Predominantly Erroneous (Exohedron nonsense blog)

Every once in a while I think about my math education, which took place primarily outside of the classroom. No real fault of the teachers, who were bound by curricula from on high, their own educational backgrounds, and the needs of the other students.

But if I had been forced to pay attention in math class, I probably wouldn't be a mathematician today. I remember being so frustrated that I probably would have started skipping school altogether. I probably wouldn't have been able to get away with it for long, but I definitely would have gone delinquent given how bad my temper was.

Fortunately by the fifth time I cussed at the teachers they decided that letting me curl up eith a textbook in the back of class was easier than trying to enforce actual discipline, and I had other sources of mathematics than just school. At that point I had at least demonstrated that I was pretty self-motivated ehen it came to learning mathematics.


I guess then I should think about my stance regarding public education, given that my own was semi-private. I want to tell myself that a better-funded public school system would have worked for me, with more teachers with stronger backgrounds and less interference, but I am not actually sure that that is true.
On the other hand, maybe I am merely willing to sacrifice other people like myself for the sake of education at large, although that sounds a bit strange given how cynical I tend to be about schooling in this country.

 

Kind of funny that Rome, the place whose language the word "empire" is derived from, was, by most modern definitions, imperialistic long before it became the Roman Empire.