Deqi-Arawit wrote: ↑29 May 2020, 16:15
The Man who singlehandedly started the disintegration of Ethiopia ... Let his eminence start with reality check ... in the end of the day, what matter is result, result result... What did the son of the slave Mengistu achieve ... by some narrow minded Ethiopians? Absolutely nothing.
.
.
.
but Mengistu was just a stupid negro to take advantage of this opportunity. Smart vassal states of the Soviet Union mimicked Stalin style industrialization of their country ... Students who enrolled 12th grade during the Derg are ignorant and dumb, they can't even solve basic mathematics. This is the achievement of this dumb negro Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Deqi-Arawit wrote:
Haile Debass, Eritrea;s renown doctor who is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Wolde-Ab Isaac (former Senior research Scientist of the giant pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and many other prominent scientists and technicians are product of Haile Selasie;s Education system and this is a validation and prove that there was something Haile Selasie was doing right to see his products flourish while leadership who came later failed utterly in this regard.
.
.
.
when karl marx and friedrich engels wrote the communist manifesto, they never had an agrarian, heterogeneous, complex and mosaic society deep in Africa in their mind but it was meant for an industrialized or semi industrialized European country.
.
.
.
But Mengistu, killed all the cream of the crop of the Ethiopian society
Deqi-Arawit,
I have just come back to this thread and found out your suggestion that there was something HM was doing right to see his products flourish. This suggestion of yours, which I agree with and tried to defend, comes after you claimed that Colonel Menghistu "singlehandidly" started the disintegration of Ethiopia, after you asserted that he did absolutely nothing, and after you blamed him for his heritage.
A lot can be said about the fallacy of your quoted statements above.
When I reacted to your first post under this thread, I tried to defend the institution that was there even during the time of Colonel Menghistu. You now assert that HM must have been doing something right. That admission alone makes all your other allegations above fallacious.
Once again, my main point here is what HM might have been doing right, especially in spreading education, didn't come to a halt but had continuity even under a militant leadership, however weaker it might have appeared to be over time. You can sample the times when የዕዉቀት ዉይይት outweighed የትግል ዉይይት. There were times when the words ትምህርት and ምሁር used more commonly than ትግል and ጀግና. You don't need to go much farther than sampling the transformation of Ethiopian Review over the years.
Based on my limited reading, the Colonel didn't initiate the ML revolution in Ethiopia. My limited reading suggests that he was brought on board in a popular revolution, including with the student movement that had in its ranks graduates such as the late Dr. Senay Likke.
But when it comes to blaming, you conveniently singled out the Colonel. You falsely reduced the institutions that HM put in place and produced some bright Ethiopian graduates to achieving absolutely nothing. If HM was doing something right to produce bright graduates, they could have turned Addis Ababa University into the Harvard or Oxford University of Africa by building on what HM was doing right, as you belatedly admit.
Initially, you failed to defend those institutions based on objective data. I choose to defend them because there is a trace of Ethiopia's education institution in me and I am sure that I am one of many. I gained much of my education in Ethiopia, most of it during the time of the Colonel. So, you must understand here that I am not trying to defend myself but the institution and institutions, including the educational institution left behind by HM. I am unsure if you were able to say HM was doing something right when about everybody in the country was taking on him in the name of a revolution even when we know in hindsight that he must have been doing something right.
I know both ESLCE and GRE. At the risk of being biased, I have a higher regard for the rigors of ESLCE than GRE. I also know TOEFL and the English language portion of ESLCE. Again, at the risk of being biased, I have a higher regard for the rigors of the English language portion of ESLCE than TOEFL.
I also know Math, including Calculus. The teaching of Math up to and including Math 331, which was probably started during HM, didn't stop during the time of Colonel Menghistu.
I was taught my first Calculus course by a lecturer from your generation, could be your distant relative. This high school graduate during the time of the Colonel was able to show that Math lecturer when he was lost in class how to solve one Calculus problem, in front of all the students in the class. This is all healthy and I have never judged the lecturer for that.
An Indian Professor, a Gohil, once gave a test that needed to be solved by formulating an equation and using it to solve the problem, as an optional question in the test. Only one student tried and solved it correctly, he reported to the class with some passion.
In an American University, only one student who was educated during the time of Colonel Menghistu correctly solved a test question prepared by an American Professor, during his first semester in the American University. His score in the test was by far the highest in the class. Another graduate student who got the second highest score in that test has been a leading member of an American University, which is an achievement that I respect. At least three Ethiopians have earned their Ph.D. Degrees under his mentorship.
Another American Professor, a Houston, brought to a graduate class a simple integration problem to see if that class could do it correctly. The Professor told the class that the class from the previous year was unable to solve it and the Professor said didn't know how to solve it, either. The integration problem was an easy one for those who know something about integration. A student who was educated during the time of the Colonel was quick to tell the Professor the right way to solve it, also during his first year in the American University. The Professor got it. Among a diverse group of students in the class, one correctly guessed that that student may be an Ethiopian and that he expressed how he felt to see the we know it all type of some American professors put to size, he later said in the presence of a mutual friend.
In an Operations Research course in an American University, a famous American Professor, a Montgomery, who has written a popular text book on Statistics, once gave a list of homework problems in an Operations Research text book, which is authored by a Winston. This Ethiopian student noticed an error in one of the problems in the list and went to his office to talk about it. The Professor refused to accept the error in the problem and the student left. Later on during a lecture, the same Professor told his class the error in the problem. The student introvertly said ትዝብት ነዉ ትርፉ and moved on.
Speaking of Operations Research, while you talk about Math as its expert, I can talk to you about one of the best original formulations and solution procedure ever developed in Math. In Operations Research, there is something called Nonlinear Programming. There is also something called Integer Programming. Something else that is called a heuristic search algorithm helps you find a potentially optimum solution for a complex problem that is formulated by combining the two programmings.
In practice, a British Engineer whose academic inclinations I respect once made a minor but a basic formulation error. This former student corrected it by formulating the right equation. Neither the error nor the correction is the point here. The point here is that the two formulations led to a discussion among a diverse group of engineers and the British Engineer refused to accept the correction. Once again was the moment of ትዝብት ነዉ ትርፉ and moving on. But the simple incorrect and correct equations remained unresolved subsequent to the discussion among the diverse group of practicing engineers.
In another case of practice, an Engineer used a correct formula that was different from a formula written in a handbook. Another Engineer saw it and thought that it was erroneous and reported to his boss. The Ethiopian Engineer who didn't know about the existence of the handbook and hence that particular formula checked the correctness of the presented formula by driving it from a scratch. A disagreement followed, potentially because of the reporting, which the Ethiopian Engineer didn't know about at the time, and consequently its implication.
I am unsure if you are bold headed or still have some hair over your head. I understand the local biases where we grew up even as people happily accept names like ገብረ መስቀል፣ ገብረ ግዮርጊስ, and so on. Another goes ገርብ ዲማ ቀበ መሌ ሉጫ ህን ቀቡ። I don't know if the words ሉጫ and lush (lusch in Old English) have any relationship.
However, I know that when you are blaming the Colonel for his heritage instead of his failures and successes, the legend Simone Biles comes to my mind, among many. I wouldn't mind if you are bold headed and she comes to you and shows another spin off it like below to register another world record.