More lethal than RAW

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
More lethal than RAW

Our generals say India’s spy agency RAW is up to its nasty tricks again. No evidence provided but, okay, we’ll buy the story for now. There are two good reasons. First, it’s safer not to question the wisdom of generals. Second, they speak from deep experience, having long played the spy-versus-spy game across borders.

So let’s provisionally assume that India’s spies have engineered the odd bomb blast here and there, and send occasional gifts to the BLF or other militant Baloch movements.

But RAW’s alleged antics are pinpricks compared to the massive and irreversible brain damage that Pakistan’s schools, colleges, and universities inflict upon their students.

Imagine that some devilish enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power and makes a population stupid. :rofl:One measure, though not the only one, of judging the lethality of this hypothetical weapon would be lower math scores.


No such scores are actually available, but for over 40 years my colleagues and I have helplessly watched student math abilities shrivel.

Only the wealthy customers of elite private schools and universities, tethered as they are to standards of the external world, have escaped wholesale dumbing down. As for the ordinary 99pc, with the rare exception of super-bright students here or there, some form of mental polio is turning most into math duffers.

Imagine that an enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power.
Does being poor at math really matter? After all there are plenty of intelligent people everywhere, even brilliant ones, who hate math and therefore are bad at it. But this is only because they had dull and uninspiring teachers who never taught them that math is a beautiful exercise of reason, one step at a time. Once on track, you quickly realise that math is the most magnificent, surprising, and powerful of all human achievements.

The success of the human species over other forms of life on planet Earth depends squarely on mathematics. Without math the pyramids could not have been built, navigation would be impossible, electricity could not have been discovered and put to use, factories and industries would not exist, computers and space exploration would be unimaginable, etc.

Here’s how bad our situation is: in a recent math class, I had rather typical 18-20 year-olds from non-elite schools. They had studied geometry but their teachers had not exposed them to the notion of proof — the step-by-step process in which one starts with a proposition, carefully constructs arguments, and then triumphantly arrives at the conclusion.

Instead, they were taught math as a hodgepodge of recipes. A few they remembered, the rest were forgotten.

I nearly wept to see that barely three to four students out of 60 could prove the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. None could prove that similar triangles have proportional sides. Quite a few had difficulty with fractions, some did not know how to take the square root of four or nine or unless armed with a calculator, and translating even simple real-life situations (like compound interest) into equations was difficult. Twelve-year-old kids in Japan or Europe would have done better.

Their teachers are still worse. Earlier I had the misfortune of teaching math courses to college math teachers. In their late 30s or early 40s, most were staid and stable family men who had come to university, expecting to get a higher degree and hence a higher pay grade.

But for all their years of teaching math, they were blanks. Diluting my nominally ‘advanced math’ course to a beginning level course did not help. My conscience could not allow a single teacher to pass.

Could the use of English — a difficult language for all except ‘O’ and ‘A’ level students — reasonably explain this dreadful situation? I am sympathetic to this point of view and therefore use Urdu exclusively in my physics and math lectures, both in distance learning modules and in real-time teaching (except when a university’s regulations require that I teach in English). But this barely solves 10-20pc of the problem.

So then is the math curriculum at fault? It certainly can be improved but almost the same topics in math and science are listed in Pakistani curricula as would expectedly be covered by a similar cohort internationally. In fact, primary school children in Pakistan are expected to carry a bigger burden than overseas kids.

The impediment to learning proper math is just one — wrong learning goals, wrong attitudes. Mathematics does not require labs, computers, or fancy gadgetry. But it does demand mental capacity and concentration. Nothing is true in math unless established by argumentation based upon a rigorous chain of logic, with each link firmly attached to the preceding one. The teacher who cannot correctly solve a math problem by following the defined logic will suffer loss of face before his students.

Contrast this with the madressah model wherein truth is defined by the teacher and prescribed books. The teacher’s job is to convey the book contents, and the student’s job is to appropriately absorb and memorise. There are no problems to be solved, nor is challenging suppositions or checking logical consistency either encouraged or even tolerated.

Limited to religious learning, such learning attitudes are perfectly fine. But their absorption into secular parts of the education system is disastrous. The hafiz-i-science or hafiz-i-math, which are copiously produced, carry exactly zero worth.

Giving logic a back seat has led to more than diminished math or science skills. The ordinary Pakistani person’s ability to reason out problems of daily life has also diminished.:pound: There is an increased national susceptibility to conspiracy theories, decreased ability to tell friend from foe:bounce:, and more frequent resort to violence rather than argumentation. The quality of Pakistan’s television channels reflects today’s quality of thought.

For too long education reform advocates have been barking up the wrong tree. A bigger education budget, better pay for teachers, more schools and universities, or changing instructional languages will not improve learning outcomes. As long as teachers and students remain shackled to the madressah mindset, they will remain mentally stunted. The real challenge lies in figuring out how to set their minds free.

The writer teaches physics and mathematics in Lahore and Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1182200/more-lethal-than-raw

=========

The reason why DFI members from Pak is dumb.
some devilish enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power and makes a population stupid.
Still in denial the Paki is
 

Rowdy

Co ja kurwa czytam!
Senior Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2014
Messages
3,254
Likes
3,061
More lethal than RAW

Our generals say India’s spy agency RAW is up to its nasty tricks again. No evidence provided but, okay, we’ll buy the story for now. There are two good reasons. First, it’s safer not to question the wisdom of generals. Second, they speak from deep experience, having long played the spy-versus-spy game across borders.

So let’s provisionally assume that India’s spies have engineered the odd bomb blast here and there, and send occasional gifts to the BLF or other militant Baloch movements.

But RAW’s alleged antics are pinpricks compared to the massive and irreversible brain damage that Pakistan’s schools, colleges, and universities inflict upon their students.

Imagine that some devilish enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power and makes a population stupid. :rofl:One measure, though not the only one, of judging the lethality of this hypothetical weapon would be lower math scores.


No such scores are actually available, but for over 40 years my colleagues and I have helplessly watched student math abilities shrivel.

Only the wealthy customers of elite private schools and universities, tethered as they are to standards of the external world, have escaped wholesale dumbing down. As for the ordinary 99pc, with the rare exception of super-bright students here or there, some form of mental polio is turning most into math duffers.

Imagine that an enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power.
Does being poor at math really matter? After all there are plenty of intelligent people everywhere, even brilliant ones, who hate math and therefore are bad at it. But this is only because they had dull and uninspiring teachers who never taught them that math is a beautiful exercise of reason, one step at a time. Once on track, you quickly realise that math is the most magnificent, surprising, and powerful of all human achievements.

The success of the human species over other forms of life on planet Earth depends squarely on mathematics. Without math the pyramids could not have been built, navigation would be impossible, electricity could not have been discovered and put to use, factories and industries would not exist, computers and space exploration would be unimaginable, etc.

Here’s how bad our situation is: in a recent math class, I had rather typical 18-20 year-olds from non-elite schools. They had studied geometry but their teachers had not exposed them to the notion of proof — the step-by-step process in which one starts with a proposition, carefully constructs arguments, and then triumphantly arrives at the conclusion.

Instead, they were taught math as a hodgepodge of recipes. A few they remembered, the rest were forgotten.

I nearly wept to see that barely three to four students out of 60 could prove the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. None could prove that similar triangles have proportional sides. Quite a few had difficulty with fractions, some did not know how to take the square root of four or nine or unless armed with a calculator, and translating even simple real-life situations (like compound interest) into equations was difficult. Twelve-year-old kids in Japan or Europe would have done better.

Their teachers are still worse. Earlier I had the misfortune of teaching math courses to college math teachers. In their late 30s or early 40s, most were staid and stable family men who had come to university, expecting to get a higher degree and hence a higher pay grade.

But for all their years of teaching math, they were blanks. Diluting my nominally ‘advanced math’ course to a beginning level course did not help. My conscience could not allow a single teacher to pass.

Could the use of English — a difficult language for all except ‘O’ and ‘A’ level students — reasonably explain this dreadful situation? I am sympathetic to this point of view and therefore use Urdu exclusively in my physics and math lectures, both in distance learning modules and in real-time teaching (except when a university’s regulations require that I teach in English). But this barely solves 10-20pc of the problem.

So then is the math curriculum at fault? It certainly can be improved but almost the same topics in math and science are listed in Pakistani curricula as would expectedly be covered by a similar cohort internationally. In fact, primary school children in Pakistan are expected to carry a bigger burden than overseas kids.

The impediment to learning proper math is just one — wrong learning goals, wrong attitudes. Mathematics does not require labs, computers, or fancy gadgetry. But it does demand mental capacity and concentration. Nothing is true in math unless established by argumentation based upon a rigorous chain of logic, with each link firmly attached to the preceding one. The teacher who cannot correctly solve a math problem by following the defined logic will suffer loss of face before his students.

Contrast this with the madressah model wherein truth is defined by the teacher and prescribed books. The teacher’s job is to convey the book contents, and the student’s job is to appropriately absorb and memorise. There are no problems to be solved, nor is challenging suppositions or checking logical consistency either encouraged or even tolerated.

Limited to religious learning, such learning attitudes are perfectly fine. But their absorption into secular parts of the education system is disastrous. The hafiz-i-science or hafiz-i-math, which are copiously produced, carry exactly zero worth.

Giving logic a back seat has led to more than diminished math or science skills. The ordinary Pakistani person’s ability to reason out problems of daily life has also diminished.:pound: There is an increased national susceptibility to conspiracy theories, decreased ability to tell friend from foe:bounce:, and more frequent resort to violence rather than argumentation. The quality of Pakistan’s television channels reflects today’s quality of thought.

For too long education reform advocates have been barking up the wrong tree. A bigger education budget, better pay for teachers, more schools and universities, or changing instructional languages will not improve learning outcomes. As long as teachers and students remain shackled to the madressah mindset, they will remain mentally stunted. The real challenge lies in figuring out how to set their minds free.

The writer teaches physics and mathematics in Lahore and Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1182200/more-lethal-than-raw

=========

The reason why DFI members from Pak is dumb.


Still in denial the Paki is
If muslims start using logic then the first thing to fall will be islam
 

sob

Mod
Joined
May 4, 2009
Messages
6,425
Likes
3,805
Country flag
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a respected Nuclear Physicist and one of the sane voices in Pakistan.
He is spot on in his assessment.
 

ezsasa

Designated Cynic
Mod
Joined
Jul 12, 2014
Messages
31,728
Likes
147,031
Country flag
This OP has cleared many of my doubts. So if they continue on this path we might have bigger problem than terrorism 20 yrs down the line.
 

Illusive

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2010
Messages
3,674
Likes
7,310
Country flag
If muslims start using logic then the first thing to fall will be islam
Pakistan has managed to tarnish muslims image but that should be on only pakistanis not the whole world muslims.
 

Rowdy

Co ja kurwa czytam!
Senior Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2014
Messages
3,254
Likes
3,061
Pakistan has managed to tarnish muslims image but that should be on only pakistanis not the whole world muslims.
Hmm... i understand what you are saying.
I also know this site is being run by a muslim.
That can not stop me from criticizing a religion. It is not about anti-islam as it is about freedom of conscience.
 

Rowdy

Co ja kurwa czytam!
Senior Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2014
Messages
3,254
Likes
3,061
That's a weird and objectionable comment. Can you substantiate?
Hi,
Islam rests on the premise that Koran is word of god and complete in all respects. The only proof provided is that the prophet said so. ...statement (1)
Now we see that even with one book,one god and one language most middle east is in a slaughter fest. .... statement (2)
When we read the "prophets" history we see he is involved in things like mass slaughter of jewish tribes, sexual intercourse with little girls etc etc. ...statement (3)
statement (1)+(2)+(3) imply islam is not all that perfect.
=> islam is not word of god.
=>islam is a false religion.
QED.
 

sayareakd

Mod
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
17,734
Likes
18,951
Country flag
RAW's mandate is research and analysis of info, They are not into execution of dirty work.
There is enough arms, ammo and trained Pakistans willing to kill each other many times. We don't need to screw them more then they already screwed.
Funny part Talibs including TTP is creation of Pak and ISI now they say it is armed and funded by RAW. Pakistanis are fooled by its Generals, its army and state within state (ISI).
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
If Pak as a cuntry becomes peaceful the Army loses its power to manipulate the failed system which is Pakistan. This is Pakistan moving back towards square one.
Blame India, Skirmishes with India etc etc. brings the Pak army into spot light.

err...what they say.. Pak is trying to maintain its status quo..
 

Rowdy

Co ja kurwa czytam!
Senior Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2014
Messages
3,254
Likes
3,061
More lethal than RAW=mooli ke parathe
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Hate material in books has impacted entire generations

LAHORE: Panelists discussed on Tuesday the impact of hate material in textbooks on society at a conference by the National Commission for Justice and Peace on “Uprooting Religious Intolerance through Formal Education in Pakistan”.

They discussed a Supreme Court judgement of 2014 which is the very first reinterpretation of Article 20, which calls for religious freedom in Pakistan.

Panelists agreed that the roots of intolerance arose from the two-nation theory and later the Objectives Resolution. They criticised Zia’s education policy for promoting hatred and intolerance.

Dr Parvez Hoodbouy said that media was one of the major players openly promoting hatred. It was the media, he went on, that considered the theory that foreign agencies could be behind the massacre of the Ismailis, sparing militant outfits which were proudly claiming the attack.

“It must be understood if we don’t treat all citizens as equal, Pakistan can never progress or survive peacefully.”

He said it must be noted that hate material taught in schools was against Article 22 :rofl: of the Constitution.

Irfan Mufti said that religion had been strongly promoted through politics and this was dangerous because whoever met a certain set criteria was considered a Muslim while anyone outside that circle was in danger today.

“Schools have become factories where children are being churned out with warped mindsets,” he said.:pound:

According to research, he said, most of the teachers taught religion in class rather than their own subjects. :pound:He said the institutions which taught religion solely should be separated from formal education so that religion had no space in other subjects like science. He said Supreme Court’s decision to revise the curriculum should be taken very seriously.

Peter Jacob quoted some excerpts from textbooks, highlighting some of the “shameful and intolerant perspectives being drilled into the minds of children”. Those excerpts portrayed non-Muslims as negative, preached open hatred, and declared the Muslims more superior. In some places even eminent figures of other religions were regarded as inferior.

But, he said, that most people would live in a state of denial, saying there was no inequality among citizens in the country which was very dangerous. He said too many publishers had made it difficult to monitor such issues.

Amarnath Randhawa said his mathematics teacher would ask him to read Islamiyat in math periods.:pound:


Neelum Hussain said hate material affected mostly those people, who considered themselves to be “nice people”. But these people were the same who believe that Muslims were the most persecuted in the world, and never took into account any reasons as to why non-Muslims would ever form a mob. They would never even think if it was the responsibility of the majority Muslims not to set a trend of violence. She said rote learning in schools had affected generations of Pakistanis.

We have entire generations who only repeat, who cannot think for themselves, whose language skills are poor, and all this suits an authoritarian regime so basically none of this points to any failure by the government,” she said.

“Afterwards when someone questions you, and you do not have the ability to think on your own you react in the form of violence.”

Saroop Ijaz also spoke along with Reverend Bishop Tariq Jamil, and both agreed upon certain basic facts regarding religious discrimination and the violation of the Constitution.

MPA Qamarul Islam Raja the government had made a Publishers’ Regulation Committee which would consider laws for publishers and that no books would be printed without the permission of the textbook board. He said an authority on curriculum was also recently formed to discuss and eliminate hate material from text books.

[The p0rkis are doing it Only Now?????o_O]

IA Rehman said that radicalism had come into the system since the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir. He concluded saying that first religious discrimination must end in society in order to be cleared from textbooks and for this society must pressures the government and State to ensure tolerance.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2015



http://www.dawn.com/news/1183077/hate-material-in-books-has-impacted-entire-generations

“Afterwards when someone questions you, and you do not have the ability to think on your own you react in the form of violence.”
Reminds me of our Pak forum posters. :rofl:
 

Illusive

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2010
Messages
3,674
Likes
7,310
Country flag
Reminds me of our Pak forum posters. :rofl:
They are a product of those schools and education and coupled with their incestuous tendencies for cousin marriages has created a disaster with mental issues for lack of fair reasoning and deducing.

Basically they are digging their hole and too stupid to not stop it.
 

wiseone2

New Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2015
Messages
1
Likes
0
More lethal than RAW

Our generals say India’s spy agency RAW is up to its nasty tricks again. No evidence provided but, okay, we’ll buy the story for now. There are two good reasons. First, it’s safer not to question the wisdom of generals. Second, they speak from deep experience, having long played the spy-versus-spy game across borders.

So let’s provisionally assume that India’s spies have engineered the odd bomb blast here and there, and send occasional gifts to the BLF or other militant Baloch movements.

But RAW’s alleged antics are pinpricks compared to the massive and irreversible brain damage that Pakistan’s schools, colleges, and universities inflict upon their students.

Imagine that some devilish enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power and makes a population stupid. :rofl:One measure, though not the only one, of judging the lethality of this hypothetical weapon would be lower math scores.


No such scores are actually available, but for over 40 years my colleagues and I have helplessly watched student math abilities shrivel.

Only the wealthy customers of elite private schools and universities, tethered as they are to standards of the external world, have escaped wholesale dumbing down. As for the ordinary 99pc, with the rare exception of super-bright students here or there, some form of mental polio is turning most into math duffers.

Imagine that an enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power.
Does being poor at math really matter? After all there are plenty of intelligent people everywhere, even brilliant ones, who hate math and therefore are bad at it. But this is only because they had dull and uninspiring teachers who never taught them that math is a beautiful exercise of reason, one step at a time. Once on track, you quickly realise that math is the most magnificent, surprising, and powerful of all human achievements.

The success of the human species over other forms of life on planet Earth depends squarely on mathematics. Without math the pyramids could not have been built, navigation would be impossible, electricity could not have been discovered and put to use, factories and industries would not exist, computers and space exploration would be unimaginable, etc.

Here’s how bad our situation is: in a recent math class, I had rather typical 18-20 year-olds from non-elite schools. They had studied geometry but their teachers had not exposed them to the notion of proof — the step-by-step process in which one starts with a proposition, carefully constructs arguments, and then triumphantly arrives at the conclusion.

Instead, they were taught math as a hodgepodge of recipes. A few they remembered, the rest were forgotten.

I nearly wept to see that barely three to four students out of 60 could prove the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. None could prove that similar triangles have proportional sides. Quite a few had difficulty with fractions, some did not know how to take the square root of four or nine or unless armed with a calculator, and translating even simple real-life situations (like compound interest) into equations was difficult. Twelve-year-old kids in Japan or Europe would have done better.

Their teachers are still worse. Earlier I had the misfortune of teaching math courses to college math teachers. In their late 30s or early 40s, most were staid and stable family men who had come to university, expecting to get a higher degree and hence a higher pay grade.

But for all their years of teaching math, they were blanks. Diluting my nominally ‘advanced math’ course to a beginning level course did not help. My conscience could not allow a single teacher to pass.

Could the use of English — a difficult language for all except ‘O’ and ‘A’ level students — reasonably explain this dreadful situation? I am sympathetic to this point of view and therefore use Urdu exclusively in my physics and math lectures, both in distance learning modules and in real-time teaching (except when a university’s regulations require that I teach in English). But this barely solves 10-20pc of the problem.

So then is the math curriculum at fault? It certainly can be improved but almost the same topics in math and science are listed in Pakistani curricula as would expectedly be covered by a similar cohort internationally. In fact, primary school children in Pakistan are expected to carry a bigger burden than overseas kids.

The impediment to learning proper math is just one — wrong learning goals, wrong attitudes. Mathematics does not require labs, computers, or fancy gadgetry. But it does demand mental capacity and concentration. Nothing is true in math unless established by argumentation based upon a rigorous chain of logic, with each link firmly attached to the preceding one. The teacher who cannot correctly solve a math problem by following the defined logic will suffer loss of face before his students.

Contrast this with the madressah model wherein truth is defined by the teacher and prescribed books. The teacher’s job is to convey the book contents, and the student’s job is to appropriately absorb and memorise. There are no problems to be solved, nor is challenging suppositions or checking logical consistency either encouraged or even tolerated.

Limited to religious learning, such learning attitudes are perfectly fine. But their absorption into secular parts of the education system is disastrous. The hafiz-i-science or hafiz-i-math, which are copiously produced, carry exactly zero worth.

Giving logic a back seat has led to more than diminished math or science skills. The ordinary Pakistani person’s ability to reason out problems of daily life has also diminished.:pound: There is an increased national susceptibility to conspiracy theories, decreased ability to tell friend from foe:bounce:, and more frequent resort to violence rather than argumentation. The quality of Pakistan’s television channels reflects today’s quality of thought.

For too long education reform advocates have been barking up the wrong tree. A bigger education budget, better pay for teachers, more schools and universities, or changing instructional languages will not improve learning outcomes. As long as teachers and students remain shackled to the madressah mindset, they will remain mentally stunted. The real challenge lies in figuring out how to set their minds free.

The writer teaches physics and mathematics in Lahore and Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1182200/more-lethal-than-raw

=========

The reason why DFI members from Pak is dumb.


Still in denial the Paki is
give the author credit. at least he recognizes a problem
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top