The truth is in the details

As I grow older I realize how important some mathematical knowledge is that I have not fully integrated, due to my lack of interest during my formative years and I especially notice it in my IT work where math is very recurrent.

Then I ask myself, and I clearly see a problem from my school years. From my teachers, specifically.

For example, I spent many hours calculating sines, cosines, tangents, hypotenuses (i.e. TRIGONOMETRY) and I really did it just to get by, without clearly seeing its practical utility.

What was it for? What was there in something that was so important?

WOW! Does anyone know that with trigonometry, before Christ, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the earth using the shadows cast by different objects at two distant points? They knew the size of the earth with trigonometry. I discovered this a few years ago.

You can also approximately calculate the distance from the earth to the sun, or from the earth to the moon… INCREDIBLE!... Because no one ever explained it to me? Perhaps my predisposition to listen to trigonometry would have changed.

How difficult it was to dress up trigonometry with stories like this, performing that calculation, imbuing with what that discovery meant at the time, what it signified in history, what other mathematicians believed, holding a debate… etc.

Clearly not all academic training can be fun… but to transmit knowledge you need to transmit passion, enthusiasm, curiosity, fun…

You cannot transmit knowledge as if talking to a wall, expecting the wall to absorb the knowledge; most of the time the wall, the only thing it will do is bounce it back.

I know a great many people who have studied a subject simply because a teacher made them love a particular subject, a good teacher, good training, had a clear influence on their future decisions and therefore on the lives of the students.

We have tools to make this type of training; it is necessary that… NO; it is essential that students experience their knowledge… not just listen to it.

It is imperative to have students who are very well educated, very well prepared… and I do not know if we are heading that way.

With that, I also want to say that, for me, the job of a teacher is the most important in the world (after being a parent) and one day I will write a post about it.

Remember that a doctor, for example, once had a teacher or that you can have teachers and not have doctors, but it is impossible to have doctors if they have not had teachers who imparted knowledge to them…

Someone must have a passion for teaching, for trying to make others love learning… otherwise it is difficult to produce great professionals in any field.