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The level of math and/or tech understanding in the French political "elite" is abysmal. These people graduated high school, and went on to college without doing
by bambax 2y ago
The level of math and/or tech understanding in the French political "elite" is abysmal. These people graduated high school, and went on to college without doing any math AT ALL after 10th grade ("seconde"), and probably sucked at math even then.
And they have nothing but contempt for the people who do understand those issues ("les techniciens").
- palsecam 2y agoVladimir Arnol’d (the famous Russian mathematician) touches on that subject in his essay « Sur l’éducation mathématique » <https://smf.emath.fr/system/files/filepdf/Gaz-78-Arnold.pdf https://smf.emath.fr/system/files/filepdf/Gaz-78-Arnold.pdf> (in French; Arnol’d also taught in France). According to him, mathematical teaching has become overly abstract, leading to students being disgusted by maths, seeing it as disconnected from reality. Some of these students then end up being ministers… Original quote: « Comme de telles mathématiques scolastiques, séparées de la physique, ne sont adaptées ni à l’enseignement, ni à aucune application éventuelle à d’autres sciences, les mathématiciens se sont fait haïr des lycéens (dont certains ensuite sont devenus ministres) et des utilisateurs. »
- mariusor 2y agoI think most of the people in the "making decisions" business don't really care about how or even if something is possible, they leave it as an exercise in compliance for the "boffins" and "les techniciens".
- buybackoff 2y agoFrance has great engineering tradition. One of the left leaders is PhD in math. As I mentioned, multiple comments by members of National Assembly were quite educated. The problem is with key politicians having perverse incentives and misrepresenting bad things to the less educated public.