Source: 1980s, That Benediction is Where You Are (1985), p. 18
Context: From childhood we are trained to have problems. When we are sent to school, we have to learn how to write, how to read, and all the rest of it. How to write becomes a problem to the child. Please follow this carefully. Mathematics becomes a problem, history becomes a problem, as does chemistry. So the child is educated, from childhood, to live with problems — the problem of God, problem of a dozen things. So our brains are conditioned, trained, educated to live with problems. From childhood we have done this. What happens when a brain is educated in problems? It can never solve problems; it can only create more problems. When a brain that is trained to have problems, and to live with problems, solves one problem, in the very solution of that problem, it creates more problems. From childhood we are trained, educated to live with problems and, therefore, being centred in problems, we can never solve any problem completely. It is only the free brain that is not conditioned to problems that can solve problems. It is one of our constant burdens to have problems all the time. Therefore our brains are never quiet, free to observe, to look. So we are asking: Is it possible not to have a single problem but to face problems? But to understand those problems, and to totally resolve them, the brain must be free.
“[The engineer] must identify the significant and critical problems, but in his education, problems have been predetermined and assigned. He must develop the judgment to know what solutions to problems are possible, but in school the problems encountered are known to have answers. He should be excited by new and unsolved challenges, but for 20 years he has lived in an educational system where he knows he is repeating the work of last year's students.”
Source: Engineering Education and Engineering Practice in the Year 2000 (1967), p. 134-135 as cited in: Ben. F. Barton (1981) The nature and treatment of professional engineering problems: The technical writing teacher's responsibility. p. 19
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Jay Wright Forrester 7
American operations researcher 1918–2016Related quotes
Public power (1990) Volume 48. American Public Power Association. p. 9
1990s
Book A (sketchbook), p 31, c 1963: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 50
1960s
Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: Every physician, shoemaker, mechanic or educator must know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and make his living. For some decades, you have begun to play a governing role on this earth. It is on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. But your teachers and masters do not tell you how you really think and are; nobody dares to voice the one criticism of you which could make you capable of governing your own fate. You are "free" only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.
Source: Making Mondragón, 1965, p. 170; As cited in: Ickis (2014)