Teaching Moments

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I rarely learned a phrase that was new to me from American Presidents. Of course we had to mug up Lincoln's Gettysburg speech going: "Four score and seven years ago..." because it was there in our school text. And there was this famous inaugural speech of Kennedy with the quotable quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you...", which became such a fashion statement of his that I saw it painted on a Railway Wall of KGP with loud attribution to him. I was amused to learn recently that he quietly lifted it from his old Headmaster (...I am happy to be in the good company of Kennedy and possibly his old HM?). Apparently JFK's old schoolmates got enraged:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056020/JFK-stole-ask-country-speech-old-headmaster.html

But I did learn a new phrase from a speech of Obama. He referred to the botched arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr as a 'teaching moment' for the Police. It doesn't matter that it apparently turned out to be a teaching moment for himself:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/obamas-teaching-moment-was-his-own

I just Googled for "Teaching Moment" and got 308,000 results in 0.30 seconds. So, it is not Obama's original phrase nor did he claim so. But, for me, it was new and I liked it very much because I have been in this business of teaching and learning all my life. In 'teaching moments' I include 'learning moments' since they have a symbiotic relation. One sustains the other. I guess Thurber's Editor wouldn't object to that word 'sustain' I used just now. Apparently, when he found his cub reporter writing in journalese: "...they sustained severe injuries", Thurber's Editor lifted the paperweight on the table and held it aloft in his arm and said: "This is what is meant by sustaining".

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So here are a few of my own many 'Teaching Moments':

My HM Father was also our English Teacher. Since our School in Muthukur was started just then, we had to travel to our District HQ, Nellore, to appear in our School Final Board Exams. My Father as an Invigilator and I as an Examinee traveled to Nellore and stayed in our Uncle's House for the week. My Father was a BA from Christian College, Madras, while my Uncle was an MA (Hons) in English, and a known Shakespeare Scholar.

The morning before my English Exam, my Uncle entered our Room and asked me in jest: "What is a gerund?" and I gave the stock reply taught by my Father: "present participle". My Uncle smiled at both of us and said: "Every present participle is not a gerund" and left the room.

That was my first Teaching Moment, and perhaps of my Father too, to be careful with words. There was no Google then and anyway I happened to go into Physics rather than English. So, it was only much later I learned the subtle difference between the two. See, for example:

http://www.myenglishgrammar.com/english/lesson-15-gerunds-and-present-participles.html

Many amateurs like me use the vogue word 'nuance' rather loosely. It is only recently that I read a striking example in a Literary Review. Apparently someone misquoted the Shakespeare line from Hamlet as:

"Methinks, the lady doth protest too much"

which apparently has a different nuance than that of the original:

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

That surely was a Teaching Moment for me not to misquote, at least, Shakespeare.

MSS was my First Physics Teacher at KGP. And none else of my contemporaries (perhaps seniors too) understood how to solve problems with pulleys and strings and weights and inclined planes and rolling spheres although we mugged up Newton's Laws, but were using our intuition instead and getting wrong answers. After solving two problems for me, MSS said:

"Trust Newtons' Laws"

That was a typical Teaching Moment for me. I never looked back. MSS also narrated the story of a very very Senior Professor. Apparently, the Senior Prof summoned MSS one day to his Chamber and said:

"All answers in the Chapter, Electrical Circuits, in this book are wrong"

MSS looked into one of his Solutions and said, naughtily:

"You should write to the author"

and quit. I asked MSS:

"Was he trusting Kirchoff's laws?".

MSS smiled and said: "No"

Physics is baffling because it divides what is essentially indivisible into various Subjects. I mean, the whole Universe is its subject matter. And so it is no use if you are an expert in various Subjects; you have to make Connections within you. Here only a Teacher who did it can help.

One evening, Vibhat Nair came to my room and ordered:

"Explain to me in a few words why Synchrotron Radiation has all those predominant X-ray frequencies while it is only a point charge going in a circle"

That was a Teaching Moment of sorts to me. Next morning when I met him near the Lockers, I told him: "It is like Doppler Effect". I could see from the light in his eyes that it was a Learning Moment for him which he won't easily forget.

The other day Pratik and I were talking about the (in)famous Clausius-Mossotti Equation that troubled me greatly till I read a nice derivation of it in Purcell. And we got talking about the macro- and micro- stuff which Pratik said always bothered him. That made me tell him:

"The atomic or molecular polarizability which you get from Spectroscopy in our Final Year Lab (once upon a time) is micro, while the dielectric constant that you measure in the Second Year Lab (once upon a time) is macro. The relation between the two is the Clausius-Mossotti Equation"

One rarely gets praise from Pratik; but he wrote:

"I love your summaries"

Aha Moment for both of us...


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