The Regrettable Education of Michael Buble

November 16, 2016.Reading time 8 minutes.

Upon hearing the news of his son’s cancer diagnosis, my heart immediately went out to this man I have never met and likely never will. Obviously, I hurt for his entire family. But as a father who has also heard the dreaded words, “your child has cancer,” I can identify more with Noah’s Daddy and the cries of utter helplessness pounding a discordant melody inside his weary mind.

Quite frankly, this is awful and I don’t wish it on anyone, famous or otherwise. There are things he is in the process of discovering that no man should be forced to learn – yet his education is being forged in the pristine environment of a hospital and it can’t be stopped. He can’t withdraw from school, clep out of an exam, or skip this grade. There is no syllabus and the lectures can change violently at a moment’s notice. This is not a bunny class… basket-weaving 101. No, this is AP post-graduate work – a trial by fire where no grades are curved and no group study is allowed. Sharpen your pencil and take your seat, this class is the hardest that the School of Life has to offer.

Multiplication by Subtraction

August 24, 2016.Reading time 7 minutes.

No one in our family is a math whiz – we’re all literature folk with one black-sheep biologist mixed in. Quite frankly, I think the average student is taught way too much mathematics in school. If you don’t plan on becoming an engineer, physicist, or statistician, do you really need to have advanced calculus or trigonometry? I’m sure most would disagree, but I wonder if we aren’t taught too much high level math and not enough basic life skills. How did my girls graduate high school with honors yet have never been taught how to balance a checkbook, write a resume, or fill out basic government paperwork?

I’m not saying I can’t do math. I can function on a very basic level and I helped the kids with homework until they got to about the eighth grade. That’s where I went rusty and chewed pencils down to nubs before blaming teachers for their new math and its crazy calculation methods. Give me Markmatics, which is a math theorem based on very rudimentary understanding, a calculator, and Google.