I love the Renaissance probably for trite and inaccurate reasons. The days when learning was not the "sage on a stage" but a focused study and one on one meetings with a scholar or advanced student is largely lost in our age of credentialism. In some ways our world is no different than theirs. The best opportunities are largely due to social contact not brilliance and innovation. Credit goes to the money makers who are rarely the types who have actually developed or even shepherded the ideas behind their products. This seems unjust but not my main interest since I don't have any great plan or manifesto to make the world a better meritocracy.
However, just as great wealth and privilege is no guarantee of happiness, modest means are not a barrier to great intellectual achievement. In some ways, it is almost necessary. Money has always provided so many sources of easy pleasure and compelling distraction that the very hard work to achieve the kind of deep knowledge required in mathematics, philosophy or other profound and well developed subjects is too great a barrier. Those children lacking means but with some support and stability are still often stymied by the limited quality and resources of their public schools.
Computers and the internet open up a vast world of knowledge that was previously in far off libraries and with no chatroom to get over a stumbling block. Just as they make almost all kids now rich in this way, they impoverish them in the same way that the rich have been before them. Video games and illicit material are easy pulls on their undisciplined minds when they most need to be climbing hard and improving focus. This is hardly a professional peril. Many of them develop early and strong computing skills associated with this with many later employment options. The situation is hardly a cataclysm for mankind. It may be that, whatever we have lost is not essential for our and continuity and prosperity that the bulk of mankind continues to have an easier and better life.
My own nostalgia for a time of the search for a pure and perfect kind of knowledge supported by benefactors is no doubt missing many aspects of the reality those who labored in it endured. Recently I finished a Ph.D. in theoretical physics with some experimental component as well. Currently I am seeking a way to complete and peddle my positions on various aspects of physics that I see as suffering from superficial discussion. I did many years of tutoring before and during graduate school and have returned to it now to supplement my income. Some of my students suffer ADHD and need help to stay on track with material beyond their parents. Some have fallen behind and become demoralized. Occasionally I get incredibly gifted and driven students who want to learn mathematics at a level many years beyond their peers. I have an impressive record working with all these groups for several reasons. My passion for the material, my love of children and an understanding that I make mistakes all the time and remember my failings well enough to give them the patience they need are the reasons for this. Most of my students with troubles go from D's and F's to A's in weeks or a couple of months. Clearly this is not so much that I am wonderful as that we are not reaching children's needs to let them reach their capacity.
The goal of this blog is twofold, to try to explore the reason for my amazing success here and to investigate what tools and skills contribute to putting kids in the fast lane of learning and discovery that taps their curiosity and passion in the purest sense. We currently use competition and the "stick" of failure as prods to achievement. Publish or perish, CV volume, impact factor and peer review are the grown up manifestations of the student grade books. These produce the results that optimize these parameters which are the closest easy measures of the real substance we want to produce. Few experienced in this system are doubtful that it has produced its own sort of endemic graft and mediocrity in the gaming of the system it produces. The danger of such cynicism for children is worse and I have come to the conclusion that idealism is the natural state of young people. Learning that is optimal must have some element of fire and passion that drives one through great difficulties with determination and focus. I hope this blog will inspire other tutors and allow me to continue to develop my own insights to benefit my students, future coworkers and children.
However, just as great wealth and privilege is no guarantee of happiness, modest means are not a barrier to great intellectual achievement. In some ways, it is almost necessary. Money has always provided so many sources of easy pleasure and compelling distraction that the very hard work to achieve the kind of deep knowledge required in mathematics, philosophy or other profound and well developed subjects is too great a barrier. Those children lacking means but with some support and stability are still often stymied by the limited quality and resources of their public schools.
Computers and the internet open up a vast world of knowledge that was previously in far off libraries and with no chatroom to get over a stumbling block. Just as they make almost all kids now rich in this way, they impoverish them in the same way that the rich have been before them. Video games and illicit material are easy pulls on their undisciplined minds when they most need to be climbing hard and improving focus. This is hardly a professional peril. Many of them develop early and strong computing skills associated with this with many later employment options. The situation is hardly a cataclysm for mankind. It may be that, whatever we have lost is not essential for our and continuity and prosperity that the bulk of mankind continues to have an easier and better life.
My own nostalgia for a time of the search for a pure and perfect kind of knowledge supported by benefactors is no doubt missing many aspects of the reality those who labored in it endured. Recently I finished a Ph.D. in theoretical physics with some experimental component as well. Currently I am seeking a way to complete and peddle my positions on various aspects of physics that I see as suffering from superficial discussion. I did many years of tutoring before and during graduate school and have returned to it now to supplement my income. Some of my students suffer ADHD and need help to stay on track with material beyond their parents. Some have fallen behind and become demoralized. Occasionally I get incredibly gifted and driven students who want to learn mathematics at a level many years beyond their peers. I have an impressive record working with all these groups for several reasons. My passion for the material, my love of children and an understanding that I make mistakes all the time and remember my failings well enough to give them the patience they need are the reasons for this. Most of my students with troubles go from D's and F's to A's in weeks or a couple of months. Clearly this is not so much that I am wonderful as that we are not reaching children's needs to let them reach their capacity.
The goal of this blog is twofold, to try to explore the reason for my amazing success here and to investigate what tools and skills contribute to putting kids in the fast lane of learning and discovery that taps their curiosity and passion in the purest sense. We currently use competition and the "stick" of failure as prods to achievement. Publish or perish, CV volume, impact factor and peer review are the grown up manifestations of the student grade books. These produce the results that optimize these parameters which are the closest easy measures of the real substance we want to produce. Few experienced in this system are doubtful that it has produced its own sort of endemic graft and mediocrity in the gaming of the system it produces. The danger of such cynicism for children is worse and I have come to the conclusion that idealism is the natural state of young people. Learning that is optimal must have some element of fire and passion that drives one through great difficulties with determination and focus. I hope this blog will inspire other tutors and allow me to continue to develop my own insights to benefit my students, future coworkers and children.
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