Learning and InterstandingA Vision

Leo Võhandu

Prof. Emer.

Tallinn Technical University

How we stand ?

• New technologies attack the monumental building of our Education from all sides

Every new technology finds always a group of enthusisats who study it thoroughly and think that THIS METHOD is THE real one.

Every technology has a model of thinking. How many there are? Just three main ones.

Mathematical way of thinking

• Without any doubt that is the most formal way of thinking. To be more exact we have to confess that mathematicians are used to prove results in a deductive way.

• All results they prove are created just using a lot of phantasy. For us it is important that mathematicians do not need reality to develop as a science. Nice life- pure math !!

Natural Sciences

• Hereb the way of thinking is empirical, hypothetically deductive. All results are created from general principles (axioms, laws) and from empirical facts or just combining laws, facts and hypotheses.

• In the last case true sentences are selfseparating from hypotheses.

Humaniora

• Most fuzzy way of thinking. To build a system of knowledge is much more complex and it is not so transparent as in two first groups of sciences. It is hard to formalise humanitarian sciences.

• Knowledge itself is more fuzzy, metaphoric and the used language is more figural. There are many ideas without exact definitions.

Hard for children Hard for teachers

• Every model has many suitable metalanguages and in pure science all actors (teachers, scientists) are using a shorthand style of speaking in their specialty.

• That is exactly the hard problem we are facing in our educational system future

Kaplinski

• Last summer – journal Vikerkaar (Rainbow) from year 1988. Jaan Kaplinski analysed

there the so-called ”Spirit of Tartu”.

• The main trouble in our education is that all subjects are taught only by specialists

Mathematicians teach mathematics, historians teach history and so on.

Is it really bad ?

• Yes, it is !!!• What is missing is interstanding. How to

understand each other positively• I would even say that the problem of

interstanding is a new and very big challenge to humanity. It happens often that two mathematicians from the same chair do not understand each other. And they both are used to exact definitions. What to tell about other specialities?

Interstanding

• In 1995 Rector of Art Academy prof. Ando Keskkula organised the first international conference on interstanding

• Theoretician Eric Kluijtenberg (Holland)

”The implementation of new digital media in the practice of (visual) arts engenders a radical redefinition of the categories of the works themselves, as well as their contextualisation.”

(cont)

• So speaks an artist about artist works, where all is ” on the plate”.

• Up to now our human evolution has been in general divergent but the sudden changes in human communication system (world village) have brought us all to a converging process. Very important role belongs to the Web.

What Web does?

• It creates many new scientific and cultural problems. One of the most important of those is exactly the problem of interstanding

• It is very easy to develop and defend negativism. Just everybody stays in his or her taboo system and closes eyes, ears and mind to ”all new rubbish”.

Culture

• We all know that any taboo system (culture) has taken a long time to develop and stabilise. Everybody knows how to live in a nice and stable way - not breaking rules and knowing that something can’t be done. And then comes an outsider who does not know about taboos and culture of the given field and creates something new – that other people didn’t even think about.

Interstanding and Learning

• We saw already that our children have to study in many different ways of thinkung. Teaching styles are also different. Estonia has about 12 main subjects plus some 400 for free choice. So different navigation makes results very different. That is not bad

• Without variation any species dies out. So would our educational system.

School text difficulty

• Prof. Jaan Mikk: If you have long sentences with a lot of abstract words, the understanding will decline quickly.

• I think that the problem is really in a different context: how to get rid of specialists metalanguage? People speak different languages using the same vernacular and do not understand each other verrry often!

My vision for education

• All specialties have to try to write about their subject in a language which does not use highbrowed metalanguage. You could call it propedeutic style if you wish. If somebody says that such a simpleminded presentation is not the level they want to see, do not believe him or her. Scientific American, Nauka i Zizn do the brainwork!!!

A good example

• Open University did suggest a course in Optimisation methods without any success (no participants – no money!). After changing the name of the course and throwing out all metalanguage words (optimisation, objective function and so on) plus writing a nice selling prospect our continuing education group has sold it out for a full year. And what is really important – the material covered is exactly the same (even more!)

Selling

• Selling is also very important. Books and courses have to be written so that they will sell easily to the children and not to be pushed and squeezed.

• Day of Estonian language. Last spring. Linguists said that they have written very good books about the language structure and grammar. Nobody buys. Selling !!

Style of thinking

• We use Aristotelen logical system (Tertium non datur and only two truth values).

• Orient uses fuzzy languages and fuzzy logic. Nothing in the World is only black or white. We add properties. East is using pictographic languages and the meaning of the sentence is a generalisation of separate words. Pedagogically very useful.

Future

• Western writing style covers already far less than a half of the world

• Simplicity, simplicity and once more simplicity in your thoughts and writings

• Think about interstanding. Other fields outside of your highly selfesteemed specialty have also very interesting knowledge what one can even use

New technologies bring in modelling, simulation , gaming, intelligent agents, i.e. many tools of artificial intelligence.Knowledge developes not by learning by heart but by experimenting, followingevolution, generalising and creating cultural models with local and global control ( looking what your neigbors doand taking into account global beliefs).

Moral: it is really hard to educate. But if we do not change quickly, our fate could be compared to the fate of sailing boats. Just for sunday and sports....