Asimov, Isaac (Fall 1989). The relativity of wrong. The Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved 11/9/2011 from http://www.hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html.

Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite writers both in science fiction and in science fact. A friend of mine recently pointed me to the short essay cited above. It contains a number of delightful arguments and examples that explore flaws in an educational system that focuses on exact right answers that are to be memorized with little or no understanding and not questioned.

Here are a few examples.

Right and wrong are not absolutes

Quoting from the article:

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.  

The earth is round

When people say that “the earth is round” they are probably trying to say that the earth is not flat—rather that it is a sphere.  You have probably heard the statement, “That’s good enough for government work.” However, the earth is not a sphere. Quoting from the article:

The earth has an equatorial bulge, … It is flattened at the poles. It is an "oblate spheroid" rather than a sphere. This means that the various diameters of the earth differ in length. The longest diameters are any of those that stretch from one point on the equator to an opposite point on the equator. This "equatorial diameter" is 12,755 kilometers (7,927 miles). The shortest diameter is from the North Pole to the South Pole and this "polar diameter" is 12,711 kilometers (7,900 miles).

Arithmetic

The article gives some simple math examples. We want students to memorize that 2 + 2 = 4. However, other answers are possible.

Suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an integer. You'd be right, wouldn't you? Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an even integer. You'd be righter. Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = 3.999. Wouldn't you be nearly right?

If the teacher wants 4 for an answer and won't distinguish between the various wrongs, doesn't that set an unnecessary limit to understanding?

This example reminds me of the fun I used to have in making up handheld calculator examples. On my 8-digit calculator, 1/3 = .3333333. So, (1/3) x 3  = .9999999. Somewhat similarly, 2/3 = .6666666. So, (2/3) x 3 = 1.9999998.

You know, of course, that the mean (average) of two different numbers lies midway between the two numbers. However, the peculiarities of calculator arithmetic produce the result (5.0000001 + 5.000003)/2 = 5. The calculator-produced mean is smaller than the two numbers.