08-09-2022, 06:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-09-2022, 06:45 PM by Eric the Green.)
An enlightening post about an enlightened math teacher:
A post on facebook by Kent Weissinger
A friend who is a retired math teacher warns:
My work was never boring… being a math teacher for college students was always an adventure. Most of them believed that math was hard (because they had had terrible teachers before), and it was entertaining trying to show them how easy math is if you look at it the right way. It’s all just patterns. Math uses patterns to answer three very specific kinds of questions: 1) what’s going to happen next (a question about results), 2) why did this happen (a question about causes), and 3) how can I take what I have and get what I want (a question about processes and planning).
It was great fun watching what happened when students actually figured it out. It was like the lights in their mind came on and they saw things clearly for the first time. That why I became a math teacher. I believe that, when people learn to think clearly for themselves, the world will be a better place.
There are people who don’t want that to happen. I used to tell my students… “There will always be people who will volunteer to do your thinking for you if you let them. Those people seldom want to do what’s best for you. They want to do what’s best for them. They are not to be trusted and must not be allowed to make your decisions for you.” A great many of those people are leaders in government and religion.
One of the biggest problems in a “democracy” is that people elect those that think the way they do. They want to be able to understand their leaders, to have leaders that think the same way they do. In the US, it’s called being “a man of the people”. Uneducated people don’t want an educated person in office. Educated people often have “radical” ideas. Stupid people don’t elect smart people. Stupid people elect stupid people to office, because they are not threatened by them. Stupid people like to be comfortable in their stupidity, not confronted and challenged with new ideas.
That’s why Trump is still so popular in America. His supporters think that he’s just like them. He lies, cheats, womanizes, abuses people, mocks people who are different, and gets away with it. He’s intolerant and bigoted. He hates the same people his supporters hate. He resents progress and equality. He has become rich and famous, and his supporters think that they could do that, too. With him in charge, they believe that we could go back to The Good Old Days of the 1950’s, when it was okay to call black people niggers and keep them “in their place”, when women were there to serve men and never complain, when gays were ashamed and hiding in their closets, when white Christian males made the rules that everyone had to live by.
And teaching people to think for themselves, to reason, to think things through, to make decisions based on facts and evidence, could prevent all that. The current governor of the state of Florida says that math should not be used to help people think better. Math should stick to adding and subtracting and leave reasoning and social issues out of the classroom. He may very well be the next president of the US. That terrifies me… he actually much more dangerous than Trump, because he’s smarter and younger.
I guess the future is coming… we need to be ready.
A post on facebook by Kent Weissinger
A friend who is a retired math teacher warns:
My work was never boring… being a math teacher for college students was always an adventure. Most of them believed that math was hard (because they had had terrible teachers before), and it was entertaining trying to show them how easy math is if you look at it the right way. It’s all just patterns. Math uses patterns to answer three very specific kinds of questions: 1) what’s going to happen next (a question about results), 2) why did this happen (a question about causes), and 3) how can I take what I have and get what I want (a question about processes and planning).
It was great fun watching what happened when students actually figured it out. It was like the lights in their mind came on and they saw things clearly for the first time. That why I became a math teacher. I believe that, when people learn to think clearly for themselves, the world will be a better place.
There are people who don’t want that to happen. I used to tell my students… “There will always be people who will volunteer to do your thinking for you if you let them. Those people seldom want to do what’s best for you. They want to do what’s best for them. They are not to be trusted and must not be allowed to make your decisions for you.” A great many of those people are leaders in government and religion.
One of the biggest problems in a “democracy” is that people elect those that think the way they do. They want to be able to understand their leaders, to have leaders that think the same way they do. In the US, it’s called being “a man of the people”. Uneducated people don’t want an educated person in office. Educated people often have “radical” ideas. Stupid people don’t elect smart people. Stupid people elect stupid people to office, because they are not threatened by them. Stupid people like to be comfortable in their stupidity, not confronted and challenged with new ideas.
That’s why Trump is still so popular in America. His supporters think that he’s just like them. He lies, cheats, womanizes, abuses people, mocks people who are different, and gets away with it. He’s intolerant and bigoted. He hates the same people his supporters hate. He resents progress and equality. He has become rich and famous, and his supporters think that they could do that, too. With him in charge, they believe that we could go back to The Good Old Days of the 1950’s, when it was okay to call black people niggers and keep them “in their place”, when women were there to serve men and never complain, when gays were ashamed and hiding in their closets, when white Christian males made the rules that everyone had to live by.
And teaching people to think for themselves, to reason, to think things through, to make decisions based on facts and evidence, could prevent all that. The current governor of the state of Florida says that math should not be used to help people think better. Math should stick to adding and subtracting and leave reasoning and social issues out of the classroom. He may very well be the next president of the US. That terrifies me… he actually much more dangerous than Trump, because he’s smarter and younger.
I guess the future is coming… we need to be ready.