> 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
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini_at_iee.org
Received on Sun Jun 20 2004 - 17:28:12 BST