Turns out, this particular fish could climb a tree.
Anyways, here’s a wildly popular quote in education, often attributed to the great Albert Einstein.
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Many educators and critics of education system use this mis-quote in an attempt to prove that every students is different (true), every students learns differently (not so true), and thus the assessment systems should not have a “standard judgment” (terrible idea).
Unfortunately, Einstein never said that. You can find a possible origin of this hilarious statement on this link.
But if you are passionate about education, you might find the following quite interesting - something he did really say.
Source: On Education
If you have followed my meditations upto this point, you will probably wonder about one thing. I have spoken fully about what spirit, according to my opinion, youth should have instructed. But I have said nothing yet about the choice of subjects for instruction, nor about the method of teaching. Should language predominate or the technical education in science?
To this I answer: in my opinion all this is of secondary importance. If a young man has trained his muscles and physical endurance by gymnastics and walking, he will later be fitted for every physical work. This is also analogous to the training of the mind and of the mental and manual skill. Thus, the wit was not wrong who defined education in this way: ”Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” For this reason I am not at all anxious to take sides in the struggle between the followers of the classical philologic-historical education and the education more devoted to natural science.
Don’t single out this one particular sentence “Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school” and start misrepresenting it or distorting it.
Don’t delete the context.
And, here comes the meaty part:
“On the other hand, I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible. Apart from that, it seems to me, moreover, objectionable to treat the individual like a dead tool. The school should always have as its aim that the young man leave it as a harmonious personality, not as a specialist. This in my opinion is true in a certain sense even for technical schools, whose students will devote themselves to a quite definite profession. The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge. If a person masters the fundamentals of his subject and has learned to think and work independently, he will surely find his way and besides will better be able to adapt himself to progress and changes than the person whose training principally consists in the acquiring the detailed knowledge.”
Much to the chagrin of most educationists, Einstein saw school as a formal set up where students master their fundamentals and develop their general skills in thinking and judgment.
But, Einstein did say this:
While the above “fish quote” did smell fishy, the following quote turns out to be real. Einstein did really say this:
But we also know (I hope), without context there’s no meaning. Therefore, let’s dig it.
Check out this full article here but in short, here’s the context:
In 1929, while being interviewed for the Saturday Evening Post by George Sylvester Viereck, the following exchange occurred:
Einstein: “I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.”
Viereck: “Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?”
Einstein: “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
In other words, the first time this quote appeared, it was in the context of Einstein believing that he knew how an experimental/observational result would turn out before it was conducted, on the basis of the previously-established success of his theory. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion, but he chalked up his physical intuition about a yet-to-be-determined measurement to “imagination,” rather than “knowledge,” in response to a leading question from a reporter.
The thing he was imagining was the answer to a specific question in theoretical physics: “How will the light from these distant objects behave and appear when it passes by the totally eclipsed Sun?”
The word “imagination” is doing some heavy lifting in Einstein’s quote, standing in to mean “the predictions of a new theory that I am convinced will be proven to be correct, but that has not been generally accepted by others just yet.”
To Einstein, knowledge is the prerequisite: if you want to speak intelligently about anything, you must know something of value about it. But that sort of knowledge is commonplace, and not all that valuable on its own. What’s far less common is to possess that expert-level knowledge — the sort of thing that anyone can learn with enough hard work — and to do something remarkable with it.
To pretend that “Imagination is more important than knowledge” means “I don’t need to know or accept those pesky, annoying facts; I have my imagination” is to place sparkly decorations atop a rotten intellectual foundation. In order for your imagination to take you to worthwhile places, you need that sturdy foundation of knowledge to build it upon. Otherwise, your intellectual flights-of-fancy might lead you to fantastical places, but any relationship to the real world that we actually inhabit will be purely coincidental in nature.
Educators and educationists: Please read. Please look for the context. Please stop spouting quotes by genius people.