Blog Archives

Don't Forget Education

4/30/2024

The last time I graduated from an institution of higher learning I didn’t. I don’t mean I didn’t get the degree. But I didn’t go to graduation. I had planned to attend. My wife had planned to attend. My mother had planned to attend.

But then graduation was cancelled.

Oh, there was a ceremony. But not a real graduation. Instead, it was morphed into a protest of the Vietnam war.

This followed weeks of disruption by demonstrators against that war. Disruption that included entry into and defacement of the walls of the mathematics building. And many other buildings on campus.

Now, that war was a terrible mistake that killed so many young people before ending in a defeat whose aftermath didn’t yield the disastrous domino tumble predicted by the war mongers.

I am in favor of college students protesting vigorously for whatever cause they feel merits it, but I’m not in favor of violence or destruction.

But the correctness of the protests is not pertinent to my current screed.

By the university caving by altering the emphasis of the graduation, it diminished the years of study of those who worked so hard to earn their degrees. And it denied the pleasure the degree recipients’ loved ones would have received and the validation of all the support they had provided.

These memories have been triggered by what is now transpiring on many college campuses.

As far as I can tell, the protests have been mostly nonviolent and pushing for protection and feeding of those in Gaza. That’s a position that could and is filling column after column and hour after hour of news coverage. I find what is happening in Gaza reprehensible. I also find the October attack by Hamas reprehensible. I applaud those demonstrating on both sides. I do not applaud violence or destruction or verbal or physical attacks on those who disagree. It seems to me that any hateful word or action is a direct violation of the principles the protestors are espousing. How can someone demanding humane treatment for some individuals simultaneously want to deny it to other individuals?

It's scary now for the protestors who are subject to arrest, suspension, or even outright expulsion from school. They don’t need a Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives entering campus and calling for a military response. Was Speaker Johnson motivated by the 1970 sending of the national guard to Kent State? That didn’t work out too well.

There is so much that can and should be said about what is going on now. But I want to return to the less newsworthy point very few are considering. Those who want their university to give them an education and then recognition when that education is completed.

Just as in 1970, that is being threatened. Some institutions have cancelled classes. Others have offered them online. I heard of one university, and I suspect there are others, that is considering not holding graduation.

I don’t know how to simultaneously solve the problems of keeping students (including protestors) safe, continuing to educate all that want it, and giving them the ending ceremony they have earned and represents a tangible recognition of accomplishment.

I would not want to be a college administrator. But then I never did. But they clamored for the job and get well paid for their efforts. I expect them to solve the problems that arise.

And in doing so not sacrifice the reason for the institutions they lead.

0 Comments

A Dog Tail

4/15/2024

0 Comments

This is a story about a dog. Specifically, a dog that has determined that my wife and I are acceptable roommates.

Sometimes dogs do unwise things. Sometimes they are just unlucky. The dog that is the star here first experienced the latter and then the former.

How to put this delicately. He developed a problem on/in his butt, a little way internal to his body. His obvious solution was to lick the area as best he could. Which made the problem worse. Which made the need to lick greater. Which … and so on.

A trip to his doctor was mandatory. The dog associates the doctor’s office with people peering into his mouth and ears, pushing what he assumes are illegal drugs into his body, and violating his personal space.

He hates it.

There is no trouble getting him into the car. I don’t know why. Because almost every time he accepts a ride he egresses from the car at the doctor’s office.

Which he recognized at once.

He refused to enter, until loving persuasion and strong leashing convinced him otherwise.

Inside there was intensive panting and constant movement while we waited for the tech to fetch us.

The dog and I entered an examination room, described his problem, and awaited the doctor. Who cheerfully suggested he follow the tech to the hidden depths of the building, available only to staff and dog.

The dog, after initial resistance, trotted along nicely with the tech, leaving me alone to imagine the worst.

And then it came. Not the worst, but bad enough. The dog was to wear a cone for an unspecified amount of time.

Back home, walks elicited sympathetic comments from neighbors and others, many of whom have been in the same place at one time or another.

Several exclaimed about the “Cone of Sh…” I interrupted and said, “No, that’s not the name of this cone. It can be referred to only as either ‘Cone of Pride,’ or Cone of Strength.’”

The cone has impacted the dog’s life.

Since the cone more than doubles the size of the dog’s head, navigation problems have emerged. He walks familiar paths and bangs into adjoining furniture. Some paths become impassable. Slightly ajar doors that he could open at will now get banged shut as the cone makes contact independent of his nudging nose. He has not mastered the art of backing up so I can let him out of a room. So we reach a stalemate where the cone presses on the door and the door presses on the cone until finally we manage to obtain the dog’s freedom.

There are some plusses. It’s fun to watch him eat or drink. In order to get at the food, he has to stick his mouth directly down covering the dish in the cone’s interior. We have to wait until he emerges to see how much he has eaten. Unfortunately, he uses the same trick when I walk him outside. If there is some delicacy he has spotted that might be worth devouring, he covers it with the cone so I will never know to stop him.

There are times he is immensely cute, lying stomach down, front and back legs stretched to the maximum, head resting on the bottom part of the cone, and looking out with an expression of unlimited love.

And there was the time in bed (yes, he allows us to share) when he came up, lay on his side, and gently rested the cone, with his head inside, on my chest.

I pet him, and his tail wagged enthusiastically. In fact, the little trooper has shared the entire experience by showing his love with his tail.

So this brings us to the end of this dog’s sad tale by taking joy from the wagging of this dog’s loving tail.

0 Comments

The Teacher Shortage

4/11/2024

0 Comments

We have a public-school teacher shortage in Florida, a problem that extends to much of the country.

I hate to see it, because, while I’ve never taught at the pre-college level (I wouldn’t have had the courage or the strength), I’m a great believer in public education from which I and my children all emerged.

There are many reasons for this dearth of teaching talent, most of which have been extensively documented.

An obvious one is inadequate pay. We pay our teachers, you know, those we entrust to educate our children, less than we pay people to build cars or program computers or send rockets to space.

Why?

Well, there’s always the good old supply and demand argument. These other areas get more money because there aren’t enough trained people to do the job. An argument that collapses because of the current teacher shortage. I’ve also heard those other jobs demand a higher level of intelligence and hence deserve more money. After all, the equations that control rocket flight require considerably more mathematical acumen than fourth grade arithmetic. Yes, the math is at a higher level, but how many of those using it could get youngsters to understand fractions?

I’m unwilling to accept all these and most other arguments justifying low teacher pay. I think there are two main reasons why we don’t have enough teachers and they aren’t either of the above.

First, I don’t think there is the respect for the teaching profession that it deserves, and, of course, that mindset means teachers aren’t deserving of high pay. This lack derives from many sources. Believe it or not, many parents don’t show that respect. A terrible example is the ill-named Moms for Liberty nuts. They have no faith that trained and experienced teachers can discuss subjects in class in a nonthreatening manner, or even select age-appropriate books for the tender minds entrusted to them. The Moms stances are more terrible when they are endorsed by the power of government, as they definitely have been in Florida. It seems that legislators and the governor think they know more than teachers. After all, they’ve been to school so, surely, they are education experts. When I was a kid (oh, here we go) parents backed teachers (not with high pay but with support). A teacher could inform a parent of a problem, and action at home cleared it right up.

Second is what I have observed firsthand and relates to an earlier point. When I started to teach a course like calculus in 1970, I observed an interesting fact. While I had very few female students, invariably they were the best students. When I asked them about their major, more often than not they informed me they wanted to be middle or high school mathematics teachers. I felt the future was in good hands. Back then there still existed the notion by many that the only professional jobs for women were teaching, nursing, or secretarial.

Fortunately, that was beginning to change and women began to break into other fields in significant numbers. And that’s the problem. I still had excellent female students in my classes, more and more of them actually, but now when I asked their major the answers were engineering, computer science, physics, and their like. I know several of these students considered going into teaching, and they would have been good at it, but comparing salaries made alternative decisions an easy choice.

I’m afraid the result is the pool of prospective math teachers has been lessoning and growing weaker.

During the latter part of my career, I taught a class on number theory designed for future math teachers. That course is about, drum roll, properties of numbers. It involves proofs, concepts that are fundamental to mathematics. While there were some excellent students in the class, most were weak, and some unbelievably didn’t even like math. One said in a complaining voice that when she taught she wasn’t going to do proofs. I asked how she would handle geometry, at least if it was presented in the right way with proofs. She replied that she wasn’t going to teach geometry. I wondered, but did not ask, how her principal would respond to that stand.
The feeling I had was the set of future mathematics teachers was definitely not as good as it had been 30 years prior. I know several of my students, not education majors, told me they didn’t like math, and I fear that in high school they had been taught it by people who didn’t like math.

We’ve made a big mistake by not honoring the calling to teach and doubled down by providing inadequate pay for the professionals teachers are.

And as we continue in this vein, we will deny students the best education that they otherwise could have had.

But hats off to the teachers who stick it out and work harder than many who earn three times as much.

0 Comments

Don't Forget Education

A Dog Tail

The Teacher Shortage

Author

Archives

Categories