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Chapter 5

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “But Ghadshyk, what has algebra got to do with anything?  When in my life will I use algebra again outside of school?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I have two answers to that question.  The first is another question:  What are you going to do with your life?  What jobs will you work at, what field will you work in, how will you make your living?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, I … I don’t know.  I’m only twelve!  How am I supposed to know what the next fifty years of my life are going to be like already?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Exactly.  I didn’t think you’d have a realistic answer, though most kids your age dream of something.  The real answer here is of course that if you don’t know what you’re going to be doing on a day to day basis in ten years or twenty years or fifty years, how can you know whether or not you’ll need algebra to do it?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I guess I don’t, but … couldn’t I just learn algebra if and when I decide to do something that requires it?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “You could, but first let me give you my second answer:  You aren’t learning algebra because you need algebra right now, or because your teachers expect you to go into one of the thousands of occupations that will require its use, but rather as part of a larger, general base of instruction.  Algebra gives you critical thinking skills that you can use in thousands of non-mathematical ways, Larry.  And with a mind that can do algebra automatically, the same way you count now, or breathe, or tie your shoes, these ways of thinking will come easily for you for the rest of your life.  Along with your other subjects in these early studies, and typically even through the baccalaureate degree you may someday get from a university, algebra helps form a mind in you that is good at learning and thinking in a wide variety of ways, so you can handle a wide variety of difficulties that you may come across in your life.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “You study algebra, and it helps you understand how to look at things in a balanced way, to see how things on one side of an equation or situation in life can have a transformative effect on things on the other side, and how to see what that means.  It also gives you the foundation you will need to study trigonometry, calculus, and more complicated maths that will further give you insights into how the world around you works.  Sure, most life isn’t like a simple equation, where x equals two times y plus three; that just doesn’t fit with what really goes on around you.  When you get to the more advanced principles, the more complicated maths, they get more and more like what actually happens around you in the real world.  With calculus, you could engineer a building or understand the passage of the stars in the sky.  Without algebra, you can’t study trigonometry or calculus and you will find yourself limited to a tiny box of thought from which you cannot even think of escaping.  Learning these things that seem today to have no value in your life will be rewarding to you in ways I cannot even describe, but that, in you apply yourself over the next few years, you will begin to see for yourself.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Likewise, history, English, science, and all your other subjects help to form your mind so that it is more freely able to see the world.  By knowing what has happened in the world before you were around to see it, you can begin to understand what is happening today from a more accurate perspective.  Not just world events, like why one country or ethnicity holds a grudge against another, but more personal events as well.  Almost every reason two people have fallen in or out of love or friendship that you will experience has happened to someone before.  Almost any career path that you go down has been held by thousands of people before you.  Almost any goal you set your mind to accomplish, someone else has seen a way that it can be done, and in all these things, your understanding of history will give you a better idea of how you can better proceed in your own life.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “With English it is a double-edged sword, because at the same time that you are studying the language, you are studying the history of its use.  In coming years, these two subjects will be separated for you, but they are both very important.  I know more languages than I could easily count, and they not only open up a world of communication to me, but they help me to understand the people who speak them in more than the obvious ways.  By knowing how a culture’s language has evolved and how it is structured, you can see their history, their values, and the ways they choose to address different subjects, bust by the words their language has and does not have, by they way their words come together, and in a larger context, how that is different from the ways that other cultures put together their words to try to express themselves.  Learn English as a language, but try to see it in the greater context of the hundreds of languages in use on the Earth today.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “At the same time, try to pay attention when studying the great literature that they will undoubtedly be assigning for you to read.  Do not look on it as a chore that you must get through, but as an opportunity to get to know the author who created it, as I was explaining to Merle in the story yesterday.  You can learn not just what the author put down on the page in words, but what the author was saying about himself with his word choice, and what it says about the world that the author was living in that he chose to write what he did when he did.  There is so much more to any one work than just the surface of the matter, and you need to learn to see it.  I realize that your teachers most likely do not appreciate this fact, and will not give you enough time to really study a great text in depth, but I can help you to see deeper than the surface, to really get to know not just the characters of a book, but the author.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “By getting to know all these people, the real people who wrote the books as well as the creations contained within them, you are broadening your horizons yet again, becoming able to see how people other than yourself and your friends and family think.  Beyond the cultural walls that have been thrown up all around you without your even noticing it.  By understanding how someone else thought about something, you can begin to see alternate ways that you can address the situations that will arise in your life, no matter where it takes you.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Larry’s eyes were beginning to glaze over, though he had not blinked the entire time that Ghadshyk had been speaking.  Suddenly he blinked, and shook his head.  He seemed back in the present.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Were you paying attention, Larry?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Yes, I…  I just … I guess no one has ever shown me this much … intensity and admiration and … understanding of education before.  I just thought it was something you had to do so you could get on with your life.  You talk about it as though if I don’t get my education right, my life will be empty and meaningless.  Is it true?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, think about the adults you know, the ones who have this shallow view of education.  Do they seem happy?  Do they have open minds, or do they just go through life, do as they’re told without spending spare time or thought on their hopes, dreams, their imaginations, and doing what they really want to do?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I’ve … I guess I never really thought about it.  They’re just grownups, you know?  Most of the time I don’t even think about the fact that they’re people, too, that they might not be happy.”  Larry considered what Ghadshyk had asked him.  He thought about his mom and dad, his teachers, and he couldn’t remember any of them getting excited about anything, even the things they called their hobbies.  It all just seemed like things they did to pass the time, rather than things they did because they enjoyed doing them.  “I don’t think they’re very happy.  They don’t seem to enjoy the things they do, not even their hobbies, which I thought was supposed to be the things you did because you enjoyed them the most.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “See?  I would guess that none of them got past the rote memorization and regurgitation that passes for education in most schools, that they never learned to think freely or critically about themselves or their lives, and that it has left them empty on the inside.  Do you want to be that way when you grow up, or do you want to be able to see all the possibilities that lay before you, to chase your dreams constantly, and to see them come alive before you?  Considering you followed someone’s story about a dragon to see if it was real, I’m willing to bet that you’d prefer to stay a dreamer than to submit to the bleak prospects that doing the bare minimums in school will provide you, and that is why you should study algebra.  You want to be happy, and to do what you want, and to be free to dream and to see the possibilities in life instead of the limitations, and algebra is one of the first steps on that road.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Wow.  No one has ever put it that way to me before.  Study algebra if you want to be happy with your life.  That’s heavy stuff.  But what can I do but believe you?  You’re a friggin’ dragon!  You have over six hundred years of experience!  My parents are babies compared to you, Ghadshyk.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “There’s no reason to disrespect your parents, Larry.  They simply are products of their past, and you have the benefit of my assistance in becoming a better person than you otherwise would have been.  That doesn’t make your parents bad people.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “No, no, I didn’t mean.  Just…  They’re so young compared with you, they don’t know any better.  You worked a hundred and fifty more years than they’ve been alive before you were even considered educated and mature enough to leave home.  I’m just saying that I trust you, Ghadshyk.  That’s all.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Fine, then can we get started on your algebra?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Yes.”

• • • • • • • •

Permalink for this paragraph 0 After nearly three hours of working with Ghadshyk on his homework for the day, Larry had not only completed the assignments, but had gained a deep understanding not only of that weeks’ worth of studies, but a new perspective on the school year so far.  It hadn’t occurred to him, but Larry now understood each of his homework assignments better than the teachers which had assigned them.  To Larry, it was as though what had been missing from his education before was suddenly staring him in the face.  After only one day, Larry was more interested in having Ghadshyk as a tutor than in the general idea of hanging out with a dragon.  Not that he didn’t want to hear more stories.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Can I find out what happened with Merle, now?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “It’s getting pretty late, Larry.  I’ll tell you a little of what happened next, but then you have to go home.  I don’t want you to be late for supper.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, don’t leave me with such a cliffhanger of an ending this time.  You know I won’t be back until Monday afternoon.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I know.  And you know what you’re going to do this weekend?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Play with my friends?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Yes.  Also, you’re going to tell your parents about me.  You can show them the work we’ve already done together, and you can now explain all of it with a better understanding than probably they ever had on these subjects.  Well, it’ll seem that way, anyhow, since they’ve lived so much of their lives since they thought about middle school subjects.  So they’ll not only believe you came over here to be tutored, they’ll have faith in me as a tutor.  Alright?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Sure.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Okay, then.  Where was I?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “You told Merle, who had just revealed that he was a human, to not go to the enclave, but to meet you back at that spot in one year.  You told him how to try to read more intensely, and you flew off.  So, what happened?  Did he follow you?  Did he meet you there a year later?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Merle could not have followed me if he’d wanted to, at that point.  Remember, I flew off?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Yeah, and he hadn’t flown the entire time.  Hey!  I bet he couldn’t fly at all!”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “That’s right, Larry.  Even with appropriately proportioned wings and a dragon’s body, he couldn’t lift off from the ground yet.  So he walked back to where he’d come from, I guess, and went back to studying.  When I showed up at that little outcropping of rock one year later, Merle was there waiting for me, in his human form.  He was very polite to me that day.  He had done as I had suggested, and had begun to study ‘Why We Breathe’ with a true intensity, and it seemed to have a real impact on him.  He seemed older than he ought to have aged in just one year.

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