I’ve recently begun taking a class at nearby Foothill Community College in an effort to gain some mastery over mathematics. It’s an old, old project of mine. Ostensibly I’m at school for the same reason most of the other students believe they are here, namely to get an education that will translate into a job [...]
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Yesterday’s Editorial Observer column of the New York Times carried an interesting and through-provoking piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg on “Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud.” In it Klinkenborg compares the growing popularity of audio books with the practice of reading aloud as was common in the 19th century (and obviously long before [...] Note: I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the role of mentors in one’s educational development and remembered the following essay I wrote for the Virtual Conference in Informal Science Education, sponsored by the Society for Amateur Scientists in May, 2004. I’m reprinting it here as a way of dusting off my thinking on [...] A view from the balcony of the Exploratorium on Pi Day. Photo by the author. Last Saturday we accompanied some friends of ours on a trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Many, many years ago the science show Nova featured this marvelous place in one of their programs, and if I recall “The Palace of [...] Elsewhere I have written about the power of projects. There is no educational experience that quite matches making an example of what you are studying, or even a model of it. But the experience of building or making something goes beyond the item itself and can introduce you to skills, tools, and ideas that you [...] Get some educators or instructors into a room and before long you will get an earful about good teaching practices, pedagogy, learning, and so forth. You’ll hear all the latest info about how best to get kids to pay attention, how to reach adult learners, presentation and communications. But what is less often [...] Every other week or so my spouse and I meet with some friends for dinner and conversation, usually at a favorite Chinese restaurant where we enjoy stimulating banter over excellent cuisine. An evening’s dinner conversation recently turned to the matter of competition and how it really works in business and other areas of human [...] When starting one’s private intellectual journey the question often come up: what shall I study? Sometimes it isn’t even clear which subject area a person wants to pursue. Generalists like Your Humble Correspondent find this a persistent, nagging, and fiendishly frustrating issue. Add to this puzzle the otherwise sage and sound advice of P. [...] The previous post on the unsuspected nature of genius needs a follow-up, and this is it. It is now clear that what we call “genius” is a function of hard, relentless work leavened with good instruction and mentoring. But the process of approaching mastery baffles and sometimes discourages would-be learners because they don’t [...] I’ve heard several definitions of genius. The usual one concerns high IQs and the ability to multiply nine-digit numbers in your head, play piano concerti without practicing, speaking colloquial Fortran… that sort of thing. Another comes courtesy of a friend of mine who observed that geniuses are what we call those who are [...] |
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