Melville's Influence....Continue...

It was rather late when I uploaded the article 'Melville's Influence'-in fact it was already the early morning of Labour Day. When I woke up this morning, I felt that what I have uploaded wasn't complete. I think readers will surely enjoy the humour if I include the part where Melville was explaining about the name of the bird, in greater detail. So I will include that interesting part in this article.

Melville explained to the young Feynman :
'See that bird? It's a Spencer's warbler. In Italian, it's a Chutto Lapittida. In Portugese, it's a Bom da Peida. In Chinese it's a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese it's a Katono Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing - that's what counts.' (Richard Feynman, A Life In Science. John Gribbin and Marry Gribbin.)

Though young at that time, Richard Feynman knew that his father didn't know the name of the bird at all. The point is that what matters most is the understanding rather than memorising aspect in learning. It is a good lesson not only for Richard but for all of us, especially teachers. When we grumble about the lack of thinking skills among the students and the fact that many of them memorise things without having proper understanding of them, do we just put the blame on them or should we take a little pause and question ourselves whether we train them in this respect? Are the curriculum, evaluations, teachers training, leadership, school environment, family factors and societal expectations providing conducive conditions for nurturing thinking students?

Is the straight A scorer the most intelligent student? Is he really intelligent, skillful, versatile and competent? He may be so, or rather, he most probably is. However, we do not deny the fact that under present situation, there are experts in getting the maximum marks and answering what the marking scheme requires, and of course, getting strings of A's. We may have science students who can give perfect answers and get perfect mark without having to do a single experiment. And if we are not careful about this, we may create a self-deceiving situation where we are proud to produce trainload of A's students (where else in the world can we find students scoring so many A's) who may not even be able to measure the temperature of water correctly using a mercury-in-glass thermometer.

Well, at this juncture, I am also feeling guilty for not doing enough to help to mould a thinking society and should also take some blame for it. But at least I am thinking about it, thinking aloud and 'Thinking Allowed'.