Saturday, April 26, 2014

updated - Physics education and real world perspective

I was absolutely horrified to read about this story, about how more than 200 girls were kidnapped in Nigeria by a radical Islamic group because they had the temerity to show up for a physics test (emblematic of getting a Western education).  I fervently hope that there is enough public outrage about this to get some positive action there, though it's hard to be optimistic.

Stories like this should remind many of us how petty our concerns (departmental rankings; referee comments; grant reviews; tenure decisions; grad school admissions decisions) really are, even if they seem stressful and important.  It is terrible that in the 21st century there are still large segments of the world where modern learning is expressly forbidden, on pain of death.

Update:  Uggh.  It would appear that the abducted girls have been forcibly married off.  There are so many things wrong here that it's hard to know where to begin.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This is just a two day news story.
The plane 370 is 7 weeks.
The ferry is at most 3 weeks.

Why does not Obama go and rescue these black girls. He is from Africa too.

Does not any one care.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

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