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Naga Tuma
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Ethiopia's አብረሆት and Mathematics for Engineers Course

Post by Naga Tuma » 17 Aug 2022, 18:51

I am not a regular customer of many new YouTubers' and Facebookers' posts of reports and analysis of news from Ethiopia. However, when I came across one YouTube post recently, I couldn't help juxtaposing it with the ideas I learned in one particular course in college a long time ago as well as with the relatively new idea about Ethiopia's አብረሆት.

That particular course was called Mathematics for Engineers, MATH 331. It is the most advanced mathematics course that I took in Ethiopia. If I remember correctly, it was in that course that we were introduced to some famous mathematicians like Fourier, Euler, Taylor, and Laplace.

I do not think that it is inconceivable to draw a progression from scientific ideas taught in colleges in Ethiopia and its emerging quest for አብረሆት. Then again, I do not know much about the history of academics in Ethiopia in general and that particular course in particular. Almost all my time in college, I didn't consider learning more than something curiously fun to do. May be that kind of mindset has helped me in putting off the pressure of learning as more serious thing to do in life.

Nonetheless, school has been my Bible and my moments of enlightenments throughout my school years in both Ethiopia and here in the U.S. have been my verses. Like many others, there are those kinds of moments that I vividly remember to this day. I will come back later to some of those moments. For now, I remember the day I took the final exam of that course. After the exam, for reasons I can't explain, I totally lost my appetite and couldn't eat my lunch at the student cafeteria on campus. I have no idea if any sense of satisfaction or getting over something would lead to one losing appetite. I remember trying to give it all I could to pass that exam. I passed the exam with my standard for passing, along with another student, if I remember correctly.

One batch of students in one college taking that course is a mere snapshot of the history of that course in Ethiopia, For instance, one can ask about when it was first introduced, why it was thought to be necessary to introduce that course in Ethiopia for undergraduate students to take it, how many students took it for the fist time, who the first Ethiopian student that aced it was, and so on.

I suppose getting these kinds of information to enlighten the general populace in quest of አብረሆት takes more time and resources than preparing the instantaneous reports and analysis by the many new YouTubers and Facebookers. I do not know if there are some already out there that I haven't stumbled up on yet; I am sure there is enough historical data by now to talk about.

I respect the value of instantaneous reports of news and analysis for its consumers. At the same time, I don't know if it is just me or more are sensing a gap that the juxtaposition suggests to exist in the progression from those kinds of advanced scientific thoughts in colleges and Ethiopia's quest for አብረሆት.

Naga Tuma
Member+
Posts: 5496
Joined: 24 Apr 2007, 00:27

Re: Ethiopia's አብረሆት and Mathematics for Engineers Course

Post by Naga Tuma » 07 Sep 2022, 19:29

Coming back to talking about examples of my moments of enlightenment as a student, which haven't been in our culture even though some might possibly be positively consequential for professional development, I remember some that may potentially be helpful to our young generation of students. So, I am taking the risk of self-aggrandizement, which isn't in our culture. I am sure there are plenty of other examples that we all can learn from and study if they can be more or less helpful to the young generation of students. I say this because I have a feeling that every student in school is more likely than not to feel insecure about his abilities of learning in front of his teachers, if not beside his classmates. If every teacher can help dispel that insecurity out of every student as much as possible, I think that it goes a long way in the teaching and learning process. This is my main point here.

In 10th grade or thereabout, I noticed that an Indian math teacher missed a crucial step in solving a problem. I think this happens quite often with many teachers. After she was done, I raised my hand to point out the step that she missed. She agreed with it and went over the problem to solve it correctly. What stands out to me to this day is not that she missed a step or that I pointed out the misstep, it was the subdued demeanor that I saw on her face as she solved the problem correctly. I felt guilty about it. At the same time, it gave me a sense of being validated as a student.

In the same grade or thereabout, a visually impaired English teacher asked for a definition of a two word phrase: urgent affair. I quickly answered jokingly. One, I didn't clearly know the meaning of the word urgent. Two, I wasn't one of the daring students in class to answer questions quickly. His impairment gave me confidence to answer it so quickly. I gave a definition as "an affair that needs an urgent decision." I knew I was being clever at a moment's notice about reusing the word urgent in my definition. If I were asked to define it, I couldn't. The teacher appeared stunned, turned toward where the answer came from and uttered loudly: quite brilliant. That stunned me in return. I cleverly reused one of the two words, answered it jokingly, and then got that kind of compliment. To this day, I feel I didn't deserve that compliment because of being clever in reusing one of the two words in the question. However, the compliment gave me the feeling that I could do better as a student.

A third one was in college, which was also about defining something. What I thought something ordinary to answer stunned the lecturer to the extent that classmates noticed it and talked about his reaction after the lecture. It was in one of the required courses to take, which is called Political Economy. I ended up getting a B in that course but only one student got an A, if I remember correctly. To this day, something about it remains unanswered for me. I do not mean to be accusatory of the lecturer or the only student who got an A in that course. However, I have asked if I was robbed off a scenario where I could have been the student to have broken another record at the then young institution. Another student told me that it was already talked about on campus during the semester break that I had scored straight As, which would have been the first at the young institution. Second, which remains puzzling to me to this day is if I did any worse in that course than the student who got the A. I personally know the student because our names are consecutive in the class's roster list and because of that we were assigned to work on a lab of a different course. Sometimes, I joke in introvert if the lecturer, who I heard is from Hararghe, consumed some khat while writing the grades and mistakenly put the grade I got on an adjacent line. Once again, I definitely do now want to sound accusatory of either the teacher or the student. I am just wondering about a potential scenario of inadvertent or negligent act that could lead to losing such an important record, especially given that I had a history of stunning the teacher in the class with a simple answer, hearing the rumor from a student who was on campus but not a classmate that I had got straight As during that semester, and most of all the scenario that I could do worse in that course than the student that I know who got the A.

As someone who has briefly taught in both Ethiopia and here in the U.S., I can't imagine any teacher negatively affecting the grade of any of his students. If anything, he or she would go out of his way to empower his students with more knowledge. I remember very well three of my students, two in Ethiopia and one here in the U.S. One of those in Ethiopia and the one here in the U.S. solved my tests and exams in the way I would expect them to solve, for the most part. I think a teacher would be very fortunate to have those kinds of students in class. In the other one in Ethiopia, I sensed a potential. ዕንቡጥ ኣስተዉዬ እንድያብብ ያፈነዳሁ ይመስለኛል። This is the first time I have ever talked about it, including to the student. To this day, I have no idea if he noticed that while correcting his exam papers, I tried to show him his potential while correcting the steps he missed. Also to this day, I wonder if those little comments and corrections had any discernible impact on his academic track record in the times before and after I thought his class some courses. I know that he went on to complete his tertiary level education at an Ivy League school here in the U.S. I also know that he wasn't very hopeful, which I didn't share, for underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia when he was a graduate student here in the U.S. After getting some experience in the real world, he had the following to say: ዋቅን ዴብሴ ብየ ኢትዮጵያት አነ ሃአጄሱ። ዋቃ ሞቴን ኢትዮጵያ ያድርገዉ ማለት ነዉ።

The fourth example of enlightening moment for me as a student is here in the U.S. when I told my mentor Professor that I had successfully developed a solution procedure for a highly complex mathematics problem that I originally formulated. I could be wrong about reading his body language of hearing that. To me he looked stunned, which came across as asking: You could do that? I was like yes, in introvert again, and got satisfied as validated as a researcher who could form his own original formulation and solve it successfully. I still remember how much I thought about coming up with that original complex mathematical formulation as well as exactly where the idea came to mind one day, under a parking structure on campus around or after midnight as I walked home from my student office. For the initiated in mathematics, the complex mathematical formulation involves integers and real numbers.

I hope these simple moments of a student feeling a sense of validation in the journey of learning inspires our young generation of students in terms of seeing their own moments of enlightenment about their innate potentials to learn and succeed.

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