The PISA study revealed the misery: youngsters are stupid all over the world (except in Finland). What a horrid, spoilt generation would thank their grandparents for working their arses off (remember the good old days when there was no electricity?) with illiteracy and pathetic math skills?
I must admit I felt guilty ever since. Until today: I was lying on the couch doing nothing (which is something else to feel guilty about). Suddenly this question came to mind: are we really stupid or is the world getting smarter? I tried to think logically:
1. Thanks to the authors of books like “Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Don’t Read Maps” we know that our brain is basically the same like it was when our ancestors didn’t have roast beef but dinosaur steak on Sundays.
2. The knowledge in the world doubles about every five years.
This means it’s not our fault that we’re stupid there is just too much information around for our brain to make sense of. So let’s proof it mathematically.
Assuming that the world would have discovered the very first fact in 1900 (I do know that that happened long before but my calculator couldn’t take the challenge) the situation would have been this:
1900 1 brain = 1 fact (this is a model I’m trying to proof something)
1950 1 brain = 1024 facts
2005 1 brain = 2’097’152 facts
The guilt is gone and Mr. Socrates came (to mind not in person, haha I know bad joke):
-True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
I can relax now. Knowing that what I know is nothing compared to the world. I don’t have to hurry. I can take my time and speculate whether Socrates would have done well on the PISA test or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment