the boy will learn from someone

I was talking to my friend Nicole tonight about how kids are being raised in this society.

Before you think, "Boy, that's all easy for him to say--he hasn't raised kids yet! Who's he to talk?" Just hear me out. I want to challenge our generation. I am in no way saying parenting is easy. And I have observed many things, including things my parents did.

I think you can probably figure out the details of what is disturbing me from just a simple story from working at Cici's:

Over a year ago, one day I was cleaning tables and junk, and I noticed a mother eating with her little boy. The woman was on her cell phone the entire meal. The boy ate virtually by himself. It was so nice of this mother to spend good quality time with her son, right? Oh yes.

It made my stomach turn inside out. I wanted to take her cell phone and send it through the conveyor belt pizza oven.

We need a refreshed generation of parents. I know there are many great parents out there, but I think we are slacking.

And I'm not talking about rules and spankings, necessarily.

I'm talking about effort.

There are many great ways to rear a kid good. But it takes work.

We need parents that are willing to invest in their kids' lives more than other crap.

Because the boy will learn from someone.

The boy will learn how to make conversation.

The boy will learn how to make friends.

The boy will learn how to interact.

The boy will learn how to have relationships.

The boy will learn what to do with his body.

The boy will learn how to treat women.

The boy will learn how to treat men.

The boy will learn how to treat you.

The boy will learn from someone.

The question isn't whether or not the boy will learn it all.

The question is who will the boy learn it all from?

why math class is so important

I have a biology exam tomorrow. So far I haven't done very well on my biology exams. I don't have a biology mind. I didn't really want to take biology for my science credit, I wanted Environmental Earth Science, but my advisor insisted that EES wasn't a real class or something, and he suggested Biology wouldn't be too challenging. Well, it's challenging enough I guess.

But it has to be better than chemistry. I took chemistry my junior year in high school because I thought, "Hey, in TV shows they get to blow up stuff in chemistry classes," and I wanted to blow up stuff too. But we didn't get to do that. The coolest thing we got to do was make tye-dye shirts at the end of the year. And that didn't even have to do with anything we were learning.
What made chemistry so frustrating for me was the fact that it combined complicated science principles with math. And if there's one thing my brain stinks at more than science, it's math.

Math.

Every year through Junior High and High School I heard numerous students ask their teacher the same thing about new concepts we were learning, "What are we going to do with this stuff in the real world?" And the teacher's response was usually always the same: "Um, well..."

Yes. The "Um, well..." which was usually followed by a desperate cover-up answer:

"Um, well you use it whenever you're measuring triangles and your ruler isn't working properly."

"Um, well you can use this whenever you are at the grocery store and need to know the square root of 34.57."

"Um, well you can use this formula in case you ever go on a trip to the Sun and your electronic measuring and computing devices aren't working."

Are you seeing a pattern? Here's the truth: Unless you are going to work for NASA or become a math teacher, there is no reason for learning most of what we learn in math class. Really we learn all we need to know as far as math goes before we're even halfway done with elementary school.

Let me illustrate my point:

Fig. 1

See, up through middle school we learn all of the shapes we will need to know to get through college and even get us on to retirement:

Fig. 2

There you go.