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LinKai_Jiang's picture

I think we definitely need to

I think we definitely need to be guided in our intellectual quest. At the beginning, I would want somebody to teach me the foundation of mathematics and the basics of the language and other things. Many people would be severely deprived if they were not "babied' during the early years of their education. But the problems with formal education really emerge later when we have achieved a solid foundation (of course how much is enough foundation is up for debate). Then institutional structure continues to serve what they are best at, but which we do not need anymore. I should qualify this by saying that in education one can never do without some sort of "guidance" but I do not think we need to be in school or any institution to get those guidance to take us further intellectually. What the institution does best from this point on is to socialize us into certain norms of intellectual practices: learning the right jargon, citing in the right format, picking the right topic to write about...etc.

    

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