I recently wrote a column claiming that, contrary to what's written in the pages of Parade Magazine, Reader's Digest, and local newspaper editorials, teachers suck (as a group, not as individuals).
They shouldn't even be called teachers, but conformists.
This is incredibly controversial, but the failure of the education system is ultimately connected to every evil thing in the world, and there are plenty of evil things.
Someone has to speak the ghastly truth, even if everyone else is horrified, and will remain so for many decades to come, as they probably will.
That someone is me.
This column will try to reach the same conclusion with only minimal evidence: in fact, the proof consists of only one letter, which is also a number.
It's known as 'e': the number 2.71828... or 'the base of the natural logarithms', whatever that means.
Apparently, the digits to the right of the decimal point extend forever, never settling in a repeating pattern.
It's a very profound number.
It's possible to spend years in various high school math classes, doing many exercises, homework assignments, and chalkboard diagrams, and still not have the faintest clue what that number means, for the simple reason that it is never explained. It's only used in very complicated and obscure equations.
There almost certainly is a simple explanation, but the System, or the combined free will of all its participants, chooses not to provide it. That's just the way things are: evil.
It's true that few individuals really care about math. Students just have to learn how to use certain tools in certain situations. This knowledge must be absorbed by osmosis, through the hidden rules of culture. Society is no better organized than Windows software.
The thing that teachers are worst at is providing high-level explanations; succinct ways to organize and describe complicated knowledge.
It's what they should be best at.
If the most important truths are the hardest to learn, something is profoundly wrong with the world, even if almost no one can see this simple fact, or hear it when it's explained to them.
And that is why teachers suck.
Case closed.
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