Shams, Education, A Pickle for the knowing ones, Pedantry, Students
If you haven't picked up one of the "new" textbooks used to instruct our future leaders, now is the time to do so. You will be surprised. With a glossy four color cover, a cd inside and pictures galore; you would think education has finally succeeded in capturing the wave and is now providing the best of educational matter; think again. Inside that book, no doubt either printed on recycled (so it will self-destruct in a quarter-century) or perhaps archival quality, acid free paper (meaning the drivel will survive us all), for which you have just parted with the best part of one hundred dollars or more, you will find a shameful exercise in pediology.
What you hold in your hand is not a text suitable for undertaking a learning experience which will enrich your life and the lives of others, but a MARKETING SHAM. Ask anyone knowledgeable in the area and the classic explanation is "everyone's doing it". Now Ben Morgan and his friends knew all about shams way back in 1850, but hey, this is one-hundred and fifty years later. Haven't we learned anything?
Maybe, if you visit a professor (or teacher) and see how they prepare for today's lecture you will get further insight into just how bad the current texts are. No doubt you find open on their desk, a copy of text books that are at least a decade old. No, it's not because that's the book that was used in the course when they took it. It's because you have to go back that far to get the "underlying" basics for the courses that are being offered to our students today. Let me give an example.
Suppose you are talking about amines that have biological activity. Sound too complex, after all many of us don't have the foggiest idea of what an amine is or even what is meant by the term "biological activity". On the other hand, not just a few of us (or our friends and family) take drugs that help control anxiety, depression and the like. These my friend are "monoamine oxidase inhibitors". (note the presence of amine in this terminology). Now if you visit your local "health" store your will find the shelves packed with St. Johns wort and the like. In fact the Wall Street Journal just had an article featuring "Nature's Gold Mine" an almost promotional bit of literature on Kava, an herb purported to reduce stress and anxiety. (Feb 26, 1998).
So here's a topic that should be addressed in the textbooks that are being used by our future doctors, nurses, and health care professionals, right? Wrong. If you want to know more about monoamine oxidase, you have a difficult task set out for you. Unless you go to a good library and search the stacks you are unlikely to come away with an understanding of "what's going on here". But if you go back to the text books of a decade or so ago, voila!! there's monoamine oxidase and all the bloody details of how and why it and its inhibitors are important.
Seems Mother Nature in all her wisdom; or perhaps because she let those that didn't learn from their mistakes perish, designed a system to aid in survival. (meaning the evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, ala Darwin). Monoamine oxidase evolved as an enzyme system useful in disposing of toxic amounts of amines that are in our everyday diet, as example, cheese, beer, and even degradation products of those pesky amino acids that result from our consumption of a nice steak (or maybe tofu).
But there's more, seems the brain has a special use for amines as well and controlling the level of them has a lot to do with how we feel. Too low a level and maybe we get the "blues", too much and we are dancing in the halls (as was described by one of the original reports having to do with the discovery of a class of inhibitors of the oxidase.) Now I think, any biochem text should at least mention this, don't you? Alas, they (and I mean most of the current ones, don't.)
So here's an example of dumbing down our educational system. The student can learn more in reading a good newspaper than the required text for the course in which they are enrolled. But if MAO and topics of this ilk are missing from the books, what has filled the void, because they haven't gotten any smaller? Well the print is larger, the pages are filled with colored pictures, interludes are introduced to divert (the intent is to provide references to everyday life) attention and "new" science is introduced to make one believe that this text is up to date. If that's not enough, the indexes are woefully inadequate and errors abound through out the meager text (even when the edition is the second or third).
What to do? It is popular to suggest that if one wants or needs information, it's only a key-stroke away on the Internet. Try it. Type in the words "monoamine oxidase" and see what you get. Why a group of advertisements or promotional blurbs from some health food junkies. Or, try the Grateful Med link to the National Institutes of Health's Library. Again, nothing that will aid in building a concrete understanding on the topic. In despair, search out an old text book, and finally you will begin to see the light.
W. C. Fields is quoted as saying, "I wouldn't want to belong to a country club that would have me as a member." Hopefully, you wont say; "I wouldn't want to go to a hospital that has one of my students as a doctor/nurse". Perhaps they will have survived the morass of glitz which has replaced education. If so, they will be better educated than most at least in part because their educational experience will include more than just a colorful romp through the pages of less than satisfactory teaching aids.
Fie on the authors, editors and publishers of such drivel which is dumbing down our educational system.
ABOUT Joe Wortham