Sunday, August 27, 2006

Will students really stop reading about 'Pluto'?

When the news came out that Pluto is no more a planet of the solar system, and we would have only eight planets now instead of nine, the immediate reaction of one of the school students was
' So now we have one planet less to remember'. :)
And another said “You just got to retain everything you learned and drop Pluto out of your memory"

These kids seems to be too happy that thye doen't need to strain himself to remember all the nine now:)
But will this really happen? I have all doubts. I rather feel Pluto would be remebered more than any other planet.

The lessons in books now would be like this now...

"Untill year 2006, Solar system consisted of 9 planets, namely Mercury, Venus...Jupiter, Neptune Pluto..Mercury was the smallest and Pluto was the farthest.Pluto was the coldest. Pluto was that..Pluto was this..etc etc.'And since 2006 we have only 8 planets namely..Mercury, venus...Neptune'"

And the questions in the exams would be like this...

1. How many planets were there in Solar System before 2006
2. Which was the planet that became a dwarf planet
3. Who invented the planet that was removed from the solar system.

So now instead of forgetting Pluto, students will have to remember it twice :)

I have found similar funny things in our education systems...

I still remember very well struggling to by-heart those Daltons rules (12 or 13 rules.Don't remember) for science exams. And what's funny is that only one rule out of all the 12 rules was proved correct and rest of his rules were proved wrong. But still in the exam we had to write 6 pages of all the 12 Dalton's long long rules, and then 3 pages stating why only one rule is correct and other were wrong :S
I really wondered why i should struggle to remember things that are proved wrong :(

Till 5th class or so i was taught by my teacher that Earth is round, like a ball...like a bangle, like an 'O' and students also registered this in their minds and have written so many exam papers on this stating that 'Earth is Rounnnnd'.
But suddenly from somwhere some teacher comes in 6th class, and tells us 'Earth is Not round, but flat at one pole and bulged at one pole. So now earth like NOT Like a ball, NOT like a bangle, NOT like an 'O' :S

When they always knew that earth was not round why at all do they teach it in the first place:S
I am just wondering, if a person studies only till 5th class and then leaves studies then for whole life he continues to think that earth is round. He would never come to know the truth

It's always that our educational system follows a sequence where one teachers things in the same order in which it was invented. They never comes to point immediately.But then that's the fact, for reasons that atleast i do not know:)

So little school going buddies..Pluto is not going to leave your books at all. You need to live with it, irrespective of where it lives

4 comments:

coolkrishnan said...

good one !

The purpose of education is not mere accumulation of knowledge in the brain, but to learn to think.

So teaching first that "earth is round " and then say "it is not exactly round, but slightly squeezed round" is acceptable :)

But the dalton thing is too much.....

again mugging up poetry is one of the hardest things I did in school..... never understood why one shud do that !

Anonymous said...

I feel, the decision on pluto it more like correcting a mistake which is very similiar to Y2K problem. What these idiots are doing since 1930 ? are they not so mature to decide on a planet for all these years?

Now, when you look at pluto...its very much a planet even now and has 2 moons and an exclusive orbit too. Be it wrong or not, the vedic times have concluded on the nava graha concepts long back. But the only difference is in vedic times, they have counted surya and chandra also as planets which is not aligned with modern sciences.

coolkrishnan said...

@sudhakar,
Navagrahas of Indian Astrology ->
sun, moon,
mercury, venus,
mars, jupiter, saturn,
rahu, ketu (shadows that fall on moon !)

uranus, neptune and pluto are nowhere in the picture....guess this is coz they are never visible to naked eye while the others are...
earth is also not included in this list....

Anonymous said...

oh, then there is some bug in nava graha concept :-), or the definition of graha itself is bit hazzy that time..