Here is a photograph taken on my way to work this very morning. Yes it's another couple of ships, but you'll need to forgive me that one. It's hard not to take pictures on the waterfront when it remains the dominant feature every day.
Feelings seem to be very flat here in Australia at the moment, due to the bushfires. I'm not sure that I can remember anything like it before. Mind you, with so many stories like this one dominating the news, it is kind of hard to avoid being a bit down about it.
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Read some disturbing news in one of the online Australian newspaper regarding bushfire and terrorism :-(. Really bad!! Did you hear anything?
Thanks a lot for that detailed math description answer in the previous post :-D. I am now checking out that curriculum site. I have few questions now for you, if you please answer:
1. What do you mean the teacher was not engaging?
2. From your description of teachers, it seems that there is no policy that teachers need to have certain mathematical training and education background to teach math. Am I correct?
3. How does people in Australia look upon Math and Science? If I explain this with examples, I think you will understand. In India, at least while I was growing up, learning Math and science was a proud thing to do. People in these fields were highly respected; thus the culture as a whole had a tremendous respect and urge to study these subjects. In the USA, with the current generation, it is the opposite: studying math and science means you are a NERD and that means you are anti-social, you will not get dates, bla...bla..bla...So, I want to know such things about Australia.
Ok, I think I have bored you enough with my questions :-). Thank you very much.
Unfortunately, it is far more likely to be the more common individual who lights fires for reasons known only to themselves. In a way I guess it is terrorism, but the absence of any political dimension I feel makes it more like a 'criminal' act rather than a 'terrorist' act.
As for the maths questions, I’m happy to answer them!
1. I mean that they didn’t really teach it very well to the students that were before them. It was very much, “I’ll hand out sheets of paper with questions on it, and you all sit there and answer them while I sit up the front”. That doesn’t work with most kids, you need to engage them, you need to make the subject matter either relevant of exciting enough to get them to put the effort in.
For example, you’ve got a bunch of rowdy teenagers who don’t see the point of knowing this stuff, who generally don’t do well at school, and even if they are given a sheet of paper with 25 questions on it, they know that nothing will happen to them if they don’t do it. There was no fear of punishment, and to be seen to have not done the work didn’t generate a sense of shame etc. I used to always do the work, because I didn’t want to fail the class (probably because I had parents that would notice and harass me for it), but that wasn’t true of at least half of the people there.
So how do you get their attention? It wasn’t until Grade 10 that I had a teacher who even tried to make the mathematical problems seem in any way relevant to real life. If you liked cricket, he’d frame the questions in such a way that you’d be adding up sums, working out averages etc etc. If it was football, he’d frame them that way. For a lot of people, this was all it took to get them interested enough to even think about the subject. It was just a shame that the other teachers I had weren’t very enthusiastic about teaching.
2. I’m not sure, but I can guarantee that in the period that I went to high school (1989–92), none of my Maths teachers would have had specific qualifications. The science teachers were different though, I can’t remember a case of a non-specialist teaching that.
3. It used to be the case that Maths and Science were not valued (the idea of a playground of nerds and geeks etc), but I’m not sure of that these days. A lot of effort seemed to be put in to train up a new generation of scientists in the 1990s, and I think that people are more open to the disciplines these days. The fact that science and scientists are more regularly featured in the news and have won things like Australian of the Year seems to support that.
I like answering questions, so don’t be afraid to ask.
Its so difficult to get your mind around the enormity of the fires, isn't it.
And you don't need to be sorry about those fires, unless you know something...
This image is quite a neat visual summary of Hobart, as a port, its history and its present - isn't it...well done, stimulated the mind again.
Speaking of which - have you seen Gran Torino? if not, go. Terrific film, saw it last night. Eastwood is a colossus in it - all over it.
I haven't watch a full movie for quite a while. Kiddies aren't really conducive to that. I have seen Elmo in Grouchland a few times though...
Re your comment: I do love the friendliness and easy-goingness of Aussies. It's just that I don't really know any to talk to in Sydney, except now blogger Ann. And having most of the time two little boys in tow was not conducive to starting conversations with strangers.