Skip to main content

The Beauty of the Quadratic Formula

 

Quadratic Formula

You must have studied the quadratic formula in high school and used it for solving umpteen quadratic equations. Have you ever used it at any time after your school education? How much of what you learnt in school or college has been useful or relevant in your practical life so far? The answer to the first question must be No unless you are a math teacher or in some profession related to math. The answer to the second question must be: Not much.

I’m currently a reading a book on education written by Vardan Kabra, cofounder of a reputed school in Gujarat. The book, Reimagining Indian Education, begins with the following pop quiz. 

Well, I’m sure you flunked that test. I did too. The only question I could answer correctly was the last one. I could do that because I began my teaching career as a math teacher and I was in love with quadratic equations.

Why did we learn what we did at school if 90% of all that stuff never came in handy in our practical life? This is the fundamental question in the first chapter of the book mentioned above.

The author hurls another exercise right into our faces. Mention a few people who are eminently successful in life, in your view. Take them from different professions. Take actors, politicians, entrepreneurs, whatever. Now list the qualities that made them successful. Hard work, business acumen, certain relevant skills, willingness to take risks, adaptability… Go on. Until you realise that their academic qualification and the scores they received in the umpteen exams in school and college don’t feature in the lists you make.

Success in life and academic performance are not correlated, the book tells us bluntly.

Such is the situation because our education system focuses too much on theories and exams. We learn the definition of velocity and acceleration in the classroom but never bother to connect that knowledge with, say, the acceleration of our car while we are driving. In fact, the real purpose of learning science is not acquisition of theoretical knowledge but stimulation of our curiosity, says the book. Does our car have velocity or speed? Does the accelerator really accelerate the car?

And, for a change, would the space criminal escape the prison planet when he reaches the escape velocity?

I am taking this book seriously though I don’t intend to carry on teaching in school beyond this academic session. I’m just taking a clearer look at the system with the lens held out by Vardan Kabra. There are too many things wrong with the system, I agree. But how many students today actually want anything more than the scores in the exams which help them to pursue higher studies which in turn will help them get a job without which they won’t have the money for a ‘happy’ life? I think one serious flaw about the system lies in the society rather than in the curriculum. Let me finish reading the book before telling you more about all this.

Let me end this with a personal experience narrated to me by a colleague this afternoon. She corrected a student’s behaviour in class today. The boy followed her after the class to tell her bluntly that she shouldn’t be a terrorist in class. The teacher was too stunned to ask clarification. If you correct a student’s behaviour, you are a terrorist today!

I told a girl student the other day that learning any subject demands a meaningful relationship with the subject as well as the teacher. The girl was scandalised. Why does this old man want a relationship with me? I read the question that rose in her mind.

Tough life for a teacher. I will switch over to online training for IELTS candidates in the next academic session. For now, I shall console myself with Reimagining Indian Education and contemplating the beauty of the quadratic formula which I was in love with for many years once upon a time and got a lot of students to love it too.

Related post: Generation Gap

Comments

  1. When students ask "when am I ever going to need this?", my reply usually has something to do with neural pathways and training the brain. It isn't the specifics that are important. It's the process of thinking and reasoning. But young ones don't really get that yet. They're more concrete in their thinking. There are many issues in education. Maybe one day we'll get it right.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let me share your hope too. What I notice day after day is the scary attitude problem of the students these days. Schools should do something about that first of all.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Well, there was only one of those points that I had to look up (the sin/cos thing) and was comfy with the others. But I appreciate that retaining all sorts of weird and wonderful facts and figures is not what most folks want to be bothered with. As LizA says, the purpose of education is to stimulate the intellect - I would put it that learning languages with alphabets foreign to one's native tongue, discussing comparative philosophies, music and maths, and combining them with practical vocational subjects streamed according to each youngster's interests and talent would perhaps engage them more... but of course, that would not negate the poor social attitude you seem to be encountering. Banning social media until at least age 16 might be necessary to counter that... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A lot of changes are required in the system. Broadening of perspectives and polishing of attitudes need to get priority. Instead here in India we're busy meddling with history's rights and wrongs.

      Delete
  3. I have really high respect for teachers. It's not an easy job. At all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Math isn't one of strong suit. But I only balance a check once in my life, this was before I was 20. My son who is aviation inspector and or mechanic. Only once used one of those fancy math equation.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very interesting and relatable too. No syllabus teaches us to cope with life which should be the primary focus of education with due respect to all the subjects taught in school/college.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A radical change is called for in our education system. What the present government is doing is a disservice.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Modi’s Art of Censorship

One of the infinite ironies about Narendra Modi’s India is its flagrant censorship while claiming to be the most tolerant civilisation. A Guardian report today informs us that Arundhati Roy’s 2020 book, Azadi , is banned in Kashmir for promoting a “false narrative and secessionism.” Being a fan of Ms Roy’s rebellious spirit, I buy her books as they are published. I had reviewed this book ( Azadi ) back in 2020 when it was published. The Congress government that ruled India for a very long period, before Modi’s rhetoric mesmerised the Indian electorate, was highly flawed. Corruption ran in its every single vein. Yet it was far better than what Modi brought in its place. The glaring hypocrisy of the Congress was a glue that held India together, Ms Roy says in this censored book of hers. What she means to say is that though secularism was not practised sincerely or consistently the pretence of it acted as a binding force that maintained a kind of social and political equilibrium. T...

Solzhenitsyn’s Many Disillusionments

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died a sad and disillusioned man. Solzhenitsyn was a genuine socialist in the beginning. He fought for the Red Army in WWII. He was a committed Soviet patriot. Equality, justice, and dignity of the workers were his ideals, his dreams. However, Stalin became a brutal dictator and Solzhenitsyn became his vocal critic. As a result, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sent to the Gulag: a network of inhuman labour camps. Hundreds of Russians were tortured and killed in those camps and Solzhenitsyn was disillusioned with socialism. The Russian Revolution was supposed to have liberated the common citizens from imperial oppressions. However, the new government under Stalin was far more ruthless, unjust, and oppressive than the empire. The socialist ideology became a kind of deity for which everything else was sacrificed, including truth. Writing the story of his life in the camp in The Gulag Archipelago , Solzhenitsyn warned that such systems coul...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...