Author Archives: sydlogsdon

Raven’s Run 144

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Road and train were briefly parallel here and ahead on the footpath was a familiar figure. I leaned out to look closer and the train turned away so that I had to rush to the opposite window.

It was Raven, alone, walking slowly downhill.

I bolted for the door. The train was moving swiftly now, on this brief bit of level ground. The wind snatched at the door as I threw it open. Fence posts were snapping by thirty feet away and the train had taken another turn away from the footpath, bearing toward the opposite side of the valley. Stone rip rap clothed the slope of the railroad bed; jagged, bowling ball sized chunks of Norwegian granite. I could not land on those and survive. Ahead I could see a spot where the sward came right up to the tracks. Behind me were the excited voices of the other passengers as they realized what I was about to do.

A hand caught at my shoulder and I slammed it against the frame of the door with a violent sideways motion of my body. The hand withdrew and I dived forward, twisting to take the fall rolling.

The train receded into the distance, never slowing its stately pace. There were heads stuck out of the windows looking back. I waved to them as the train passed out of sight, spat out grass and mud, and stood up. Everything still seemed connected and working. The Tokarev was still in place.

The train had carried me a half mile from the footpath before I could jump. Susyn and her new man were just passing the place where the train track and path had diverged. They did not see me, which was good. With only three bullets, stealth was in order. 

By the time I got back to the path they were half a mile ahead of me and they had seen Raven. Susyn was gesturing ahead. Her new man nodded, then looked around and saw me, but gave no sign of recognition. There was no reason that he should know me. Yet.

They hurried ahead, and I hurried to follow. 

Could I get Susyn to back off? None of her original reasons for attacking still existed, but James had died. However ill and foolishly begun, this confrontation could not simply end. There had been too much fear, too much betrayal, and too much blood.

Raven turned around with her hands on her hips and her head cocked back, staring up at the moss green ascendancy of the fjord walls. And froze in that gesture as she saw Susyn and her man purposefully advancing on her. She spun on her heels and ran.

They ran after her. I ran after them. more tomorrow

349. Master Basho’s Dojo (1)

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What! You haven’t downloaded Cyan yet? It’s been available for weeks.

OK, I understand. You want one last tease. Since you insist, here is Keir, on Earth, looking for his friend and crew mate Uke Tomiki after he has disappeared.

Keir took the jumper to the San Jose airport, and the Rapitrans to within ten blocks of Uke’s dojo. It was not actually in San Francisco, but south fifty kilometers in the hills overlooking Santa Cruz. Until fifty years ago, the hills had been covered with redwoods, but not even the most stringent conservation measures could stand against the urban guerrillas who slipped in at night to chop away at their half meter thick bark. In twenty years of nightly battering, the trees had died one by one, and as each one fell, shacks took its place. Now the forest of giants had given way to a forest of slum housing, growing like mushrooms on the bones of the ancient trees.

Keir found his way through the roadless maze of polyfoam, packing crates, cardboard, and stucco, with starving children staring like beasts from the darkened holes that passed for doorways.

The dojo was built of grey wood, laboriously split and sawed from the bodies of the downed giants. Three living redwoods remained, towering above the rubble, protecting the dojo from the sun, and in turn being protected by the ones who lived there. The dojo was a low, open building. Some of the inner parts were protected from sight by moveable screens. A stern young woman with a staff stood in the doorway, and made him wait while she sent word of his coming to those inside.

A young boy led him inside. Keir wondered if he was there to seek enlightenment, or food.

He was met by a wizened old man with sparse black hair and a wispy goatee, who was not quite the cliché Keir had expected, but close. They bowed slightly to each other, and Keir said, “I have come to see Uke Tomiki.”

“I have been expecting you.”

Keir raised an eyebrow and the old man’s face broke into a smile. “No,” he said, “it is not mysticism. I had not been expecting you, personally, but it was clear that eventually one of Uke’s friends would come for him. He is not the kind of man the world leaves in peace for long. A dojo such as this could never be his home; only a brief resting place. I will take you to him.”

The little man led Keir beyond the screens. There, a dozen men and women of various ages sat zazen, in two rows, facing an altar covered with flowers. Uke was third from the left in the back row, and he did not notice them when they came in. Keir looked at the old man, but got no help. He was simply waiting to see what Keir would do.

Uke had taught them all the pose of zen meditation, so Keir knelt quietly at the side of the room, mimicking their stance, but he did not attempt to meditate. He simply waited, watching the ones who were meditating. The old man considered him for a moment longer, then left quietly.

An hour passed. These people did not chant, so the only sound was the buzzing of flies and the distant, indecipherable sound of voices in the slum beyond the dojo. At first Keir considered Uke in his new surroundings, then he reviewed the work he had to do for the remainder of the week. It would take months of perseverance to achieve the no-mind state these people were searching for. You couldn’t just step in off the street and meditate successfully, so Keir did not attempt it.

Eventually, the old man came back and struck a gong. The meditators opened their eyes, shook their heads and began to swim back up to the world they had temporarily left. Keir was watching Uke when he stood and became aware of Keir. At first he seemed still off in that dreamy place, but suddenly his eyes cleared and a smile came to his face. He crossed the room, hand outstretched, and at the last moment, changed his mind and embraced Keir, saying, “My God, how I have missed you.”

To be completed in tomorrow’s post.

Raven’s Run 143

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The scenery was glorious. Huge waterfalls tumbled down either side of the valley. Once we dropped away from Myrdal, the grass in the sheltered fjord was heavy and green. The train groaned and clattered against its brakes on the steep grade. There was a switchback trail that paralleled the tracks. Hikers coming up from below were moving slowly, sweating, and ignoring the train. Those strolling down from Myrdol waved as we passed them. The train passengers waved back.

I watched the hikers faces, looking for Raven, or Susyn, or Alan. The train plunged into a tunnel of willows and the footpath turned away from the track. There were no familiar faces on board the coach. Of course Susyn could have recruited more help, and I wouldn’t know them. With a sudden change of light, the train burst out from the willow screen. The sun was low in the western sky, just above the rim of the fjord, bathing the valley with warm, golden light. I could see the footpath again, but no one there was familiar. Path and train track converged and the train rumbled across a grade crossing, then rolled westward across the valley. The path continued eastward out of sight.

I moved into the next coach. Most of the windows were open. Tourists were hanging out, taking pictures. The wind tugged at my windbreaker. I put my hands in my pockets to keep it from riding up and revealing the Tokarev stuck in the waistband at the small of my back.

The train ground to a halt. Here, the melting snow pack had produced a powerful waterfall that fell almost onto the tracks. Everyone on board piled out and there was much posing and picture taking. I wandered around and got a look at the rest of the passengers. The train whistle blew and everyone got back on. The various waterfall fed streams had come together to form a narrow, rapid river. The train passed over it, and over the footpath. This happened several more times, and each time there were hikers to look at. Sometimes the footpath was on one side of the valley and the train was on the other, then the reverse. Sometimes the footpath and the train were side by side for a stretch.

We were over half way through the descent to the sea when I saw Susyn, walking down with someone I did not know. He had dark hair and skin. Latino or Levantine? I had only a glimpse before we were past and a turn cut them off, but I knew with an absolute certainty that it was her.

Should I stop them and reason with her? I should not. Even if Cameron Davis could call her off, I couldn’t. They would only look upon me as a target of opportunity, and I was in no position to win a fire fight. I didn’t have enough bullets, and I wasn’t sure that Senator Cabral had enough clout to keep me out of a Norwegian prison.

And even if I convinced her, where was Alan? more tomorrow

348. Spring

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        Friday was Cinco de Mayo. Since I don’t post on Friday, I have placed this note here.
        Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick’s Day are opposite sides of the same coin, as I explained in 115. St. Patrick’s Day with Juan O’Malley, last year. I also had something to say about racial identity in 144. Who Said You Were Mexican?, on Cinco de Mayo, a year ago today. I don’t want to repeat those posts, but you are welcome to click and visit.

Now, today’s post, beginning with a quote from Cyan:

For the colonists, the world that loomed beyond the perimeter fence was a fearsome enemy. Cyan’s climate aggravated the problem. The colony was situated in the region of spring — or autumn, depending on your psychological makeup. But it was neither spring nor autumn, and as the year wore on there grew up an unhealthy expectancy. Minds and bodies geared to seasonal change had a gene deep awareness that spring had been prolonged past its time — an awareness that slowly changed to a deep, unarticulated dread.

In Cyan, I made a great deal out of the lack of seasons, because seasons are so overwhelmingly important on Earth. Of course, people who were born and lived all their lives in Hawaii or Tahiti probably look at that claim and say, “What the heck is he talking about?” But most of us know.

Here in the foothills of the Sierras, half the year is harsh, brown and dry. The other half is green, and during that rainy seasons wild flowers not only come in profusion, but they also come in order.

First comes miner’s lettuce, with tiny flowers in the center of large, circular leaves. Not impressive as flowers, really, but a life saver for the the vitamin starved miners during the gold rush. Then comes Blue Dick. Now don’t blame me; I didn’t name it, and it is lovely despite its name.

The lupine come early middle and late, in a variety of colors. When my wife and I first came to the foothills, we learned most of the names, but now we mostly just look and enjoy.

What has this to do with writing? It’s the way I choose to live, and the places my characters go are mostly places I wouldn’t mind accompanying them.

Today (April 24) my wife and I drove to one of our many favorite spots. It’s late in the sequence of things, but the white lupine haven’t quite reached their peak.

In New York City today, there are writers inhabiting dim, smoky bars, gathering material for their next novel. More power to them. I couldn’t take it.

For me, I spend my green winter going out twice a week to see how the wildflowers are coming along, and gathering material for my next novel. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Raven’s Run 142

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It was a flat, crude, and ugly automatic, with a five pointed star cast into the rubber handle. It looked like an early Browning, but the markings were not in English. I pulled the magazine and popped out a round. As I had suspected: 7.62 mm. – a metric way of saying .30 caliber. It was a Russian Tokarev. The fast little bullet would penetrate well but it didn’t have the stopping power of a .45, or even of a 9 mm. Back in West Berlin, when I was in the Army, I had shot one a few times and had not been impressed. It was clear that Susyn’s henchman had picked it up on the black market after arriving in Europe.

Worst of all, there were only three rounds. I emptied the magazine and dry fired it, then put it back together. I didn’t trust the safety, so I left the chamber empty. It would only take a second to rack the slide when I needed it.

If I got to Raven before Susyn or Alan.

I tried to put that out of my mind. I went back to my seat and stared at the barren lunar landscape of Norwegian mountains as the train strained its way upward. Soon Raven would be safe. There was no other way to look at it. Soon she would be safe. I set those lyrics to the silent music rattling around in my head, keeping time with the sound of the train. Safe. Soon. The alternative was unthinkable. 

*          *          *

The line from Oslo to Bergen runs over brutal, gray, granite mountains where heavy snow pack stays into July. Well toward the coast, Myrdal is a way station where a secondary line snakes its way precipitously down into a deep fjord to the village of Flam. The scenery on that descent is spectacular, and the run to the bottom is a favorite with knowledgeable tourists. Eric had said that Raven planned to take it, then go on to Bergen.

Myrdal itself was little more than a train station and restaurant. I showed Raven’s picture to the railway officials but hundreds of tourists pass through each day. They did not remember her. I checked my pack and picked up a map. The train down to Flam was powerful and short, with light excursion coaches. There was a trail down as well. Many tourists walked down, then rode the train back up. Few walked both ways.

If Raven had taken the train down and up, she was probably in Bergen already. Take the train down, walk down, go on to Bergen – hard choices. If Ed were here, or Will, or even if I had recruited Eric, then I could leave someone here to watch for her if we missed each other.

Then I cursed myself. I had money – Senator Cabral’s money – so there was no need to act alone. I scanned the faces on the platform and selected a likely looking couple. They were Danish, they spoke English, and they would be glad to earn a hundred American dollars for a couple of hours work. I peeled two fifty dollar traveler’s checks out of my stash and gave them one of the xerox pictures of Raven. I wrote a hurried note to Raven explaining the situation and telling her to stay in the station until I returned.

The little train was groaning and whistling as the conductor hurried the last passengers. It was already moving when I swung aboard. more tomorrow

347. Prenatal Algebra

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I wrote a post some time ago on the subject of No Child Left Behind, without saying one good thing about the program. I know almost nothing about Common Core, since it came on the scene just as I was leaving. When I retired, I retired. I enjoyed my days of teaching, but twenty-seven years was enough.

Without reference to the latest nonsense, I can say as a general and probably universal rule that a lot of BS floats down onto teachers from above. And from whom?

Everyone knows the saying, “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.” Like most sayings, it isn’t always true, but sometimes it feels true. There is another saying that only teachers know. “Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach teachers.” Again, not universally true, but I have known some Professors of Education who fit the aphorism with sad precision. And I’ve seen a lot of self-appointed experts who make the circuit of schools, giving training programs they devised themselves, who could spin out reams of self-evident drivel as if they were conveying the word of God.

It makes you wonder. Could it be that they weren’t fitted by their education to work outside of the schools, but they would do anything to get away from kids? I don’t know. I never knew any of them personally. I can tell you that of the hundred or so trainers I endured while teaching, only one or two had anything worthwhile to say.

I can also tell you that there should be a banner on the State Board of Education building that reads, “If it doesn’t work, do more of it.” They double down on every bad idea.

________________

The French scholar Jean Piaget, studying children back in the 1930s, discovered that there are stages of readiness for learning. If you try to teach a skill before the readiness is there, it won’t take. I can’t say that is a shocking conclusion. What is shocking is that eighty years later the educational establishment is pretending that it isn’t true.

Everyone can learn. Okay, that’s probably true, but an administrator who says it, means this: Everyone can learn everything. And that’s a lie.

Worse, in their actions, in the textbooks they approve and the tests they give, they are really saying: Everyone can learn everything, and all at the same age, on the schedule we set. And that’s just bullshit.

In California about the time I retired, students in eighth grade had to take algebra, whether they were ready or not, whether they could pass or not — whether they would ever be ready or not. But as soon as they were in ninth grade, and presumably a year more advanced, they could opt out of algebra and take something easier.

Read that three times and it still won’t make sense.

The general rule is this: the state assigns a skill to a certain grade. Some kids get it, some don’t. Does the state let the latter group try when they’re older and more mentally developed? No. They say the students lacked readiness, but they don’t mean readiness in the way Piaget meant it. The state thinks readiness can be taught, so teachers have to try.

If students can’t understand algebra in eighth grade, the schools could teach it to those who are ready, and teach another year of more basic math to the others. Fat chance. Instead the state requires pre-algebra of seventh graders so they will be ready for algebra in eighth. And when that doesn’t work? Let’s try pre-pre-algebra in sixth grade? Where will it end — with expectant mothers sleeping with opened algebra books on their baby bumps?

Read that three times. No, read it 4(2N+3) where N=9 times. It still won’t make sense.

Like it says in the title, get ready for prenatal algebra.

________________

All right, if any of you are young and want to change the world by becoming teachers, more power to you. You are needed.

But first, buy yourself a big pair of hip boots. It’s a swamp out there.

Raven’s Run 141

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I had seen that look before. Not often, thank God, but you don’t forget what someone looks like the moment he is about to kill you.

When I saw his eyes, my hands were already at his chest. I slid them in, drove my fingers into his armpits and my thumbs into his chest, where the pecs run under the deltoids, pinching like I wanted to tear his armpits out. His face went gray with pain and I slammed my forehead into his nose. Then I threw him off and scrambled back. He was holding a knife, but his fingers had gone lax. I jerked it free and threw it down the alley.

A couple of tourists went scurrying by, looking carefully away. No one else was in sight.

I caught him in the armpits again and jerked him to his feet.  I threw him toward the back of the alley and followed him in.

He threw a looping right. I took it, knocked him down, then grabbed him again. There was a cross alley, just a ten foot square brick alcove, out of sight of the street. I threw him back into it.

He staggered up, and I slammed him back against the bricks. I put my forearm across his throat and said, “Where is she?”

“Who?” he sputtered.

“Susyn Davis. The one who hired you.”

“I don’t know, man!”

“I don’t know, man! With that God damned California accent. She brought you with her. Listen, you little bastard, you’d better talk quick or you’ll wish you were back in California.”

“I don’t know nothin’.”

“Not good enough!” I hit him in the ribs. Some broke. “You’d better talk quick or you’ll never live to get back to California.”

He spat in my face. I broke some more ribs. His eyes rolled back into his head and for a moment I thought I’d lost him. Then he swam back up to consciousness and I was still there, staring into his face like a vision of his own death. I said, “Where is she?”

“Murtle. Maidol. Something like that. I didn’t catch the name real good.”

“What were you supposed to do?”

He looked at me with his last ounce of defiance and said, “Kill you! She wants you dead.” Then his body turned to rubber.

I eased him down. He was badly hurt. Broken nose, broken ribs, internal damage. I had been well and truly pissed. I shook my head, and said, “It runs in the family.”

**********

Well and truly. Hemingway said those words first and often, and now every male author has to use them, in homage or in defiance. Well, here’s my version.

**********

Chapter Thirty-seven

A train for Bergen left the station at 1343. I made it by minutes.  A train had left at 0813, and another at 1131. Raven would have taken the first one. Susyn or Alan – or both – had probably been on the other.

I waited until the train was well on its way, then made my way to the toilet. Susyn’s henchman had had a gun stuffed inside his shirt, but he had never had time to get it out. I needed privacy to examine it. more tomorrow

346. Science, just for fun

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rat-hereTeaching should be fun for teacher and student alike. That’s my perspective, but I have to admit that I had it easy on that front because I taught science. Science is full of falling things, and flying things, and squishy things, and stinky things. If I had to teach English, or social studies, or math, I would certainly have a different view of how much fun teaching is.

Here is an example. CH4 is the formula for methane gas. Teaching chemical formulas could get a little obscure and uninteresting if you let it, but there are always “interesting facts” that you can throw in to help keep things rolling. For instance, methane is what comes out of the gas pipes that you cook with if you live in a city. It’s also what comes out of cows and ends up in the news as a bovine generated greenhouse gas. If you leave a stove on without lighting it, you smell it, but methane is odorless. How does this happen? The gas company puts a chemical in with the methane that stinks when fresh, but burns up without stinking if a fire is lit.

This is the point when some wiseacre will say, “If methane is odorless, why do farts stink?”

And you can answer with a straight face, “Well, if you consider where they come from, and what the gasses have to push their way through, and the little particles they are carrying with them . . .”

If you can’t make science fun, you probably shouldn’t be teaching it.

One of the things that come up in middle school science is the conservation of matter. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, except in nuclear reactions; it just changes form. Methane gas combines with oxygen to create carbon dioxide and water. You know the equation, and you’ve probably had to balance it. My students had to do it, too. You have to do the work if you are going to learn.

But there is nothing wrong with spicing things up occasionally with an illustrative story. Even Jesus used parables.

Consider the story of Billy, who never believed what he was told.

I would begin this story with a drawing on the board like the one at the top of this post, except that there would be a cartoon of a dead rat, on its back, where the word “rat” is.

The story begins — When Billy came into science class one day, his teacher had put a dead rat on a scale and covered it with a bell jar. The scale read 7262.5 grams, the weight of the bell jar plus the rat. Billy’s teacher said, “This is part of a two week long experiment. Don’t touch the setup.” Then he taught something else.

The next day, things didn’t change. After the third day, the rat had started to swell up. (I didn’t take two weeks for this. The whole story took about fifteen minutes. At this point I erased and redrew the rat with a distended belly.)

By Friday, the rat was huge, and it was all Billy could do to keep from lifting the bell jar and poking it. But he didn’t. Even though the rat was huge, the scale still said 7262.5 grams.

Over the weekend, the rat blew up. When Billy came in on Monday, there was nothing left but a skeleton wrapped in a busted skin, with a few oozing guts. The air around the rat was kind of brown and the scale still said 7262.5 grams

(At this point I had redrawn the rat to match the description. This was also the point when I elicited from my students just what was happening and why the scale still read the same.)

Billy just didn’t get it. He couldn’t understand why the scale stayed the same when the rat was reduced to almost nothing. His teacher had explained that the rat’s mass had been converted to gasses which were trapped in the bell jar. Since the gasses could not escape, the scale had no reason to change.

Billy didn’t believe it. It had to be a trick. While his teacher was across the room, helping one of his fellow students, Billy slipped up to the teacher’s desk, took hold of the bell jar, tipped it back . . .

There was a pop and a hiss as the bell jar came unstuck. The scale dropped to 6571.3 grams. The students in the room screamed, leaped up holding their noses and yelling at Billy, and ran for the back of the room . . .

You get the point. They got the point. And we had a lot of fun besides.

Raven’s Run 140

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Eric was there, opening up his instrument case. Raven was nowhere in sight.

When I walked up, he looked puzzled. He knew he should know me, but I was out of context. I said, “Where is Raven?”

Then he remembered. “You are – Gunn. What is your first name?”

“Ian.”

“Why is it you want to know?”

“I have been looking for her since the two of you took off. She is in danger. You ought to know that much. She certainly told you some of what happened.”

He nodded.

“I know some things now that she needs to know, in order to find safety. I need to talk to her.”

“You want her back?”

His accent gave him a kind of lisp. I had noticed in Paris how it added to his air of boyish innocence. It had irritated the hell out of me at the time. It still did.

“Of course, I want her back. Who wouldn’t? But that isn’t what this is about.”

“Isn’t it?”

That was a good question, but not a timely one.

“Let Raven decide who she goes with. She will anyway. What you or I want doesn’t have a damned thing to do with it.”

“This is true. Gud, is this true.”

He took up his fiddle and bow, struck a chord, and adjusted a tuning peg. I gave him time to decide. As long as he decided right. Otherwise, I was out of patience with this blonde, good looking – pasty boy. Daniel Cabral’s phrase was so right for the Erics of this world.

He lowered his instrument and said, “She left early this morning. She wanted to stop at Myrdal and ride the train down to see the fjord, then go on to Bergen for the night.”

“Without you?”

Eric looked at me with pain. “Without me,” he said, “and soon everything she does will be without me. I can see the preparation for her leaving every time I look in her eyes.”

I said, “I know the feeling.”

*          *          *

I was in a rush. It isn’t an excuse, just a fact. I knew that Cameron Davis wanted me dead, but he was half a world away. I knew Susyn was here in Europe and wanted Raven dead.

I forgot she wanted me dead, too.

I had left Eric to his music and started back toward the train station. So far I had seen about four blocks of Oslo and it looked like that would be all I would get to see. I didn’t want to miss the next train, so I was walking fast and thinking about running.

What I ran into was trouble.

It was neatly done. I was rushing, so he turned in front of me and it looked like my fault. We stumbled over each other and in the confusion he pushed my off shoulder and sent me down on my back in a narrow alley behind some trash cans. He came down on top of me. I automatically reached up to break his fall, embarrassed by my own clumsiness. Then I saw the look in his eyes. more tomorrow

345. Do You Measure Up?

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if-youI keep an eye on who reads this blog. Most of the people who like or follow are young, at least from my viewpoint.

I know that most of you aren’t teachers, aren’t in school (unless it’s college), and don’t have kids in school yet. I also know that most of my own friends, including my teacher friends, are uncomfortable with math or with measurement, and many aren’t comfortable with either. That’s really too bad, because they’re useful and fun. Honest.

Math isn’t that hard, if you approach it right. Truly.

What’s the secret? I’ll tell you further down the post.

Even those who are good at one kind of math are likely to come up short when faced with a different kind. Give a carpenter a problem in double entry bookkeeping and he would probably be lost. Ask an accountant to solve . . .

                5 feet  1 1/8 inches   minus   2 feet  3  7/16 inches

. . . and he probably wouldn’t know where to start, while carpenters do this kind of math a hundred times a day. Or they use workarounds. A carpenter might walk up to an eight foot 2 x 4, mark out 5 feet  1 1/8 inches with his tape measure, then mark out 2 feet  3  7/16 inches from the same starting point, then measure between the two marks he just made. 2 feet  9  11/16 inches. Easy, and no logarithms were injured in the making of this “calculation”.

Ask a math teacher to hand you a piece of five-quarter lumber and he will probably just stare at you.

Ask an auto mechanic why he glanced at a nut, picked up a 9/16 inch wrench, and knew it would fit. Answer: because he has a solid visual knowledge of sizes from doing the same chore ten-thousand times.

I took math through college calculus and I’m a pretty good craftsman. I’ve built furniture and musical instruments, both of which require accurate measurement. I’ve taught math now and again for three decades. But I couldn’t calculate an elliptical orbit and I couldn’t balance the books on a hot dog stand.

That secret I told you about? Here it is — everybody needs math, but not everybody needs the same math. And not everybody needs the same amount of math.

It is as pointless to teach an auto mechanic or a home-ec teacher calculus (unless they just like math and want it for their own interest) as it would be to teach a NASA scientist that 2-9-3+ means two feet, nine inches, 3/8 inches, and an unspecified little bit more, to a traditional boat builder.

————————–

Math teaching is often excellent, but it works under the burden of a basic error. The march from simpler to more complex math in our schools moves at a pace that only the brightest can manage, and aims toward reaches of higher math that only a small percentage could master or will ever use.

If you put the truth of this ambition on a bumper sticker, it would read:

Everybody needs to be a nuclear scientist,
and if you can’t cut the math,
you aren’t trying hard enough.

Both of these assertions are untrue, but they rule our math programs. I saw this all the time as I taught science. My students could not confidently and accurately add, subtract, multiply, or divide, even though they were — by state law — all enrolled in eighth grade algebra.

Their math teachers were not allowed to help them. They were required — again, by state law — to teach at grade level. That is, to teach algebra only.

They were not allowed to remediate. If they did, they were scolded by those who came in to evaluate our school.

I remediated, in science class, where the proctors of compliance would never know. Some years my student’s skill levels were so low that I actually spent several weeks teaching the processes, mostly long division, as I would have taught a math class. Most years, however, my math teaching was science in disguise; or was my science teaching math in disguise?

Were my students stupid? No.

Were the math teachers stupid? No.

Were the ones who devised the math plan stupid? ———- It would be so satisfying to say yes, but the opposite is true. They were the overachievers who never misplaced a decimal. They were putting in place a plan they would have done well in, when they were children. But that plan doesn’t work for the other 90% who suffer under it.