Islam, science, and free and open inquiry
DOI: 10.1063/1.4796611
In a well-written analysis, Pervez Hoodbhoy states that “most universities in Islamic countries have a starkly inferior quality of teaching and learning” in which “obedience and rote learning are stressed” and “debate, analysis, and class discussions are infrequent.”
Those particular problems also occur in non-Islamic countries, as Richard Feynman observed during a year of teaching physics in Brazil:
After lecturing the students about the need to work the physics homework problems to gain understanding, a student delegation “told me that I didn’t understand the backgrounds that they have, that they can study without doing the problems, that they have already learned arithmetic, and that [working such problems] was beneath them.”
… Feynman would stress to the students “how useful it was to work [the physics problems] together, to discuss the questions, to talk it over, but they wouldn’t do that either, because they would be losing face if they had to ask someone else.” 1
References
1. R. P. Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character, W. W. Norton, New York (1985), p. 194.
More about the Authors
Victor J. Slabinski. (slabinsk@patriot.net) Arlington, Virginia, US .
