Perspective

I was talking to my niece a few days ago and we were talking about what new things she was learning.

She mentioned that they were doing Quadratic Equations in Math. I asked her how are you solving an equation and she said we either factorize the equation or we use a formula to solve it. I asked if she knew what quadratic equations really mean and if there was another interpretation for them.

And she told me that our teacher tells us if you see a quadratic equation, you factorize it and solve it. I had to explain to her for about an hour about functions and what quadratic equations mean and what solving them means and how geometrically they represent a parabola and how you can solve quadratics using graphs or just by guessing the roots in easier cases.

This is the deplorable condition of education these days, just learning for the sake of marks but not knowing the real interpretation of something. This is a clear cut case of Macaulay education system doing what it is supposed to do produce industrial workers. This has to change, students should try to see the big picture and learn about how something they learn is applicable to solve real-world problems, but not become calculators.

All this being said she actually raised a good point, she asked me if we can write a program to automate the process of factorization or finding the roots in some other way and I told her, yes you can and I wrote a small piece of code that does exactly that. You see when you tap into someones thought process they can figure out for themselves that this is something that can be done swiftly and accurately. Education is an investment, that will serve you well in future if you don't invest in it properly, in the beginning, your rewards will be equally abysmal.