Wise Like a Child
Jul. 27th, 2010 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apple_pathwaysYesterday, while I was working with a student (he's 9), out of nowhere he turned to me and said, "You know in Antarctica they buy things with rocks." I asked him to clarify, and he said, "Yeah, people who live in Antarctica use rocks for money."
I explained to him that people don't actually live in Antarctica; just a handful of science-type sorts studying penguins and climate change and such.
He said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Antarctica; Antarctica, or Poland." At this, I nearly choked with laughter; being part Polish myself, I'd heard a lot of "dumb Pollack" jokes, but this was entirely new. I told him it was definitely not Poland he was thinking of. "But how do you know?"
That's always the question, isn't it? I said, "Because Poland is a developed nation (like he knows what that means...); of course they have their own money!" I asked him where he picked up this tid-bit, and he told me his archery teacher had told him that the eskimos used rocks for money.
Now, this is way off the topic of math (which is what I was supposed to be teaching him), but this is the sort of "teachable moment" one can't quite ignore. I picked up some paper and a pencil and drew a circle. "You know how the earth is shaped like a ball?" He nodded. "Ok, so Antarctica is here, on the bottom of the ball, in what we call the "southern hemisphere". The people your teacher calls eskimos, who actually go by many different names, live up here on the top half of the ball in what we call the "northern hemisphere", near what's called the Arctic Circle."
At this point, he had completely lost interest in my explanation; he'd only brought up this topic because he wanted to have a discussion in which we would speculate whether or not one could become rich by hauling a truck full of rocks up into an eskimo village and buying out the town. I asked him what he imagined he would buy from a society that used rocks as currency, but he didn't understand the question.
I explained to him that people don't actually live in Antarctica; just a handful of science-type sorts studying penguins and climate change and such.
He said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Antarctica; Antarctica, or Poland." At this, I nearly choked with laughter; being part Polish myself, I'd heard a lot of "dumb Pollack" jokes, but this was entirely new. I told him it was definitely not Poland he was thinking of. "But how do you know?"
That's always the question, isn't it? I said, "Because Poland is a developed nation (like he knows what that means...); of course they have their own money!" I asked him where he picked up this tid-bit, and he told me his archery teacher had told him that the eskimos used rocks for money.
Now, this is way off the topic of math (which is what I was supposed to be teaching him), but this is the sort of "teachable moment" one can't quite ignore. I picked up some paper and a pencil and drew a circle. "You know how the earth is shaped like a ball?" He nodded. "Ok, so Antarctica is here, on the bottom of the ball, in what we call the "southern hemisphere". The people your teacher calls eskimos, who actually go by many different names, live up here on the top half of the ball in what we call the "northern hemisphere", near what's called the Arctic Circle."
At this point, he had completely lost interest in my explanation; he'd only brought up this topic because he wanted to have a discussion in which we would speculate whether or not one could become rich by hauling a truck full of rocks up into an eskimo village and buying out the town. I asked him what he imagined he would buy from a society that used rocks as currency, but he didn't understand the question.