"So How Come I Have to Learn This Stuff, HUH?"

One of the "orientation" seminars I attended today was actually interesting.  Imagine my surprise.  (The other one was pitiful, made me sorry for the students of these disorganized, none-too-bright, middle-aged, well-meaning but pathetically self-important teachers.)

The good one was about "General Education"--formerly known as Basic Requirements, I think, though not everybody was completely clear on the definitions or its attendant assumptions:  what they should be in the 21st century (if different than before), and what the subjects each of us teaches has to do with Gen Ed and with each other.  Or something. 

Well, I was off to the races.  Silently, of course.  What's the socioculturalintellectual interface of, say, nursing and fine arts?  Should a nursing student have to study Matisse?  Far more to the point for me: how the flaming hell are math and English related?  Just then, the math teacher at my table pipes up (I haven't said anything) about how he requires his students to frame math problems verbally--what we used to call "word problems." 

"And then do you do it the other way?" I blurt.  "Do you give them an equation and have them write a story about it?"  "Oh yes," he says as if this weren't a miracle, "three different stories, actually.  To pass my class, they have to be able to write three different verbal extrapolations of the same problem."  He gives me a quizzical look.  "Have you never enjoyed thinking about numbers verbally?"

"Um, gee, actually, no.  Until recently, it never occurred to me to do so other than the 'Dick has four candy bars, Jane takes two of them, how many does Dick have left?' model which never interested me at all because I'm a girl who likes a complicated narrative.  I thought words and numbers were mutually exclusive--UNTIL"--uh-oh, I'm off to the races--"I just recently read this fabulous book, Moneyball, about how Billy Beane almost singlehandedly rebuilt the Oakland As and possibly rescued the entire MLB by thinking outside the box about numbers, and I couldn't believe I was having such a good time reading a book about numbers because--"

I dwindle off because I've lost them.  They're glazing over.  I'm the only woman at the table, and they are reacting as if they'd answered their doorbells only to find JoWits on the porch.  Not everybody is a baseball fan; I keep forgetting that.  It seems so unnatural, why would it occur to me?--she said in self-defense.

But my point--and I do have one--(as Ellen DeGeneres would say) is that I felt a whole bunch of potential going on.  Which is, after all, way more than anyone has any right to expect who's been to more than three of these "seminars."

Comments

[beth]

Maybe you SHOULD think about writing something longer about baseball, Doc. Not everybody glazes over about it, and like you say, it has a lot of potential.

Glad you had a good day!

[dale]

Yeah, what she said :-)

I remember reading about that book and thinking I'd like to get it. I'd long thought that the traditional baseball stats were pretty lame indicators of how valuable players were.