20 Jun
2004
20 Jun
'04
10:28 a.m.
By your own admission we _are_ losing knowledge (in
that, as you say,
valves are not taught any more, for example).
But we (mostly) don't design using valves, so it's
not a major issue. There are some branches of electronic
design where it matters, but the vast majority of designers
don't need that knowledge.
Maybe US schools are different to those in the UK, but
over here,
fundamentals are most certainly not being taugh. Heck,
logarithms are no
longer taught in the the equivalent of your high schools, I believe.
Log tables and their use don't seem to be.
[FIWW< the 'justification' for that is that
logarithms were
only used to
make it easier to multiply numbers, and as everyone does that on a
calculator now, logarithms have no use. You know as well as I do that
this is totally bogus!]
Well the principles behind logarithms do still
seem to be taught, if my son's experience is
anything to go by. Maybe he'll be forced to
forget all about this soon :-)
people thinking. If you think -- if you challenge
(politely,
I may add)
the teacher, if you start asking relevant questions, then you are a
'troublemaker' and will be expelled or worse.
There's always one :-)
It nearly happened to me several times (and yes, the
questions I were
asking were certaioly applicable to the subject, and yes, the
teacher was
talking rubbish half the time (which is why I asked said questions).
... and they rarely learn from their errors :-) :-)
Antonio
--
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Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org