Learning and Life

Sunday, May 26, 2013

How Parental Judgments can Shatter a Child: Self Fulfilled Prophecies

It is often said when you are dealing with children:

"Treat them as you want them to be, not how they are!"

Basically the driving force while the child is growing and learning is the "Future Potential" of the child and not his "Current State". Focusing on how the child is doing right now, i.e. his current state, ignores the tremendous store of future potential that every child has at any

given time. The potential is yearning to come out and wants to manifest itself. However, the child may not have discovered yet the niche where this potential would manifest itself. Our inability to focus on future and proclivity to brood over the current weaknesses destroys the self confidence of the child and closes the avenues through which the child would explore and eventually land into a niche where he can shine.There can be many reasons why the child may not have discovered his niche:

The child's exposure of the spectrum of fields where one can excel may have been limited. Parents, family or even school may not be aware of the unveiling importance of many fields. They may not be aware of all the work that is happening around the world in different fields.

The family environment may not be sympathetic to a child who is trying to experiment with unconventional ideas. I clearly remember that when I did my intermediate, there were just two options in front of us. Either become a doctor or an engineer. It is only in the 1990s that computer science and business administration started appearing on the radar screen of the parents. Families in Pakistan have a very powerful role in determining the directions that kids may take. But, the recipe that worked for us or for some children may not work for others.

An environment that allows children to experiment with their thought processes is a great source of encouragement. Learning actually happens when one tries and fails. Failure should not be considered a crime, but actually a sign of maturity. You can't become a world class footballer or a world class cricketer or a world class sportsman unless you have learned to lose and take each loss as a challenge to be overcome. However, our educational system and our families make failing a crime. They want to see everyone doing the same thing at the same time with the same competency. These expectations are highly debilitating for someone born with a different bent of mind, and yearning to make his mark in uncharted territories.

When we compare our child with others and expect from him to do the same thing as others and when he fails to meet our expectations, the school labels him as a failure. The parent sees the child and compares him with other siblings and feeling pressure from the school and the family concludes similalry. Parents start believing that there is some thing wrong with the child, may be some kind of learning deficiency or slow learning or hyper activity or some such pseudo deficiency.

Once the parents start seeing their child in a negative light, the last support of the child falls. His expectations of an unconditional love are shattered, his self confidence suffers, he becomes unsure of himself, and he loses his "khudi". The more a parent worries about the deficiency, the more the child behaves in a similar manner. Feeling the spotlight on him, sensing that each act of his is under a microscope, his ability to make mistakes and learn from the mistakes suffers. The cost of failure appears to him too great. It will lose him his mother's affection, the failure will disappoint his father, the cousins will make fun of him, the uncles and aunts will point the finger towards the mother or the father and when both, feeling the spotlight on themselves, turn the light back on the child in a vicious circle whose only outcome becomes predictably what was being expected. A self-fulfilled prophecy. A child with some learning problem.

There are parents who have lost faith in their child and consequently the child has lost faith in himself and his ability to learn. The barrier to self confidence becomes so great that the child gives up. The parent finally finds a refuge from the peer pressure of his or her family members and in turn starts having conviction (to resolve coginitive dissonance) that something is indeed wrong with the child, otherwise, the blame would have fallen on the parents themselves.

The poor child and the people around him playing a vicious game of self fulfilling prophecies!

Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always a room at the top

Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always room at the top

I often see parents coming to me for guidance about the field that their son/daughter should choose that would have scope in the future. They want to know the field which would be in great demand so that when their child graduates he/she would be able to easily get a good job and make a career out of it. The scenario used to be simple some thirty/forty years ago. At that time the conventional wisdom was that the only field for a good student is either medicine or engineering. If a student can't get into either of the two than he is a failure and would for ever be labeled as such. The situation changed a bit about 20 years ago when two other fields got added to the list: IT/Computer Science and Business Administration.

There is always room at the top! Daniel Webster

Learning Problems: Top 9 Questions to Answer Before You Run for Help

If you think your child has a problem or the child's teacher/school has told you that you need help for some learning deficiency that they have noticed in your child, then before you rush for any remedial action go through the following checklist. Do read the reason for building this checklist at the end.

How do you know that the child's behavior is actually a problem?
Is your source of information based on some movie?

How many documentaries on the subject have you seen?
How many of such documentaries were made for commercial gains or sponsored by pharmaceutical industries?

Were you influenced by the opinions of your family members, cousins, in-laws?

Was your conclusion based on comparison with the child's siblings?
Was your conclusion based on comparison with the child's cousins?

If you were also told about the problem in child by the school teacher, then

Did you find out what the teacher's or school's expertise about the subject is?
How many books of educational/learning experts have the teacher read specifically ?
Is the teacher knowledgeable about the different and opposing views on the subject?
How many research papers and articles has the teacher researched?
Did you ask for a list of papers and books on the subject that she has read?
Does the school has a recommended list of books and papers on learning, growth and motivation that administration must have read before they can counsel the parents?

Was your view about the child's problem diagnosed by a psychologist/psychiatrist?

How is the family life of the psychologist/psychiatrist and how many children does he/she have?
Ask for a list of books, research articles specifically related to children's learning and growth that the psychologist/psychiatrist recommends others to read.
How much time has the psychologist/psychiatrist spent in school environment guiding the learning of healthy students and of what age?

Is that behavior actually a problem: What is the basis of your conclusion?

How many books of educational/learning experts have you consulted?
How many research papers and articles on the Internet have you researched.?
Are you aware of the views of different schools of thoughts on that issue?

Are your observations about the child constrained by the time pressure?

Are you pressed for time due to family/work or household pressures?
Do you feel pressed for time because you need to give special time and attention to your younger children?
Are you pressed for time because of the health issues in your family and near ones?
Are you pressed for time because of some external pressures?

Have you studied the Islamic view about the human nature?

What are the learning requirements for the success in life here and in the hereafter ?
How does Islam define success in the life here?
What are the minimum requirements to be successful in the eyes of the creator?

What are the achievements of people who were diagnosed in their school times with such problems?

How many such examples have you seen and studied?
What made these high achievers overcome their initial problems?

Objective of the above Checklist

The checklist is intended to highlight the role of different people involved in labeling a child.
Beware of people masquerading as an expert who have studied for passing the exams and never did a passionate study of the nature of a child and the growth and learning dynamics.
Please have faith in the ability of your child.
Before you start suspecting a problem in your child do a little research. Seek guidance from several sources.
Beware of the pharmaceutical companies bribing the doctors/psychologists to recommend medications for problems that do not exist or are not severe enough to require immediate medication. They are routinely bribing the doctors and psychiatrists with foreign trips and gadgets, funding various psychology institutes and other businesses.
Note that psychologists and psychiatrists typically are trained for abnormal people. They go through text books that are based on the experience and study of abnormal people. They often have not done an extensive study of the normal children having difficulties in learning.
The study of learning issues of healthy children is the domain of educationists and not psychologists or psychiatrists. You must consult a very well read educationist who is up to date on the literature and research in education (not someone in school whose entire life is spent teaching or controlling or administering children).

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Why are there no IT companies with more than 10,000 employees

In a speech made by Dr. Ishrat Husain, Dean IBA at the CIO Summit on May 21, 2013, he asked the question why is it that we do not have in Pakistan any IT company similar to WIPRO or InfoSys of India. We do not even have an IT company with more than 10,000 employees. He raised this question following an impressive talk by Dr. Ata ur Rahman outlining the great and wonderful work he had done as Minister of S&T and as Chairman HEC in jump starting the telecommunication revolution and development of policies that have improved R&D.

Charter of Children's Recognition

A Charter of Children's Recognition

By Salman Asif Siddiqui

Founder and director of Educational Resource Development Centre. director@erdconline.org

Children learn best when they are respected, and this respect is every child’s right. If we take a look at the quality of experience that children undergo during their education, we will arrive at the conclusion that it is filled with feelings of fear, insecurity, rejection, embarrassment, humiliation and guilt.

I often ask teachers if education without insults is possible and a lot of them wonder at my question. I
have asked many students, who have been top performers in their schools, if they have ever experienced a fear of disapproval and most of them say ‘yes’. Quality education cannot just be referred to the conceptual coverage of curriculum. Quality education needs to be redefined as making learning meaningful and enjoyable with making children feel unconditionally respected and recognised.

Recognising children is to accept and acknowledge them for what they are. Children should not be recognised conditionally on the basis of their test scores, mastery of a foreign language or show of obedience. They must be recognised wholly because they are human beings.

Children’s self-respect is something that remains at risk throughout their childhood. There is an acute need to have a national consensus on the protection of this basic children’s right. I would like to propose a Charter of Children’s Recognition for this purpose that is based on three fundamental principles. As per the dictionary definition, ‘charter’ is a document describing the rights that a particular group of people should have. It can serve as a practical guideline for teachers and parents to work with children and should be based on the following principles.

Listen and acknowledge
How do you feel when you are not heard or acknowledged? You feel unimportant. Sometimes you feel disgraced. Listening can be a very powerful tool to make children feel important. Children bear tons of things to share ranging from interesting and weird questions, to realistic and hypothetical ideas, to a variety of sentiments and feelings.

Encourage children to express in whatever language they feel comfortable speaking in and listen to them without being impatient, judgmental or losing your temper. When you allow them say whatever they want to say in their preferred language, you will find a world that was hidden before. After having listened to children it is appropriate to acknowledge them by simply rephrasing what you have heard.

Acknowledging a child’s point of view does not mean agreeing with him or her. The act of acknowledging makes children feel understood and respected.

Recognise individuality without comparing

How would you feel if you are compared with your colleagues all the time? Every child is creative in a different way. Expecting all children to be alike is unjust. They can be similar in some ways but actually they are all unique and therefore different from each other. Comparison between children communicates that you are not accepting children as what they are, rather demanding of them to be like their peers. It shatters their self confidence and they view themselves as incompetent. When we believe that every child is uniquely intelligent and creative, only then will we understand that it’s perfectly fine if they learn differently. Expecting all children to learn in the same way at
the same pace and respond invariably is absolutely inappropriate and ridiculous. Children show phenomenal development when they are accepted along with their individual learning styles and pace. Children must be recognised for what they do instead of what they have not done.

Unconditional respect and trust

How children are treated when they are young has a huge effect on the type of people they will grow up to be. Children are born pure and innocent with delicate self-esteem. Their sense of self worth grows through approval from outside. What children need most are respect and trust, and not costly toys.

Respect is their basic need which comes prior to education. Quality education is to understand and treat children respectfully irrespective of their academic performance or behavioural state. One more reason for which children should be respected is that respect in itself is reciprocal. Children who are treated respectfully learn to be respectful and treat others respectfully, too. Respecting is natural when children do something which is desirable and socially acceptable. Respecting becomes challenging for many when children do something undesirable. We must remember that even in the latter case, we should disapprove the wrong doing but not disapprove of the child. This is to treat children respectfully and reject bad behaviour, if there is any.

Dr Allama Mohammad Iqbal in his magnum opus work Javidnama introduced a clear vision for educators. He says, “The purpose of knowledge is nothing but to show you the splendors of yourself”. Education that compels children to understand the curriculum and does not understand and recognise the child cannot serve the child. The education process must not be impersonal because it dehumanises and demoralises learners through which the purpose of existence is adversely affected.

The writer is founder and director of Educational Resource Development Centre.

director@erdconline.org

published in dawn: http://dawn.com/2013/05/05/a-charter-of-childrens-recognition/

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Why My Child does not Sit and Concentrate?

My Child does not Sit and Concentrate

Ah! We remember the good old days when there only used to be a single PTV broadcast channel and that too would start with "Baseerat" at 6pm and end with "Farman e Ilahi" at around 12. Kids like us will open the TV much before the start time and would watch the insignia and later the signature tune before the start of transmission. We had nothing much to do once we came from schools except to sit down and pick up a book (or a comic) and read till it was time to go to ground and play and come back before maghrib. The most flashy material were the Archie comics. How we patiently waited for that few minutes of our favorite cartoon skit for the entire week! How we waited for that episode of Star Trek for the entire week! There used to be just four short (really short) breaks for ads after every 15 minutes at designated times for which the program episode would leave you at a suspenseful break.

Early to bed and early to rise was the order of the day. Life was simple and uncomplicated. Telephone was a luxury available only to the elites or those with either fat references or extremely fast speed money. T&T (old name of the PTCL) ensured through its bureaucracy that the phone connection will eventually be granted to those fortunate enough to have a farsighted grandfather who had applied for the connection decades before his death. There were only a few homes in each street that had a land-line telephone. Calling any one's house meant negotiating first with the head of the household or the mistress of the household and explaining your identity and purpose before the phone access was granted to anyone else in the house.

See also: Who Fails when a Student Fails

I am not telling tales about centuries or ages ago. Just forty years ago! However, over the last forty years, ages have passed. Today life of a child is filled with exciting possibilities. He is now often active in the virtual worlds where he is fighting to survive in a "Mortal Combat", or trying to save his car from tumbling over bridges and ramming into buildings in "Need for Speed", or living through "Age of Empires" where he has to defend his city against enemies while growing food, generating wealth and raising an army and building embankments for defending against enemies firing with canons, catapults and other arsenal. Meanwhile, he is surfing the Internet, getting acquainted with great music, previews of the latest thrillers, watching the construction of mega structures, trying to avoid the vulgar enticements, and coming across with content that is unbelievable. He now has so many channels that one has lost count and that are continuously showing all sorts of programs round the clock. Cartoon channels banging the head of the young mind with an incessant doze of fast pace cartoons, interspersed with psychologically designed ads to keep the kid riveted to the channel.

See also: Truth about Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD/ADHD): Reasons and Revelations

Surfing the channel has now become a popular habit. When was the last time you watched a program from start to finish on a channel? When was the last time, anyone watched a program completely starting with the announcement and finishing with the credits and acknowledgement of the sponsors? Facebook, Blogs, Linkedin, Mobile Phones and social media have connected our kids with everyone. Kids of ten years are now frequently and even openly getting come-on messages on facebook and cell phones from the opposite sex. If we close the open channels, there are backdoor channels one can easily open. Even the government and supreme court has not succeeded in closing down youtube. How can a parent do this?

See also; Parenting Challenges of the 21st Century

This is the exciting and thrilling environment in which today's kids live. However, we are expecting him to sit down with books whose content has not changed over the last 40 years. The material is as dull and drab as they ever were. Structurally not much has changed either in presentation or in structure except a bit of color and more pictures. The teachers are teaching in the same manner, using the same methodology, using the same examples, sitting in the same type of class room with children facing the teacher, and the teacher delivering the same kind of lecture in a timetable that is not much different in duration or structure from the past. Even the homework is being given in the same format, using the same types of homework copies with same type of questions.

See also: What does a Child Need? Mother's Teacher-hood vs Motherhood

Parents often force their kids to sit down every day and write a page of Urdu, a page of English and solve a few maths problems. The parents often think foolishly that what worked when they were forced thirty-forty years ago, would also work today. When kids do not comply, parents first become worried and then become furious. They forget that when was the last time their kids saw anyone writing a page with pencil or pen? When was the last time they actually sat down themselves and were seen writing one page (or a letter) with pen and pencil. Writing with pen and pencil has nearly become obsolete. We are seen either composing emails or sms text messages using keyboards or touch pads. Even keyboards are becoming obsolete. Email or an sms experience is much different, you can copy and paste, forward, spell check, use word completion etc.

See also: 5 Major Misconceptions of Muslim Parents regarding Parenting Challenges of the 21st Century

And, of course, the parents and teachers are both out of sync and out of date. They neither know facebook, nor can even keep their phones charged all the time. They are too much busy with their daily chores, young infants and pressures of in laws. They don't have time to interact with the kids and listen to them or understand them.

From B to C

Our challenge is as follows: If we want them to make them work, study and learn, then we must design our educational content in a format that can compete with the distractions that they have. As Edwared DeBono mentioned in his wonderful book "A Textbook of Wisdom", if you want to stop someone from going towards B from A, then you can not do that by erecting barriers, threats, codes or rules. The only way to stop someone from going towards B from A is to offer a more attractive C. See the Figure.

The challenge for us is to develop more interesting and more thrilling way of teaching. Teaching material must measure up to the level of games and social interactive media, and then surpass it. Fortunately much research has been done and there are paradigms of how to grab the attention of children and make learning more interesting than computer games.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Myth of Impact Factor- Does it Measures Real Impact or is it a Racket?

Myth: Impact Factor Measures Real Impact

One of the most interesting game being played in the universities is that of impact factor research. There is a whole industry that is now specializing in how to increase the impact factor. There are researchers who are publishing at the rate of one publication every month (or even every other week) in the prestigious ISI index. There are several researchers in Pakistan who have published over 30 ISI papers in three years. Where is this impact coming from? How can one do a unique original research that can produce a paper every few weeks, unless it is just a rehash of some existing work?

Impact factor is the holy grail. A game that researchers play. Simply stated it means that greater the references to papers in other papers, the greater the impact. Supposing a Pakistani researcher's paper gets cited hundreds of times in ISI research journals of obscure names and places, what impact would it have created on the society here in Pakistan and on this nation. It is possible for a group of researchers to collude and using the you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-yours approach to jack up the count of citations. I am told that some researchers are really playing this game well.

One of my friends who did his PhD from a prestigious US university told me about a course that he took in USA that he later dropped. The professor told him to write a paper that is so dense and complicated that it should not be understandable by any one. This should be done by including some complicated equations and matehmatical models and should revolve around terminology related to a particular field. The only restriction was to include a few references to the work of some professors in Europe. When those professors' papers were analyzed, it was found that the papers were equally dense, incomprehensible and even non-sensical. These works are all published in reputable journals.

There is an interesting analysis of computer generated non-sensical but completely grammatical and correct English papers that appear to be scholarly but totally gibberish which were sent for publication to various journals/conferences and which got accepted and were published. There is even a website that helps you generate scholarly research papers complete with tables, facts and figures that get accepted in various conferences. Even major publishers of online journals had published computer generated research papers.

I know of some scientists who have over 800 publications in a career spanning over 40 years. If you do the maths i.e. number of days in 40 years divided by the number of publications, the average number of days in which a publication was produced comes out to be around 18 days (= 40 x 365 / 800). What originality can there be in such creative work? Mind you majority of these publications would be in worthy impact factor journals.

I think there is a fundamental problem in this kind of measurement. You are measuring the instrument with itself. Fever can not be measured with fever of other people, it needs a device called thermometer that measures expansion of (say) Mercury. Speed of a car can not be measured by using speed of other cars, it needs a device called speedometer. Height of a plane in air can not be determined by comparing them with other planes in the air, it needs an instrument called altimeter that uses another quantity. The issue in impact factor measurment is measuring a quantity with itself. Hence, the number of publications have increased tremendously. There are now services available that would publish your journal and articles and would get your journal and articles a high impact factor if you pay some thousands of dollars.

The more fundamental question that may be asked is can we use this impact factor measure to quantify the contribution of Steven Spielberg, Disney, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Sam Walton (of Walmart fame) to the US society.

Can this impact factor quantify the positive contribution of Abdul Sattar Edhi, Dr Adeebul Hasan Rizvi, TCF, and so many others who are creating a sizeable impact on society.

Can this impact factor quantify the negative contributions of the dictators, bigots and war-mongers or exploiters of environment and plunderers of the financial industry in Pakistan. The impact factor is hopelessly out of sync with society and industry.

The challenge for HEC in Pakistan was to define an impact factor that has relevance for Pakistan. It should have measured:
– Impact on the industry; new ventures, new products, new opportunities, new jobs, ..
– Social change, economic change, change movements

Instead of plagiarizing impact factor research and whole scale implementing it in Pakistan without thinking about its societal impact, we should have been prepared to do original research and should have researched to enhance the impact factor so that it can measure concrete changes brought about in our society. This should have been the role of higher education commission.

West is at a stage where the relevance of research to society has already been worked out and they can play this game. Pakistan is at a stage which has to ensure this societal impact as it spends its precious resources in research. Development of such an impact factor that quantifies contribution to our society is our need. It is not the need of West that has already transited from the stage, where we find ourselves at present.

What we need to do now is to develop indices that measure industry growth, job growth, poverty alleviation, health improvement and other such goals. Then we need to link the output of the university such as the contribution of the alumni to society, industry, and entrepreneurship. We should subtract from such positive contributions, all the negative contributions made by the alumni. There should be Hall of Fame for each university and then there should be a Hall of Shame. Let's measure the true impact. The impact on character of the graduates as reflected in their contributions to the society and industry.

People may argue that it is difficult, it may not be objective, it may not be measurable, what would be instrument, who would calibrate. But these are the challenges not the problems. Solving such challenges is the real impact factor research. If proponents of higher education would not do this, then who would!

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Who is educated! - Iqbal's View

Iqbal on Education [1909]

I unhesitatingly declare that I have greater respect for an illiterate shopkeeper, who earns his honest bread and has sufficient force in his arms to defend his wife and children in times of trouble than the brainy graduate of high culture, whose low timid voice betokens the dearth of soul in his body, who takes pride in his submissiveness, eats sparingly, complains of sleepless nights and produces unhealthy children for his community, if he does produce any at all.

There is no absolute truth in education, as there is none in philosophy or science. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a maxim of fools. Do we ever find a person rolling in his mind the undulatory theory of light simply because it is a fact of science? Education, like other things, ought to be determined by the needs of the learner. A form of education which has no direct bearing on the particular type of character which you want to develop is absolutely worthless. I grant that the present system of education in India gives us bread and butter. We manufacture a number of graduates and then we have to send titled mendicants to Government to beg appointments for them. Well, if we succeed in securing a few appointments in the higher branches of service, what then? It is the masses who constitute the backbone of the nation; they ought to be better fed, better housed and properly educated.

Life is not bread and butter alone; it is something more; it is a healthy character reflecting the national ideal in all its aspects. And for a truly national character, you ought to have a truly national education. Can you expect free Muslim character in a young boy who is brought up in an aided school and in complete ignorance of his social and historical tradition?

You administer to him doses of Cromwell’s history; it is idle to expect that he will turn out a truly Muslim character. The knowledge of Cromwell’s history will certainly create in him a great deal of admiration for the Puritan revolutionary; but it cannot create that healthy pride in his soul which is the very lifeblood of a truly national character. Our educated young man knows all about Wellington and Gladstone, Voltaire and Luther. He will tell you that Lord Roberts worked in the South African War like a common soldier at the age of eighty; but how many of us know that Muhammad II conquered Constantinople at the age of twenty-two? How many of us have even the faintest notion of the influence of our Muslim civilization over the civilization of modern Europe? How many of us are familiar with the wonderful historical productions of Ibn Khaldun or the extraordinarily noble character of the great Mir Abdul Qadir of Algeria? A living nation is living because it never forgets its dead. I venture to say that the present system of education in this country is not at all suited to us as a people. It is not true to our genius as a nation, it tends to produce an un-Muslim type of character, it is not determined by our national requirements, it breaks entirely with our past and appears to proceed on the false assumption that the idea of education is the training of human intellect rather than human will.

We spend an immense amount of money every year on the education of our children. Well, thanks to the King-Emperor, India is a free country; everybody is free to entertain any opinion he likes—I look upon it as a waste. In order to be truly ourselves, we ought to have our own schools, our own colleges, and our own universities, keeping alive our social and historical tradition, making us good and peaceful citizens and creating in us that free but law-abiding spirit which evolves out of itself the noblest types of political virtue. I am quite sensible of the difficulties that lie in our way. All that I can say is that if we cannot get over our difficulties, the world will soon get rid of us.

[Iqbal's article on ISLAM AS A MORAL AND POLITICAL IDEAL, 1909]

Monday, April 29, 2013

Can Grades and Degrees Measure the Success of Students?

We see schools in Pakistan proudly displaying their biggest achievement as the number of A grades secured or the number of positions obtained in board examinations. There seems to be a mad rush to secure a large number of A's with the benchmark recently set at some 22+ A grades. The schools as well as students define their success in terms of high grades. Why? Because high grades would get them in to good universities and the graduates of good universities get good jobs. High grades are a ticket for economically weak students to secure admission in public universities where there is high competition because of the low fees. Such high grades for economically strong students studying at premier institutions provide literally a ticket for enjoying the university life in liberal western countries, obtaining scholarships and credit exemptions. Even high achievers studying in public universities in Pakistan plan to go abroad and construct a lucrative life there. The quest of grades boils down simply to earn a better living through a good paying career job.

How Maths is made difficult

Children should use tools

Maths becomes difficult when the natural progression of how children learn maths is not followed.

This progression is often designated by ELPS:

E for Experience
L for Language
P for Pictures
S for Symbols

Typically the maths books start from the Picture (P) stage and, then immediately move to the Symbol stage (S).

Without proper exposure of Experience stage (E) and development of the necessary Language stage (L), we naively expect that a student would directly comprehend from pictures (#3) and would effortlessly graduate to the symbols stage (#4).

The Myth of Mushrooming of Universities in Pakistan

I think we were and are being sold this myth of "Mushrooming of Universities in Pakistan" because there are forces that do not want 20,000 universities coming up in Pakistan and would like to cap the number of universities and HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) to a small manageable and controllable number. In 2006, in India there were over 22,000 engineering colleges, institutes and universities of all hues and shades in public and private sector. Of courses, not all of them had the stature of IITs, but there were plenty providing a useful service.

Myth of SnT as Panancea: Are we Backward because we Lag Behind in Science and Technology?

The mythology that has been sold to the entire Muslim world and especially in Pakistan is that our backwardness is because of our backwardness in Science and Technology. Hence, S n T became the holy grail for progress and development. Everyone is willing to invest in Science and Technology, whether it has been Zia's government and Dr. Mahboob ul Haq's drive for S n T scholarships, or whether it is the political governments of the 90s or the Musharaff era (1999-2008) when Dr Ata ur Rahman was at the helm of S n T and HEC. Funds were lavished on S n T. The underlying assumption behind this myth was that the society would magically transform itself when we have x-thousand S n T PhDs; y-thousand professors with high impact factor; n-thousand SIS publications and z-thousand state of the arts labs spread all over the country. After spending of billions of tax payers money we find ourselves back to the starting point.

Covered Drains of Moenjodoro

Beauty is Our Business - Mathematics, Excellence and the Great Dijkstra

I remember here the lessons Dijkstra gave about beauty and excellence through personal examples. His colleagues celebrated his works with the salute: "Beauty is Our Business"[1]. Dijkstra is one of the most revered computer scientist whose footprint on the fundamental ideas in computer science is now legendary.

This was 1988-89. I was at The University of Texas at Austin, USA when my friend and colleague Mobashir R Hingorjo (who later became the founding director of TPS) came up to me and said let's take this course "Capita Selecta" by Edsgar Dijkstra. I had read about Dijkstra in computer science texts but had no idea what Capita Selecta meant. I showed my concern to Mobashir about how would this course be relevant to my direction of research, which was more towards software engineering, and less towards formal (mathematical) verification of programs. To this argument, Mobashir had a simple answer "Trust me. One day we will be telling people that we took this course by Dijkstra!"

I had no intention of pursuing verification and mathematical correctness of programs, hence, I was less interested in the course contents and more interested in Dijkstra himself. I had taken the course on a non-credit basis to shield myself from any adverse grade that I may be awarded by this guru of computer science. We thus found ourselves in this Capita Selecta class of Dijkstra and what a memorable experience it was! This interaction with Dijkstra eventually became a profound lesson in my conception of beauty and my understanding of what it means to strive for excellence, and this I would always cherish.

I now often share the following anecdotes with my students and to those I am trying to explain the concept of excellence.

One day Dijkstra was writing an algorithm on the board. As he came down to the bottom end of the board, he found himself short of space. He had one line more to write and had run out of space at the bottom of the board. He had the option either to write the remaining line on the right hand side of the board which was blank or he could use the other slideable board on the right that could have slid on top of the first one. But, what did he do? He chose to rub all the lines of the algorithm that he had written, and then rewrote all the lines once again, but this time a little smaller, so that the remaining last line would also fit on a single page of the board. From top to bottom. No need for the line spilling over to another side of the board and becoming orphan. I wondered at that time what is this. Why is he wasting time. Now I know better. He was giving us a fundamental lesson in aesthetics and beauty. This effort invested in making your work proportional, balanced and visually appealing is the essence of the strive for excellence for those for whom beauty is their business.

I remember one day his saying to us that he had never written a program that is more than a page long! I often wondered then what kind of programming he was doing. It was much later, after my software house venture failed that I learned the hard way; that any program (or function or procedure) that is more than a page long should be thrown away. On his authority, and my adverse experience of the tremendous loss that we incurred in the software house venture, I can safely say that one of the best methods of software quality assurance is that we should throw away any routine (or program) that can not be put succinctly on a page, better still half a page!

Add to this Dijkstra's conception of beautiful expression in the style and structure of the program and you have the most powerful quality control tool for programming. I think one is better off just throwing away a program that is not beautifully written with balanced and concise names. This is much easier than Fagan's Inspection Method which is a more technical implementation of the same idea. A program that can not be easily read is an expression of convoluted and imprecise thinking and should be immediately discarded. Trust me, I learned it the hard way.

I also recall the effort that Dijkstra would invest in coming up with short and very brief names of variables so that the reader can concentrate on the structure of algorithm and not get lost in the wilderness of long names. The strive for coming up with names and their prefixes would often take major amount of time. But the result of this effort was an elegant system of notation which had simplicity, brevity and directness often not witnessed in other areas of computer science. His remarks on the use of imprecise and loose language used in papers were scathing, ruthless and some of his lampooning of bad style is now legendary. See for example this analysis of Dijkstra of a document. If the imprecise and loose language used in reports and papers needs to be stringently criticised, then one can imagine what high standards are required in writing clean and neat algorithms and programs. His algorithms are supreme examples of beauty, elegance, and conciseness and so are the algorithms designed by his colleagues and students.

In another semester I was taking a class on Distributed Systems by Professor Mohammad Gouda, who was one of Dijkstra's true disciples. At the start of each class Prof Gouda would take several minutes to divide the board into three equidistant areas each separated by a vertical line drawn with chalk. He would take forever to make sure that the lines were vertical. Would rub a line many times and would draw the line again and again and would view the line from every direction until he was satisfied that his hand-drawn line was perfectly vertical, balance and dividing the board in equidistant areas. I wondered at that time, why was he wasting his time and ours. But, now I know. This must have been a lesson passed on by Dijkstra to his student and a true reflection of what is meant to have beauty as our business. Excellence is not an act but a Habit as mentioned by Aristotle, but I saw it in the example of Dijkstra and his students. Habit of excellence in every thing that we should do; whether it is making an algorithm fit on a page or whether it is drawing a line on the board.

He was dead against the use of word processors, for the simple reason that they encourage shoddy thinking. You write first and then think later. All this ease of editing, cutting, pasting, revising and readjusting in word processors is at the expense of deep and precise thinking and should, therefore, be discouraged. I remember there was this colloquium in which the famous Donald Knuth ("Art of Computer Programming" and Tex/LaTex word processor) was making a presentation and it fell upon his old friend E W Dijkstra to introduce him. I was astounded to hear Dijkstra taking this opportunity to criticise Knuth for endangering beautiful and precise thinking with his word processing software. No wonder he was probably the only computer science researcher whose handwritten manuscripts were accepted for publications by journals for example see this wonderful paper. Just imagine the time, effort, pre-thinking and planning required in composing a handwritten page without crossing out sentences, overwriting and corrections. Think about the time we spend and the number of times we enter, cross out, revise, edit and re-edit a single line that we write using an editor/wordprocessor. Even with the help of spellers and what not, our writing is full of mistakes. There is a great deal to be learned about this maxim "think before you leap" that we have forgotten and continue to ignore when we write.

I will relate about what grade I got in this course in a later blog "Fairness in Grading: A lesson by Dijkstra"

Dijkstra Posts:

References:

Please note that the title of this blog is taken from the following conference:

[1] Beauty is our Business: A Birthday Salute to Edsger W. Dijkstra, Texts and Monographs in Computer Science is published by Springer-Verlag, 1990, Editors: Feijen, W.H.J., A.J.M. van Gasteren, D. Gries, and Jayadev Misra.

Pages

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References:

See Also: