Although I no longer teach at my own University, as a secular Jew (i.e., one who needs love and approbation, which explains why so many comedians are Jewish), I will claim that I’m included in the group being celebrated today by Google. And I still teach here and there. . . .
I left out this holiday in the Hili post, but include it here, along with the cute animated Doodle. Click on it to see where it goes:
I have a feeling that the last pencil in line, stunted, alone, and upside down, is making some kind of political or ideological statement, but maybe I’ve been in the game too long. Your guess?
Matthew Cobb, however, still teaches, so we can celebrate him. And also Leicester City, which clinched the championship of the Premier League yesterday after my beloved Spurs didn’t beat Chelsea, tying them at 2-2.
The one at the end is the one non-conformist in every class!
You ask for approbation by not asking for approbation! Eg in your why does no one read my science posts!😊
Sorry, but that was not asking for approbation; I was trying to ascertain if people were really reading them: they are the hardest posts to write and I didn’t want to put in the effort if they weren’t read. This post, on the other hand. . .
Yes, thanks to John Besley, my high school biology teacher for challenging my beliefs. And sites like this that educate the masses.
Mark Selby won the snooker! Also from Leicester or at least a supporter
Not forgetting the bones of Richard III were recently resurrected from a Leicester car park.
“exhumed”, I think. If he were resurrected, I’m sure our god – squad gadflies would have lost no time in letting us know of the event. With much crowing.
You are an excellent teacher through this website. I come here to learn. Also your books of course. I am even (I say “even” because I am just an amateur) reading Speciation.
That last pencil looks like the youngest, trying to keep up. But that would not explain why it is the only red one and the only one without an eraser.
Okay, no more approbation, but thanks!
I didn’t know Spurs were your team Jerry – commiserations.
They’ve been brilliant all season, fantastic to watch, played better football than Leicester, have the best young striker in the world(who scored a couple of the goals of the season), a fantastic young manager, and they’ve had to play the last few months uphill considering most of England if not the world has been lapping up the Leicester fairytale and willing Tottenham to blow it. They lost their cool a bit – okay, a lot – yesterday but I pretty much understood why, since they’ve been treated as though they’re an inconvenience simply for not standing aside and letting Leicester win.
You should be proud of them. They remind me of some of Alex Ferguson’s young Manchester United teams when they were on the brink of becoming serious contenders. If Tottenham can ward off the(many) vultures who will inevitably descend in pursuit of their manager and their best players they could be on the verge of something great.
…played better football than Leicester…
Yes, that’s why they’re still in the title race. Oh wait…
Hurray for all teachers! (Including my wonderful wife!)
My late parents too! 🙂
I should have guessed there would be a posting on this subject today. I’ll say what I said on the Hili dialogue:
…and today is Teacher’s Day. Congratulations to all the teachers on WEIT. I did a little teaching myself and I know it is very challenging (and rewarding). Teachers at every level, from primary through graduate school, deserve a great deal of respect and admiration for the critical work they do. Let’s hear it for the teachers!
To have a teacher’s day is fine but what they really need is the respect and compensation to equal their position in this endeavor. Not what is happening in Detroit today.
Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil. 🙂 My guess is the inversion is simply because it made for a cute(r) graphic.
I think the last one simply depicts a child too young to be in class but desiring to keep up with his/her siblings and learn from a teacher.
Yes – running to catch up. I know this is a US thing but how apposite that today some parents in England (& Wales?) are protesting about the imposition of ‘SATS’ tests on 6/7 year olds! No idea if they are right or wrong but taking your children out of school as a protest seems a funny thing to do.
Keep up!
Yes, it hasn’t yet the head for writing and the capability for learning from mistakes. (It takes a rubber padding to not hurt from redoing work…)
Or it was simply a way to make a “cute” pencil.
I also thought that the shorty having trouble keeping up was a younger sibling, wanting to be in school like his/her siblings. I had three stair-step children. When the eldest started second grade and the next eldest started first grade in the same year, the three-year old tried to stay in each of their classrooms and was terribly disappointed to have to go home with Mom.
All the little pencils fit well known stereotypes. You have the besties. The slightly discombobulated nerd, and the perfectionist.
That strangely reminds me of Top Cat and his gang. And that’s Benny tagging along at the end.
This is how I feel about good teachers:
“let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
They can be the role models of our future, the inspiration for our civilization, and purveyors of direction for all creative endeavors. [Full disclosure: I was once a HS teacher and hope to be again someday.]
Props to “Dr Blunt,” who may have tried Xtian proselytising from time to time in form time, but allowed us to debate and argue the subjects without interference (Except to keep things civil). And when handed a note, in my handwriting, that said “NI3 (so-called)” accompanied by a finger pointing at my ear, refrained from verbal questions until I’d recovered.
I bet he did a stock – take of the store room and worked out where I’d got the materials. But he didn’t change the locks.
In my view, anyone who explains or describes something in a useful way to another is a teacher, however minor. In that way we can be grateful to many members of our species, which is not to detract from all those who spend much time at it, and those who make it a profession.
“I have a feeling that the last pencil in line, stunted, alone, and upside down, is making some kind of political or ideological statement, but maybe I’ve been in the game too long. Your guess?”
The runt is ready to write. The others are posed to erase and rewrite, proofread. She, the runt, is saying “Come on! It’s time to write history.”
The teacher is of course reading the words “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Oh, and the teacher just told the student pencils about the Bangladesh murders of humanists. The runt pencil is ready to sign the petition.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Bangladesh_Prime_Minister_of_Sheikh_Hasina_Protect_the_rights_to_freedom_of_religion_belief_and_expression/?wFQyFkb
No eraser because cannot admit mistakes; red because socialist; short because stunted; last because slow. It’s Bernie Sanders!
Actually I think it’s just another member of the class who is a bit different, drawn smaller to be cuter, and that there is no political message at all.
I am that little red pencil in math class.
In that case, most of us are “little red pencils” in some subject or other. When my kids were in a non-graded grade school in Palo Alto, CA, the students learned to help each other. Those with skills in one subject tutored others with less skill in that topic, and vice versa. They learned that we are all “differently abled” in some ways and we are all intelligent in some ways.
That school sounds heavenly. When I was struggling in math, teachers didn’t care because “girls can’t do math” so they saw this as normal. When I got things wrong, they simply said “do it again” instead of helping me figure out why I got the answer wrong.
I excelled in language and reading and writing so had an extremely advanced level of reading comprehension. In order to keep a reading program open for kids with reading problems, they put me in a remedial reading class. Guess when this class was? During math class. So basically, it made everything worse. There was no remedial math class.