Rankings

I am beaming with pride.

My 8-year-old, Thun, came home with his report card. He is ranked 3rd out of 31, and he is #1 in mathematics. This is the Thai system. They rank 8-year-olds.

When I went to his school, I saw the rankings prominently displayed outside of the classroom. There's no hiding. Name and ranking, just like the League Tables in soccer, or the Standings in baseball. When I saw his name third, I was proud, but then I realized: the kids at #30 and #31, they've got parents, too!

But what really makes me happy is this: not only do they rank the students; they rank the subjects, too! Thai Language ranks first. Mathematics ranks 2nd. Science and English are tied for third. Art, computers, and religion (surprisingly!) are tied for 5th, and PE comes dead last!!! Why can't our school do that?

Thun's grades in the important subjects are all very good. However, his teacher thinks he's no good at PE, because he likes to play ball instead of listening to the teacher, and he sucks at Art, because instead of drawing a still life, like he's told, his imagination wanders to abstract expressionism!

Our learners are caring!

At the end of a lesson, I often tell the students: “I must now release you back into the wild.”

Once, Tung responded, “Is this a jail?”

“No!” I declared, “Math class is not a jail!”

“Then why are you releasing us?” he asked.

Good question. “I am releasing you back into the wild. Do you watch National Geographic?”

“No,” he said bluntly.

“Releasing you back into the wild means that you have been in my care, like a hurt animal, but now you are strong enough to go back into the cruel world. For example, if an injured bird flies into your house, you take care of it, make it better, and then release it back into the wild.”

“Oh,” he said, “that happened to me once.”

“What—an injured bird flew into your house?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“So, what did you do, did you nurse it back to health and then release it back into the wild?”

“No,” he said, “I killed it.”

“Oh no!” I was shocked. “Why did you kill it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I was young, about 5 years old. I didn’t know what to do.”

“How did you kill it?” I asked, “Did you step on it?” I was hoping that the murder was accidental.

At this point, Nathan chimed in: “Tung snapped its neck!” Nathan imitated the ritual execution of a chicken.

“No,” said Tung, forthrightly. “I didn’t do that. I broke every bone, one by one,” and he proceeded to demonstrate, snapping his wrists: click! click! click!

I was appalled.

“I didn’t know,” he shrugged, “I thought I was helping it.”

Boys and Girls

I like to give hard problems. For example, today I asked the Year 11s to calculate the logarithm, base 27, of 6561, without a calculator.

"How are we supposed to do that without a calculator?" they asked.

I gave them a hint: "it's easy!"

Then Mr. Ross walked in. "Mr. Ross," I asked, "what is the logarithm, base 27, of 6561?"

He turned pink.

Then Mr. Barry walked in. "It's simple!" I screamed. "Mr. Barry, what is the logarithm, base 27, of 6561?"

"Four!" he shouted. WRONG!

"Three!" WRONG!

"You said it was simple," Mr. Barry observed, "so I figured the answer is simple."

Once Mr. Barry started, the boys started shouting out all sorts of silly answers: "SIX! TWO! FIVE! ELEVEN! EIGHT!"

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

The answer is 8/3.

Some people think these problems are too hard, but if there is at least one person in the class who can do it, I don't think so. Later I checked their answers and Erin, Ji-Young and Natsumi all had the right answer.

That's the difference between boys and girls. Boys love to shout out the answers, even though their answers are wrong. Girls prefer to keep quiet, even though their answers are correct.

Multiplication is Marbles

We had the Parent Teacher Conferences last week. Many teachers don’t like PTCs because it’s a long day, but they’re fun for me. I like to see where the students come from (literally, since I’m usually meeting with their Moms). The parents are always nice and thankful, and I usually feel like I have an ally when I meet with them. Like me, most parents are old-fashioned. They don’t understand all these newfangled theories about enquiry, discovery and reflection. Many of them are successful engineers, doctors, or business people who have counted a lot of cash, and they figure, “the way I learned mathematics was good enough for me, so why isn’t it good enough for my child?”

They also think we need more emphasis on basic skills and I agree. For example, one student asked me, “I understand 6x = 18, but how did you get x = 3?”

“It’s called division,” I answered, “you learned it in elementary school.”

“I don’t think we learned that,” she said, but her best friend came to my rescue:

“Yes, we did! Don’t you remember, in Ms. Dearborn’s class?”

“Ohhhhh,” she remembered, “you mean the marbles?”

“No!” chided her friend, “division is beads, multiplication is marbles!”

Exchanging Vowels

I apologize to my regular viewers (both of you) for failing to update the blog.

It’s a new year and there’s not much to report. Same, same but different. There’s a new principal (he’s quite nice, actually) and a new Deputy Head (he’s the old principal), and it’s still work, work, work, and then more work. The students get it even worse than we do.

Today, the Y13s were funny. We were talking about set theory. They were asked to write in set notation:

e is an element of the set of vowels.

“What’s a vowel?” Adarsh asked (I’m hoping he gets a 7 — in math, not in English).
I rolled my eyeballs and growled, “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.”
“Really?” asked Nick, “I thought the set of vowels was what you exchanged before you got married.”

Darling, I give you my i and my e.
Sweetheart, you can have my o and my u.

The Tablet Ate My Homework

When I was a child we used to tell the teacher: The dog ate my homework.

Now the students say: the technology ate my homework. I told the Year 10s to email their homework to me. Two thirds of them were unable to do so. A typical exchange:

Student: I emailed it to you.
Teacher: No, you didn’t.
Student: Yes, I did.
Teacher: No, you didn’t.
Student: I thought I did. Oops, it’s still in my Outbox.

Or, they send us attachments we cannot open. A typical exchange:

Student: I emailed it to you.
Teacher: But it was nonsense.
Student: Don’t you have Mozilla Zippety CyberWolf Version 8.05(a)?

Modern students cannot print out a nice-looking paper copy that their old teachers can read with pleasure. They don't know what paper is. The saddest and most pathetic students are the ones without their tablets. Ha-Woon now walks around like he is in mourning; he might as well dress in black:

Ha-Woon: I couldn’t do my homework
Teacher: Why not?
Ha-Woon: My tablet is broken.
Teacher: Why?
Ha-Woon: I dropped it.
Teacher: Don’t you have a computer at home?
Ha-Woon: Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

So, three days later, Hawoon-without-a-tablet brought his homework to me. Is it a nice-looking paper copy that I can read with pleasure? No! He handed me a thumb drive and said: here it is! I opened his thumb drive and found forty pictures of dogs.