Feynman's key point is that learning rote means you can't invent new things. Its not knowledge, its not progress.
The article mostly looks at it from a 'its boring' angle instead. Which is not nearly as damning.
The article mostly looks at it from a 'its boring' angle instead. Which is not nearly as damning.
However, one could equally as well argue that we don't need average people to be able to read or do maths. They can learn it all from videos on Youtube et al anyway, right?
More seriously, the notion that most people can't produce wonderful things is the single most pernicious lie of our times. Everyone is born with more than enough potential to do great things, and the job of society is to give them the tools and encouragement they need to do this.
So, don't sell the species short. We may not need everyone to create new things, but hell, it couldn't hurt, right?
Secondly, so what? The particular structure of our economy is no reason to constrain our abilities as a species. I would argue that we have crippled, half educated college graduates doing pointless work across the WEIRD (google the acronym) world, and that this is bad.
My argument is not that we have educated the "average person" (presumably you're not one) too much, but rather that we have educated them too little. Just enough to believe that they know enough, but not enough that they actually reflect upon their existence.
He's complaining about the fact that they don't really know what they've learned, they've just learned to 'say the right things', specifically because of the way they have been taught. Which is precisely the point I'm making.
e.g. "After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant."