Orangpples

Today I went to help an 8^th grader with his math assignment. He had to use a compass and straight edge to make angle bisectors, perpendicular bisectors, altitudes, and midpoint lines on triangles making inscribed and circumscribed circles. I was excited since I had loved doing this exact same stuff way back in 9^th grade. Unfortunately it turned out to be a much more painful process than I ever could have imagined. We would read the instructions in the book on how to bisect an angle but then when I drew an angle and asked him to bisect it he had no idea where to start. I then demonstrated how to do it; pointing out how each action corresponded to the instruction in the book which he had read and then drew another angle and ask him to bisect it. Still no idea where to start. I would literally have to hold his hand and place the compass in the correct spot and if I didn’t tell him which direction he needed to go, he’d go the wrong way (mysteriously way more than half the time) and have to make an entire circle before getting to the right spot when all that was needed was a small mark in the opposite direction. And after doing three angles like this I expected him to be able to do one on his own. Nope no success. Still no idea where to start, though this time he did understand that he was supposed to draw arcs on the paper and did so at random points along the line.

I don’t want to put to much blame on this one kid for I could go on and on describing similar anecdotes from the last several months. The 12^th grader who had to make chicken scratches for 3×3, the blank stares I got today when asking what the x and y coordinates of a point were (they were (1,0) and the point was on the unit circle and the students were supposed to graph cos(θ)), the total inability to pick any meaning out of word problem unless I explicitly explain it. The level of mathematical literacy is so frustrating below the level of understanding the curriculum requests that it makes me slightly mad just to think about it. I’ve decided to make it my battle for the next 18 months to do my part in helping improve mathematical understanding, intuition, and problem solving at all grade levels. I feel that math is a good thing to pick because you can do it with out any fancy equipment, the critical thinking skills required to solve math problems can be translated to other areas of school as well as life, and math is easy to teach because it has concrete principles that you can fall back on (remember those chicken scratches to multiply). I have lots of great ideas on how to do that, but nothing that is making any progress as of the moment. I hope in the next few months to have something productive started with that regard.

But none of that is what I’ve been thinking about tonight. While I was watching this kid attempt to bisect an angle and find the midpoints of lines I started thinking how the Ancient Greeks could make regular pentagons with just a straight edge and ruler over 2,500 years and yet this kid was struggling with something so much simpler. At the same time, several times while helping him I saw him pull out a cell phone capable of 3G data access. The juxtaposition of those two events really got me thinking that not much about human cognition or intelligence has really changed since the dawning of civilization. The simple key to all the great successes we credit to the human mind is a memory of what came before and the ingenuity to go further. In the 12^th century Bernard of Chartres wrote

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size

Just think how much the collective human mind has created, invented and discovered in the 9 centuries since that was written. Just think how much its done in the last century alone. Just think how much has happened in my short life time of 22 years. The computer world has a very famous axiom of growth first quantified by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the mid 1960’s which basically states that the number of transistors that can economically be placed on an integrated circuit grows exponential to time – double approximately every two years to be moore exact. Such exponential growth is only made possible because each generation of integrated circuit stands on the shoulders of the last. And this analogy can be extended to technological change anywhere and at anytime because one change leads to two more changes which lead to four more changes ad infinitum. The whole process is due to the fact that knowledge does not have to be reinvented and each generation sits upon the mighty progress of the last. It is interesting to observe the effects of that cycle being broken as happened in South Africa during the years of Apartheid. How it only takes a few generations of cruelty, hatred and fear for a society to lose its collective conscience and how hard it is to restart the engines of human creativity, inspiration and ingenuity as this countries school system has been trying to do virtually over night.

I think its also important to note that the only thing that has changed in the last 5000 years is the amount of collective knowledge and technological prowess. I doubt the basic intelligence of the average human has changed very much in the last 3000 years. Our capacity to feel and be loved hasn’t grown in the last 2000 years. The desires and needs of a new born infant are still almost the same as they must have been a few million years ago. So while technological change is exponential biological change is relatively constant. This is why technology without foresight and vision is so dangerous. Technology breaks barriers. It shortens time and distance. It is the great instant pill reducing the amount of physical labor necessary to live. But its also blind. The chain saw doesn’t care if it cuts down every tree. The TV doesn’t care if it shows WWE or Sesame Street to a generation of South African kids. The cell phone doesn’t care if its used as the detonating device in a large bomb or to call 911 once the bomb explodes.

We are basically large apes running really fast to change the world but staying in the someplace because we can’t change ourselves.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

We are like the Red Queen in Through The Looking Glass and the only solution we can think of is to run faster, when maybe the right choice is to slow down and make sure we’re not running in circles. Its easy to change the world with our technology but much much harder to change ourselves so we can use it efficiently, effectively and ethically.

Its interesting the places you mind can go when set out to help an 8^th grade student with maths. Just imagine all the places it can go when you set out to explore the world.

The Umjindi Mumicipality hereby informs you that reticulation has been completed.

This was the beginning of a message that greeted me as I entered the small one room library in the location. Reading further down the announcement I found out that reticulation (what ever that actually is) was completed for Phase 2 and Extensions 15 – 17. This are some of the least developed areas of the location. I’ve been through them only once or twice, but the difference between them and where I live is almost as great as between where I live and Barberton itself. Almost every single house is made of wood planks and you can see in through the cracks. There’s also a vegetable garden in front of most houses and the number of chickens wondering the street is closer to that of a rural village than a township.

I had to wonder how many residents of these areas 1) actually make it all the way up to the library which is in a much different area of the location and 2) how many of them would understand what the message was about. When reading it I had no idea what the word reticulation actually meant except for something I might have found on the GREs. After reading further down the letter and seeing that requests to have water hook ups could now be made I figured it had something to do with water piping. Since I was at the library I went in and found a dictionary to look reticulation up, here’s what I found.

reticulation: to divide, mark, or construct so as to form a network

Ok I can sort of see how that might somehow be the same as connecting really poor houses to the main water supply, but seriously, which ever office bound bureaucrat who picked that word had no idea what their actual audience was like and must have only been trying to impress their boss. I didn’t see a SiSwati translation of the announcement anywhere (I was sort of looking forward to using the SiSwati equivalent of reticulation in random everyday conversations), so I can only hope that there were other means of getting this message to the people that live in this area.

This is the great divide that exists in South Africa right now, and its not a racial one. It’s between those people who can use the word reticulation in the main subject of an official flier about water distribution and those people who cut their own wood to build a small 2 room shack for their families. These two groups coexist with in kilometers of each other but each has very little understanding or the other. For me as a Peace Corps Volunteer it is very interesting to sit somewhere in the middle of the two groups and go back and forth.

There are aspects of your society that are so ingrained and habitual that you don’t notice them until you have the opportunity to live in another culture.  Some of these are major things and pretty obvious to anyone with knowledge of both cultures.  But some of them are really subtle and found only in the small unimportant details.  Here’s a story of one such aspect of American society that is so ingrained in me that even after five months here I just realized it today.

I went to the one of the local shops to by some crackers and candy.  The total came out to be R10.50.  I had a R10 and R20 bill in my wallet so I figured I’d try to get 50 cents out of my coin pouch.  My mind was on cruise control and thinking 50 cents though 2 quarters.  Now I know perfectly well that South African coin denominations come in 5, 10, 20, 50 cents and then 1, 2 and 5 rand.  But when I think 50 cents my mind defaulted to looking for two coins.  Since I only had one 50 cent coin, which I thought was 25 cents, I payed with the R20 bill.  Instead of handing me back 9.50 — which would have all been in coins — the merchant handed me a 10 rand bill back.  I immediately thought that at least I could give him the 25 cents if he wasn’t going to make me pay the 50 cents.  And then while I was handing it to him I suddenly realized that it was 50 and not 25 cents. Walking out of the store I felt pretty stupid.  The cashier must have seen my 50 cent coin in my coin pouch and couldn’t understand why I didn’t hand it to him at first.

Over the past few weeks I have had several opportunities to render a great service to people. That service is the all important enlightenment about the silent vibrate profile on cell phones! My host mom recently bought a new cell phone, and this phone is a power house of computing power. It has the ability to view word, excel and power point documents, plays mp3s and videos, comes with a 5 megapixel, built in bluetooth and wifi, and could probably control the TV if I spent some time digging through the manual. So anyway one of the first things that she asked me to show her how to do was put the phone in silent mode. I was more than happy to help with this because cell phones going off during meetings, class, or any other inappropriate time is a major problem here. For most of the cheaper phones there’s nothing you can do about this since they have no silent or vibrate option (why those are considered advanced features is beyond me) and these advanced phones hid the option so deep down in the Tools or Settings options that it makes it hard to change.

I fumbled around the settings on the phone (reading manuals sometimes takes longer and in never quite as much fun) for a few minutes and managed to change the up short cut key to take her to the phone profiles page. Since then I’ve had to do this service for about 3 other people. I’ve also been showing people how to get more out of the expensive phone’s they are buying. When you show someone how to use the funny picture frames on their phones camera it doesn’t take long for the phones background to change to their 2 year daughter with a clown face superimposed over her or a snowy boarder around their house. These phones are all really powerful and teaching people to use the more advanced features is quite a rewarding task. Of course I never have to teach any of the kids anything about the phones and ofter learn things from them. My supervisors son was with me at work and told me all about the best sites for downloading MIDIS or flash videos to my phone. My host mothers nephew showed me how all the kids here chat online all day with a program called MxIT where he has over 100 friends he talks to daily.

On a completely different note I was told today by another volunteer that today is SA18’s 100^th day in South Africa. With everything that has happened and all the new and amazing people I’ve meet it seems like it should be much longer than that, but at the same time when I look at pictures from back home or talk to friends it seems like just yesterday I drove with my family to staging in D.C. I think if I have time this weekend I’ll make a javascript counter so everyone can now how many days we’ve been here. It will be a good weekend project to add to my already long list of weekend projects.

My first spring time in South Africa has already begun and there are only two colors on the trees purple and green. About a week and a half ago these purple trees started blooming all over town. The colors were so vibrant and unique for trees that I thought I would take out a few pictures.

Road leading into Barberton bordered by Jacaranda Trees

The Purple Foothills of Barberton.

When I got back home I decided to google “Purple Tree South Africa” and it turns out South Africa is famous for these trees and I can now understand why. The trees are called Jacaranda trees and the trees in Pretoria are so famous that sometimes called “Jacaranda City” and there’s a whole flicker cluster just for Jacaranda trees in Pretoria!. I’ll have to remember to make a trip to Pretoria next October so I can see them.

The blossoms have already started falling and going down some of the streets in town it looks like there is a centimeter of purple snow on the ground. Its really cool to look out towards the mountains and see purple patches all over. I’m used to looking at the vibrant oranges, yellows and reds of an American forest so the Jacaranda purple is always surprising when I see it even after a few weeks.