Tycho Brahe

Summer school is fast coming to a close. It is sad to say good-bye to the students who made it the best job I have ever had.

Today I had four students. Tomorrow I will have two.

We are supposed to give some sort of musical performance at the closing ceremony. But with only two students, what can you do? I was thinking of a spoken-word performance of one of Bukowski’s poems, but there are small kids in the audience. And their parents with video-cameras.

That’s teaching nowadays. Kids have video-cameras in their phones. Today at the end of the lesson, the students asked me, “how do we KNOW that the Earth’s axial tilt is 23 degrees?" I explained the story of Tycho Brahe and his measurements. Then I noticed a student was filming me.

“What are you doing?!” I shouted. “Turn that video-camera off!”

“But it was so funny!” she explained, “your hand was moving up and down,” and she re-created my explanation of Tycho Brahe’s map of the stars.

If you’re a teacher these days, beware. The students are photographing you, maybe video-ing you.

Supposedly, there’s a website where Korean students have uploaded videos of their teachers beating them.

It’s called, “Korean teachers spanking girls” or something like that.

I dare not google it.