MathEdZine #0.1

above we have pp 6, 7, 8, 1;
below are pp 2, 3, 4, 5. the whole
thing’s soon going to MEZB where it belongs
if i’ve finally figured out how that process goes.

rtfm

first monthly newsletter for NFM
(“new faculty majority”: national coalition for adjunct and contingent faculty).

4mad1

oh! … you!…
gotta gotta gotta gotta
gotta gotta gotta gotta
gotta gotta gotta
give ’em hope.
OU
gottagottagottagottagotta
gottagottagottagotta
gottagotta
givem hope.
oh. when.

there isn’t any isn’t any
isn’t any hope
you
gotta give ’em gotta give ’em hope
be, cause, there,
isn’t any isn’t any isn’t any
isn’t any isn’t any isn’t any hope…
that’s, why, you…
gottagivem gottagivem
gottagotta gottagivem
gottagotta gottagivem
hope. just when there
isn’t any isn’t any isn’t any
isn’t any gotta give ’em
isn’t any hope.
and… so… you!…

dig we must

some spinach seeds went in this morning
right about where madeline’s shadow
is falling in this shot.

not for auction

painting by me. i can’t quite do this kind of thing. yet.

madeline’s front room (with guitarist)

there’s only five strings on “woody” here.
not having to control the sixth makes it
easier to get a nice sound. i learned
this trick from bob sauls who says
keith richard tunes his guitar this way.
as you can see, i’m happy to be here.
madeline’s house is a lot closer to “home”
than i ever expected to feel ever again.

never at reft

more of “dekist’s hot shelves“.
science & medicine below;
litcrit above and whatever fits
in between. the “ancient med”
poster is by national geographic,
natch. i got if for next to nothing,
natch. along with most of the
fine reference works you see
here. lotsa good stuff out there
still i think but not for long maybe.
grab up the reference books
and keep ’em in a pile in the corner.
you’ll thank me someday.

the swirling beachball of doom

my life in schools.

fast forward.
bill carroll’s humanities initiative
at ohio dominican college.

if word-choice were anything like
as influential as many in politics
(and almost all academics)
like to pretend, why then,
my “indoctrination” would have been
*over* when i got my “doctorate”.

but one door closes when
another one opens and
as far as “turning pro”
goes, i was almost completely
unprepared. (that this was
in large part because of choices
i’d made with eyes *at least*
as wide open as the generic
next-guy player in whatever
game it is we’re here considering
[or are *about* to; somebody
say “go”]… well, that’s very likely
true i hope and feel. so what.
[i hope you don’t like it
and want to do something
about it].)

“i hope and feel.”
“trust” doesn’t enter into it of course.

personal slogans of the season part n+1.
‘our medium is handwriting.”,
“trust no one.”,
“tools at hand.”,
“no yin without a yang.”,
“look again. look closer.”,
and “where was i?”.

to name but a few.
where was i?

bill carroll and humanities at dominican.
of bill i know but little and will
say only slightly less. young administrators
“going up” some career “path”
(a “graph”? a “*tree*”??) will…
or so conventional wisdom has it…
generally try to distinguish themselves
by *changing things around*. if nothing
too horrible happens, they’ll have proved
that they can get people to *do things
their way* (instead of some tried-and-true
*other* way)… which, on some prominent
world-running models anyway, is pretty
close to the *whole point* of “administration”.
(or, as i’d rather call it, “management”.)

anyhow, when i turned pro in ’92
and moved to columbus to work at
dominican (as a newly minted
math Ph.D.), bill was academic V.P.
there and was energetically recruiting
faculty from all departments
to teach in a newly-redesigned
humanities program.

i loved this idea and signed on right away.
so along with teaching my math classes,
i sat in as an auditor-with-benefits
on (young theologian) leo madden’s
Hum101 (as i’ll here style it;
the actual course number is lost
to me and good riddance).

it was great. just for the regular
direct contact with leo, it’d’ve been
totally worth it. but the big draw,
as you’ll’ve guessed if you know me,
was the *texts*: the iliad,
the aeneid, luke and
acts, some readings in plato
(“the death of socrates” and,
the intro to the whole course sequence,
“the parable of the cave”),
and (alas) the confessions
of augustine. (i’m pretty far from
catholic [nanny converted to marry
owen thomas (“senior”); their son
owen thomas (“junior”) was my–
owen thomas (“the third”)…
“owen by the way”…–dad;
dad was raised catholic
but *never* spoke of church
matters (with me) except
in the abstract; some years
after his death i was somewhat
surprised to be reliably informed
that he (dad) had considered
studying for the priesthood
as a young man]; as a lifetime
academic one cannot escape
having a certain respect for
the “catholic school” tradition;
that’s about it.)

anyhow, one semester later i was ready
and led my own classes. and i’m sure
i had a point when i begain this ramble
and i even expect to get *to* it…
at some later date. suffice it to say
here that i taught Hum101 three times
and 102 once (a “team teaching” situation;
we-must-do-our-*ex*ercises…) and
loved it and that i even have some notes
left over (that i’ve had it mind
to port up onto the net for quite
a while now and maybe soon will).

more light!

madeline’s guest bathroom; daadd n+1

is this a self portrait by me?
or by Legion (my MacBook),
using me as part of the medium?

the medium is *at least*
half the message here so
let me just endorse these
“window crayons” i bought
a couple hours ago. erases
from glass with a damp
paper towel. i blended
the orange; there are black
blue green yellow and red
crayons in the set of five.
also i can’t resist mentioning
that that’s a track-3 razor
in the upper left just under
the sunlike glow of the flash.

a petri-disch community

florida school reform in WaPo.

now with bloglike pop-up commentation from users:
deschooling society (dot-digress.it).

my life in schools.

primary first.
i was… more than most people even…
the subject of an *educational experiment*:
at university elementary school in the sixties
many of us even as kids spoke of ourselves
as “guinea pigs” for indiana university,
its ed school in particular. there were
great big ungainly boxes like a filing cabinet
on wheels that ran remote controls for
closed-circuit-TV cameras following us
through our lessons. for example.
and we were tested tested tested
you’d better believe… the “iowa test
of basic skills” seems to have come up
pretty often (anyhow the name sticks).
but remember it was the sixties:
we were also getting “the new math”,
a from-the-ground-up approach based
on *set theory*. this approach allegedly
flopped nationwide because its teachers
didn’t understand its principles.
ours sure did and it was far the clearest
thing in school or life then or now
as far as i’ve been able to determine.
there was plenty of (what’s now called)
“discovery learning” going on too:
it was the very *age* of “do your own thing”
and our teachers had breathed in its spirit
at a rich source. (iu bloomington, as we
will see, was my very *garden of eden*,
the paradise i’ve been exiled from
[for my knowledge of good and evil]).

so there was a lot of best-of-both-worlds
and i was right at home. in fact, i was
pretty much at home *anywhere* in those days
and i knew it: my family did two years
(“kindergarten” and “4th grade” for me)
abroad with *lots* of travel time
in croatia and the rest of what was then
known as “yugoslavia”… slovenia, serbia,
bosnia, and so on… plus poland, czechoslovakia
(another name change for the present-day),
austria, and on and on. *we* were together
and it felt it would just naturally always
be so. we five: dad, mom, elder sister
hannah, me, younger brother nathan.

sixth grade was pivotal. i’ll have mentioned
it already in this very blog i think; anyway
i hereby promise to return to this subject.