One of our writers is awful at math, and it was painfully obvious in an article he wrote about a survey of donor habits. He kept writing about the differences in percentages as though by themselves they mattered. (I ended up writing comments on the proofs such as "how is a shift from -6.6 percent up to 1 percent 'relatively constant'?" before I realized what his problem was. He had no idea where the numbers started or what was being compared to what.
This guy is a musician, so I asked him what the difference was between 4/4 time and 3/4 time in music. This one didn't work too well; I asked how they sounded different, for example, and he tapped them out on his desk. Wrong question, I suppose. Then I tried to have him imagine sight reading a piece of music. "Start two beats into measure 23," I said. Then I explained, "Unless you know what came before, you're not really going to know what's going on from that point. You don't know how it feels or sounds musically."
A good musician can sight read like that; an excellent musician might actually be able to make it sound beautiful. But I don't know whether even a musical genius can make it artful by jumping into the unknown song two beats into measure 23 -- or wherever.
It's been years since I sat in an academic classroom, so I could be wrong in my supposition. But it seems to me that students give up too easily when it comes to understanding math or science. And perhaps teachers quit on apathetic students. Brains are wired differently from person to person, but can't teachers cut new pathways to understanding, slicing through the underbrush to lead a team of outsiders to discover the otherwise invisible temple of knowledge? I think I need to learn how to teach again.
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