Today is National Education Day.
Unfortunately the education system is geared towards the very few students who can win national and international science olympiads. Too many schools are dilapidated and that although school administrations are supposedly free to adopt teaching methodologies which allow students to experiment and to develop innate talents and skills, every student throughout the country has to take the same strictly knowledge based exams set by dumb central government bureaucrats.
Did you know that Einstein wasn't very successful at school?
He was also no great shakes as a mathematician, but he was creative and insightful, and saw a whole new way of thinking about gravity and the structure of space-time.
A vivid interest in things, and an active desire to understand more about them, is a major characteristic of intelligence. When this leads to great creativity and important discoveries, we call it genius.
Today in 1997 Paolo Freire, a Brazilian educator, died.
He was an advocate of popular education which may be defined as an educational technique designed to raise the consciousness of its participants and allow them to become more aware of how an individual's personal experiences are connected to larger societal problems.
(Is she crying because she failed her national exam or because she's just found out that Jusuf Kalla, who is not a friend of teachers, has chosen Gen.(ret) Wiranto, wanted by the UN for war crimes, as his vice presidential partner in the upcoming election?)
