Ah, Discordia!

Stephen King used this phrase to reference the downfall of a kingdom-the Camelot of his world- being the JFK assassination. Borrowing from the King, I feel akin to the faceless politician, who yearns in his youth for a better world, devoid of the ruling corporations and Party's and soft money and lobbyists, who wants to make the cliched "difference".; who struggles to gain a position sufficient with power allowing for such change; yet in striving to attain the seat, he must compromise his ethics along the way, makes deals and compromises to get mention, sponsored, nominated. As he reaches his summit, he surrenders the reason, the impetus that drove him; and now, he cannot cannot change the world; fore the world, in an act of  self-preservation, defends itself. Thus, a new puppet is made.

And so, I prepare to return to school. To listen to lectures. To grunt answers for the lower classes. I fear my research will never be realized. I fear it will become, at its apex, like Paul's speech on Mars Hill at the Temple of the unknown God: though eloquent, it moved the Stoics not. My work is one of reformation. Or perhaps restoration...

We need better teachers!- is the cry. Then, I say:  FIX THE MACHINE. 

Modeling, grouping, hands-on activities, tactile learning, dynamic instruction: none of these were part of the math classroom of the past.

And yet, people learned it. all around the country, the educational world screams, yowls of the need for it. And they do it all whilst lecturing. How hypocritical of them! to publish findings not to be used in the higher systems.





Were it true, were it relevant, and were it in fact integratable, I posit that every generation of teacher would become, as it were like each new model of computer: better equipped, faster, easier to adapt, more prepared than any educators in the field save the bravest who pioneer these idea's. instead what do we get?

Scared, timid people, untrained, malnourished in the ways of people, most completely unprepared for disciplining and coaching. And what do they get? Pupils who come under-educated, severely objectified, undisciplined, frustrated, and lacking any kind of academic confidence that they can perform the tasks that have been, and will be set before them.

The teachers bray for better pay. Yet I would sacrifice 5 years of pay raises for students who would come to school:

1. Nourished
2. Proved to be On-level
3. Trained to follow instruction
4. Held responsible for their own education 

I would stay after the clock to create for such youngsters projects that were meaningful to their lives, work with companies to employ their math skills through the school, publish and blog with these students articles about best practices, gifted teachers to feature. But our new teachers aren't given these tools of creativity. And they need them years before they hit their first classroom. They need OJT [on-the-job Training] through internships, mentorings, tutoring, from Year 2 on. They need challenges for when they leave for the summer, teams to collaborate with, projects to test with experienced teachers, who can critique and add and publish with them their new idea's in real-time, and then use them in their own classrooms. Why isn't this happening nation-wide? It will cost little more than coffee's and breakfasts, a host of universities [who are bored in the summertime most places], and some leg-work. It could be done. It must be done.

A-Wishing for Graduate School [School for Superman]

Teaching isn't so bad. Then again- neither is dying. You get the hang of that too after you've done it. And, just like death, there's really no going back for some people. Most people. And trying to make a return to the academic world seems in some ways, almost superfluous. By now, one realizes that most of the research done these days is comparable to the perceived art scene: elitist, obscure, and done more for the subject's sake than for a less-than-gracious society. Art for art's sake. and it would seem - publishing about Mathematics for publishing's sake.

Very little effect is had upon the world by the sheer mass of published works in the ranging magazines and periodicals. Who's applying these in the actual classroom? Real teachers? -Hardly. They have little time to sift through the remains that was someone's dissertation- its glory flown the coop as soon as there were feather-pages enough to lift it; it then fluttering to a cozy perch  [read: University post] or lesser murder as some adjunct staff somewhere.
We're glad you were inspired with brilliance to defend a pseudo-Fibonacci page-turner that kept your enamored professor's bill for sleeping medications blissfully low; and that you've now convinced the hooded demi-gods to make a place for you somewhere near the bottom of the rotunda  rendered their Valhalla.

Meanwhile, the rest of humanity will see little to nothing of your provocative treatise which detailed the patterns of undergrads on their first day of class and why it has significant meaning to both scholar and layman alike. And they shall be about as impacted by its message.

Forgive a sarcastic pragmatist, but such purposely impotent creations are mostly self-serving rubbish, and yet more likely to be validated than the brief, direct idea's of the  non-commissioned-officer, hailing the academic world from the trenches. So much for the man in the arena's credit; the laurel always falls on the head of the Connected, the Networked. Suppose someone's done an analysis of college classroom instruction, and made a point of reforming it? All lecture, little activity, other than scribbling furiously for 40 minutes, give or take the odd five for turning board-to-class for a sweep of intrigue, then back to the lectern, and the perceived evergreen rhetoric. business as usual.

I say, if you want good teachers - hail and hearty, creative, innovative, loyal, ethical teachers - then by God, someone's going to have to model it. For 4 years. Is it likely? I do hope so...