Education is certainly a vital field, because every thing in civilization depends upon education. I saw that on a website someplace — a non-profit organization in the Philippines. Teachers bust their tail at their craft (many of them, anyway). But there are a few who seem to have a gift to inspire. My high school world history teacher was one particular. She had lived in China as a growing up. When she taught in Rockville, Maryland, you could possibly feel the wisdom of all her experience.
She didn’t have us memorize dates. That had been the first truly great thing I had heard from a history teacher. What she said next took the subject several magnitudes higher in value. She wanted us to be aware of the motivations of history — the deeply visceral, human issues with what can somewhat be a deadly dry subject. Jaime Escalante of “Stand and Deliver” fame, dared to dream big. Calculus for the typically dropout crowd? Pushing them to go on to college? Wow. And I’ve this publication called, “Calculus Made Easy,” by Sylvanus P. Thompson, first published in 1910. It’s been through lots of printings all to make a simple subject simple.
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This post was submitted by Federico Klebe.