Count the Dots!

Posted on 16 January 2013 by RobertLovesPi

I’ll be nice, and not name names, but there was a time, when I taught at another school, when I had in-school suspension for half a day, every school day, for an entire semester. It sucked.

There was a senior in this high-school version of, well, jail, who was working on Geometry homework. I was trying to help him — and to get him to think for himself. (I’m always trying crazy stuff like that.)

To do the problem he was working on, he had to know what three times eight equals. He was 18, or perhaps 19, and a senior. I was not willing to simply tell him the product of three and eight, because . . . that’s just ridiculous.

I told him to draw a row of eight dots on his paper. He did. I told him to draw another such row beside the first row. He did. I told him, finally, to add a third row. He did, and gave me an utterly blank look.

I said, “Now count the dots.” He did.

Even though he got the correct answer, he was still furious at me for, well, possibly the rest of his life, which may or may not still be going on. We haven’t kept in touch.

On “Mediocracy”

Posted on 16 January 2013 by RobertLovesPi

I have actually heard two different high school principals say, to assembled students in one case, and a faculty meeting in the other, that “mediocracy” was not acceptable, nor what we should want as a school, from our students, blah blah blah. Use a non-word like that, and you’ve lost me as a listener, possibly permanently.

Clearly, the fact that two different principals (neither at my current school, by the way) in central Arkansas did this same SNAFU means it is likely that someone nearby is teaching this to people, spreading the idea to replace “mediocrity” (a perfectly good word) with “mediocracy.” They’re probably doing this at a nearby teacher school, er, I mean, “College of Education.”

This got me wondering about possible definitions for “mediocracy.” One comes to mind very quickly, and that is a system of government: rule by the mediocre.

Oh, wait, we have that already, and have had it for as long as I can remember. I guess we are willing to accept mediocracy, at the federal, state, and local levels, and in all branches of government.

Sigh.