Science/Math is not 'easy' and should be celebrated

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I have felt for a long time that things worth learning are worth struggling for.

Learning very often is NOT "fun" - it's painful.

That's part of education.

I always had an aptitude for science and excelled at it for some reason...but math bored the beejeezus outa me... endless hours on manipulating numbers so that they might equal some other numbers. I was a straight D and F student in Math. Spent my math classes watching the clock and drawing doodles in my notebook. Then the beginning of one year this one math teacher instead of teaching us math had everybody build model rockets of different types...sanding them or laminating them smooth for aerodynamic efficiency ... the whole class was going yeah!...this beats math class...then we would end up launching these rockets outside near the track...we would set up baselines and build simple devices to measure angles to the apogee so we could calculate altitudes and who's rockets went higher...Trigonometry at its finest...that's when it dawned on me...holy mackerel...look what I can do with math! ...one simple class...one simple teaching method...my grades went up like the rocket there after...
I think the teaching methodology has a lot to play in any subject.

Once in a while I am told, “Writing must be easy for you.” “Yes,” I sometimes say, “writing is easy for me in the same way that wrestling is easy for wrestlers, or teaching is easy for teachers.”

In my teaching days (may they recede ever more swiftly and distantly into the past), I encountered plenty of students who were annoyed with me because I tended to point them toward what was hardest to do in whatever they were writing. It used to amaze me, before I got used to it, how many students sign up for creative writing out of a vague sense that inspiration and energy will suffice.

I used to ask poetry students if they’d ever thought about all that they had in common with discus throwers. Most hadn’t, believe it or not.

Well, here goes. I require that you write at least one sonnet that follows some known set of rules, and is grammatical, and says something that gives at least a momentary impression of being worth saying. The discus thrower works within a circle of prescribed diameter, studying and practicing to figure out his or her best way across it to the best possible release. Many hours and months are spent just running or lifting weights. Videotapes are made, sometimes digitized to stick-figures so the angle the held platter makes with the line of the torso can be looked at and optimized. Work, work, work, technique, technique, technique, and once in a long while a burst of splendor that gains you one more centimeter.

The students would begin to see what I meant, and I would go on: “Tell me when the last time was that you saw a help wanted ad for a poet or a discus thrower.”

In other words, even the work, even the constant technical study, however painful at times, should have some inner reward of its own. It should be more than just the means to the imagined end. The solitary joy of the thing itself.

Cheers,
Henry

I've always wondered why scholastic excellence isn't rewarded as richly as is the ability to throw, hit, kick or catch a piece of cowhide.

Rick

Throughout high school I was a discus thrower. You are correct in that I have never seen a job listing anywhere searching for a professional discus thrower.

The closest I've ever come to being a poet is being able to recite: He was a poet....and didn't know it. I'm certain that I've seen a job listing for a poet, either.

But, if they were to advertise for "problem solver needed" all sorts of people would think they could excel in that position.