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You are absolutely right on all points!

Students need to take responsibility for themselves and Teachers need to point them in the right direction and help/steer as needed.

A Chinese Martial Arts saying which i keep in mind goes;

To show one the right direction and the right path, oral instructions from a Master are necessary, but mastery of the subject only comes from one's own incessant self-cultivation.

A good authoritative book can be the stand-in for a Master in which case there is more discipline and effort required of the Student.

These days different types of books/videos focusing on different aspects of the same subject are so easily available/affordable that the Teacher/Student can both work together and focus on understanding. A handful of real-world problems modeled and worked through beats pages of mere symbol manipulation. We need to start stressing quality over quantity i.e. deliberate effort via deliberate practice in the right way.





The Feynman essay here is all about the teachers NOT pointing the students toward understanding.

And it is all about the students being disciplined and putting in effort, but toward rote memorization rather then understanding, because that is what teachers told them to do.


I was agreeing/elaborating on "setopt's" comment (which lists specific approaches) on how to solve the problem detailed in the essay.

I had submitted the original article for discussion since the observations seem to apply to how Physics/Science has been taught/studied in most countries and not just Latin America.




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