50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education by Charles Sykes

Author:Charles Sykes [Sykes, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

RULE 25

Pi does not care what you think.

Regardless of your opinion, personal preferences, or need to be “true to yourself,” pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, is approximately 3.14159265358979323846. This isn’t like the debate about red versus purple pens: pi is what it is, no matter how you feel about it.

Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees centigrade); the speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282 miles per second; a basketball court is ninety-four feet long; the diameter of a basketball rim is eighteen inches; and the peak of Mount Everest is 29,035 feet above sea level.

Science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick defines reality as that which “when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”106 In other words, not all truth is subjective or relative, despite the number of times you hear the phrase “Well, that’s just my opinion.” Of course, some things are genuinely matters of personal opinion, like your taste in music, or whether you like red more than blue. But other facts stubbornly refuse to accommodate themselves to your needs, desires, intentions, or feelings. Remember that, the next time you are tempted to think that the world revolves around you.

* * *

Engineers can pursue their bliss, but if they don’t know the mechanical properties of steel, their buildings will fall down; and even if they have been protected from dodgeball their whole lives, lawyers have to know the rules of procedure or see their briefs tossed out of court. Your personal views have little bearing on the physics of a two-and-a-half-ton car smashing into a light pole.

One day, when he wasn’t managing the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said: “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” As Michael Barone might put it, Hard America recognizes this; Soft America doesn’t.107

Like a softball team that wanders into the New York Yankees’ spring training camp, the educrats, counselors, professors, pundits, and therapists of Soft America often regard Hard America with a mixture of disdain and anxiety. People who talk or emote for a living always have a nagging inferiority complex about people who do things, especially those who have to do things that can be measured and that can have exacting standards of excellence. Surgeons, firefighters, pilots, and architects have to get it right; Soft America just needs to feel OK about it.

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