Gosh, I hope that title was spelled correctly!!  Did you catch the ‘misprint episode’? Let’s revisit it, which will also allow us to tackle a couple of other mini topics of interest.
Yes, I Can Spell Mathematics.
I picked up the print version of the paper that morning, and when I reached the OpEd page, imagine my consternation to discover that title of my column had the word mathematics misspelled!  It took me 10 minutes to clean up the mess on the kitchen floor!  I envisioned the responses I might get, and the false impressions that might further affect credibility.
In retrospect, I was somewhat lucky.  Most of the responses, with a notable exception or two, were on the humorous side, some with even touches of empathy, for which I was grateful.  (These were direct communications, mind you.  I rarely check the digital comments, where the trolls usually live.)
The headline made it into the digital version correctly, so the News-Leader was not at fault.  But the set-up for each day’s paper is now done in a remote off-site location each night.  We think that some anonymous ‘night editor’ was apparently the culprit.  (This means he/she actually had to change the spelling, which is worrisome.)
The upside, I guess, is that it’s always good to know there are more than 3 or 4 readers out there on some days!
 Cell Phones and Education
I ran into the following quote recently on a friend’s FB page, and it gave me pause – twice, actually.  It is apparently from Glennon Doyle’s book entitled Untamed.

“I find myself worrying most that when we hand our children phones we steal their boredom from them. As a result, we are raising a generation of writers who will never start writing, artists who will never start doodling, chefs who will never make a mess in the kitchen, athletes who will never kick a ball against a wall, musicians who will never pick up their aunt’s guitar and start strumming.”

I like the thrust and the imagery of the quote. It caught my attention. And I’m certainly sympathetic to the concern.  Indeed, I’ve probably expressed vaguely similar thoughts myself, some of them in this space as they regard education’s roles in change.
I like the thrust and the imagery of the quote. It caught my attention. And I’m certainly sympathetic to the concern.  Indeed, I’ve probably expressed vaguely similar thoughts myself, some of them in this space as they regard education’s roles in change.
However, at the risk of being flippant, my concern about our kids’ finding their niches in life is not terribly increased by the ‘new’ omnipresence of cell phones.  After all, these same general fears were voiced about television in the ‘50s or the internet in the ‘90s, and scores of others in the years before television and since the web.  In both life and education, the changes occurring around us always seem bigger than changes we’ve adapted to in the past.
It’s a fine line we walk.  And, in education it’s an almost-daily in-your-face awareness.  How do we deal with emerging changes in society (calculators, internet, disappearance of cursive writing, etc), while working to prepare our students for a life of even more and unexpected changes as they grow?  It requires perspective, patience, and vision.
A quick final irony here, though.  If education is to further help expose students to writing, doodling, finding guitars, and kicking balls, doesn’t it seem all the more dangerous to be cutting programs in arts, music, and PE?  Are we penny-wise and dollar-foolish?

Lessons in Civics
Wow.  Haven’t these previous months served to be graphic reminders of the power, the value, and even the necessity of our right to vote in a democracy? A free civics lesson! If you haven’t already, be sure to exercise that right on or before Tuesday!