JOLLY DAYS

Pay Teachers More Than CEOs

I've been again this year watching the Filippenko astronomy lectures at Berkeley. After the 2006 series you might think you had seen the course, been there done that, but so much is changing in this golden age of astronomy and cosmology, and Filippenko is such a great teacher, there is good reason to watch again.

If anything, Filippenko has gotten better. If there is a gold standard for a society it is the great teachers. Great teachers pass on our human heritage, the culture, the knowledge, the resonant past, acting as a bridge to the future and ensuring the best of the society continues forward. They are like runners carrying hope. These 18 year old kids taking the Berkeley course will carry the wonder and enthusiasm about the cosmos with them the rest of their lives thanks to Filippenko. Or at least some of them will, if they cash in the chance for a better life an education affords.

After watching many university lecture podcasts it becomes apparent that like a parent with a toddler who begins to talk to adults with the same simplified syntax and rhythms, teachers are prone to play to the energetic, shallow enterprise of youth. Filippenko could probably moderate the showy demos, the Go Bears group membership cookies and the “rocks songs which relate to astronomy” beginning the lectures — but really so what? Filippenko is a human being, as easily impressed as impressive, as needy of being liked as any performer. He just happens to finish off the tally with intelligence, warmth, humor and enormous skills as a teacher; the blessing of a teacher who cares that his students get it.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana (“Life of Reason”)

And what the heck, how about some more from Santayana, we do love quotations:

• “Sanity is a madness put to good uses.”
• “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
• “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”
• “Oaths are the fossils of piety.”
• “People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.”
• “The world is perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery of what it is pretending to be.”
• “The highest form of vanity is love of fame.”
• “The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”
• “My old age judges more charitably and thinks better of mankind than my youth ever did.”