say that at least teachers in elementary have
the basic knowledge not to miseducate kids.

~~~
gcb
haha i can relate to that too.

on 3rd grade i argued with my science teacher when she 'taught' us that the
Moon was bigger than Earth. or something as bad as that.

She kept her point and i mine until she sent me to the principal for
disrupting her class. Principal lost words when i explained her the reason I
was there

~~~
zalew
hah, looks like it's quite common :) sad though...

------
TheAmazingIdiot
Surely you jest. This IS about the movie Brazil, right?

Wow, I mean, just wow.

