Getting a new angle on the old joys of geometry
Hector Mackenzie wonders whether schooldays really are the best of your life.
THE other day I heard someone trot out that old chestnut about school days being the happiest of their life.
Would you agree?
While I certainly know a few folk who would take issue with that statement, I’d argue that those formative years in the classroom are the most influential in many lives, with far-reaching implications for all that follows on.
Very occasionally I have a recurring dream involving an impending maths exam for which I have not prepared.
The details vary but the central theme remains the same: blind panic over a task I know I’m not equipped to see through. Generally I wake up needing to go to the toilet. I’m sure everyone has a dream (nightmare?) which fulfils a similar function.
Maybe that subconscious sense of unfinished business is what prompted me to pick up, leaf through and take out a library book I can still scarcely believe I borrowed. It’s from a series headed “I Used to Know That” and is called “Maths — stuff you forgot from school”.
I still remember my excellent and supremely patient maths teacher, Isobel MacIver, tell me I’d be able to get through Higher Maths after scraping through the O Grade with a C. She was honest enough to add that it might take me two years to do so. . .
So why is it now, 30-odd years on, that algebra (anyone remember how to do quadratic equations?) and trigonometry has found a space in the bedtime reading pile? Maybe that pesky subconscious again trying to pave the way for answers to all of those awkward homework questions which will return to haunt me through my children?
The little hardback (published by Michael O’Marra) is proving — against all the odds — to be a riveting read. Talking of odds, I’ve learnt how to calculate the 14million to one chance of winning a jackpot lottery (play once a week and you can expect to win once every 270,000 years, not that I want to burst anyone’s bubble).
Reading it produces flashbacks to what I used to know (sort of) plus the occasional Eureka moment where a long-standing confusion is suddenly cleared up.
It’s been an emotional rollercoaster and I’ve not even got to trigonometry yet.
This sense of deja vu has been intensified by a brief Easter holiday visit to a sister whose teenage son is currently preparing for school exams.
My exam preparation used to involve forests of A4 pads, well-thumbed textbooks and note-taking so copious I’d only stop when the wrist seized up or the paper ran out. I’d occasionally take a breather to listen to a record (remember those?)
My nephew seems to do most of his revision on a (very beautiful) MacBook Pro, while simultaneously listening to music from a massive collection stored on the hard drive. He’s a straight A student and about as far removed from a class swot as it’s humanly possible to be. I predict he’s either going to be a rock star or a doctor — possibly both.
I had a peek at his biology text book and within seconds was hearing the voice of my former teacher, Sandy “Do you follow?” Leitch. A good teacher stays with you throughout pretty much the rest of your life.
The same may well be true of a bad one. I’ve been pretty lucky. The fact that I’m still interested in maths, despite really struggling at school, is surely something to do with some inspirational teaching.
My wife’s interested in ultimately pursuing some sort of a career in teaching. She’s not going to let the fact that she was born in China get in the way either, even if it’s hard to find out exactly how a university degree in Romanian secured in Beijing will be regarded by the authorities in Scotland. I didn’t know the General Teaching Council of Scotland existed until a fortnight ago.
I’m now on first name terms with at least three of its representatives.
If it turns out she needs to pass Higher Maths (or whatever it’s called these days), I vow here and now to sit the exam with her. Maybe that’s why that unexpected little book dropped into my life?
