Some years back I was drawn once again to Euler’s identity (e^iπ+1=0), which Richard Feynman called “the most remarkable formula in mathematics.” This remarkable equation has immense beauty – a beauty that a person steeped in Mathematics can appreciate. And as I was working on this post, one of my students forwarded an article on appreciating the identity. I am glad she at least is entering the world of mathematical beauty.

The equation links many aspects of Mathematics in a nice small nugget of truth. The article cited earlier explains this quite well, so I will not repeat. But to appreciate the identify as aesthetically pleasing one must stop asking, “So what is it good for?” or “Where can this be applied?”

The absurdity of such a question is clear if we changed the subject from Euler’s identity to a work of art, say Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. To ask of such a painting, “What is it good for?” is ridiculous and might even border on the perverse. The painting is not ‘good for’ anything! It has no intrinsic utilitarian value.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution at least the purpose of education has been seen primarily in terms of preparing people for jobs and of improving the nation’s economy. Curriculum was changed to closely match what the industry needed. Since, prior to this, there wasn’t anything pervasive on the lines of public education, public education was seen as a boon to the common folk and people felt indebted to the nation, not realizing that they were not being molded into thinkers and creators but workers. So hardly anyone objected to the objectives of public education. What else could it be for but to strengthen a nation’s economy?

But when you do something because someone else needs it, unless you have some deep commitment to that person or institution, the task will seem like drudgery. And drudgery is exactly what modern education has become. Rare is the student who sees the process of education as anything other than primarily a stepping stone to a dream job. Rare is the student who sees the learning process itself as something to take joy in.

But more devastating is the fact that most institutions and educators themselves are so busy preparing students to achieve a ‘qualification’ that they are unable to communicate to students that learning is simply something humans are always doing and that we learn more robustly what we take delight in.

We need to redefine education as a human endeavor of appreciating beauty in whatever disciplines we happen to be studying. We need to recapture wonder at learning about this world and its inhabitants (both human and non-human, flora and fauna). I may be amiss in using the word ‘recapture’ since I doubt there ever was a time when education was designed to be a process filled with wonder.

But at least in earlier centuries, the quantum of knowledge students had to familiarize themselves with was not as onerous as it now is. Today’s bloated syllabuses, filled with sizable portions of irrelevant and prosaic content, do not lend themselves to wonder and inhibit the revelation of beauty in learning.

The task for today’s educators is to prune our syllabuses, ruthlessly excising things that do not foster an appreciation of beauty in our subjects. We need to throw off the millstone of ’employability’ that hangs around our necks right now so that our students can become reacquainted with childlike wonder and acquainted with learning as appreciation of aesthetics.