the students will (TSW) label all radians and coordinate points on the unit circle

the title is a transcription of one of the listed objectives for my model lesson today; and it is, when interpreted at face value, a drastically impossible/impractical objective. clearly, the intent is to label all "common" and/or "important" and/or "special" radians and coordiantes on the unit circle (this is where i wish that i had enough rudimentary HTML knowledge to post a graph), e.g. 0, 30, 45, 60, and 90 degrees in the 1st quadrant (again, more advanced computer competence would allow me to actually present these in radians, as well as give their coordinates) . however, when i raised a question regarding both the validity of the objective as it was stated as well as the acceptability of such a presented goal, our veteran teacher responded - in effect - by stating that (a) i was able to understand what it meant, and (b) you don't want to overcomplecate your written goals.

my problems with this -

(a) i was only able to understand what this meant via focused intuition, and only this after doing a double-take when actually reading the objective. this, in my mind, is a situation wholly insufficient for maintaining the academic integrity of a classroom; a student - or any person in the classroom - should not be left to fend for themselves - especially on intuitive grounds - in order to understand with confidence the very premise of the day's lesson. this is a particuarly difficult situation when you're dealing with a population for which this material is new, and who may not even notice the logical snag in such a written objective as the one give above - which can only lead to some reducto ad absurdum in their mathematical worldview somewhere down the line, and thus rather uncecessary confusion. if objectives are not internally consisent, then they have no place as focal points of discourse.

(b) the words "common," "special," and "important" are not overly complex terms. rather, they are in the exact set of words that serve to demystify the situation. furthermore, these radians are actually useful within our setting, due to their functional smoothness with those properties of math we usually deem worthwhile. so, i can't see how any emphasis on the powerful substructure of these objects - which resurfaces again and again in various mathematical fields - can serve to overcomplicate, rather than merely provide both logical consistency and further narrative boost to the character of these coordinates.

so this was today. yesterday, during another model lesson, our veteran teacher was questioned about the role of austria in the marshall plan - an inquiry sparked by the teacher's drawing of the "iron curtain" across post-war europe, signifying those countries east of the line as soviet satellites, and those left of the line as recipients of marshall plan funds. austria was on the western side of the line, and - whether it belonged there or not, i do not know - a student wanted to check that this was the case. the teacher responded - in effect - that we would talk about austria later, when the cold war intensifies and austria joins the ottoman empire.

clearly, both this and the "all radians and coordinates" case were most likely simple mistakes. however, in both cases, surprising difficulty arose in attempts to discuss what seemed to be factual missteps on the part of the teacher. perhaps this is due to a degree of defensiveness on tha part of the person questioned, but it seems that these sorts of inquiries are not inappropriate in a teacher-training scenario. in the austrian case, the veteran teacher responded to my inquiry that talk of austria and the ottoman empire would be covered in a later lecture. when i persisted in wondering what post-wwII austria had to do with the ottoman empire (which i primarily associate with turkey and wwI), she continued to stress the fact that these connections would be covered in a later lecture, when the class would go over "new maps" vs. "old maps." though still unable to see how this validated what seemed to be either an untruth or a huge analytical stetch, i did not push the issue further.

i don't know what to make of all this - i witness similar factual messiness on part of some teacher corps colleagues (and they very well may have anecdotal evidence of my own inconsistencies in this field) during the summer school placement last month. as i find the mere dissemination of untruth (regardless of any relation to intent) something of a cardinal sin (excuse my popery) in the ritual of the pedagogical performative, i haven't taken these instances lightly. on the other hand, as any sort of dialogue about these observations carries a high risk of offense on the part of those observed, i haven't known how to procede. regardless, due to the high instance of these sort of jarring events, i'm worried that there is some sort of structural weakness in the very theories of teaching that i'm coming into contact with, at least as i parse them with my staunch opposition to the dissemination of untruth.

a last anecdote: during a different lecture/discussion that i encountered yesterday, the dialogue shifted from the role of mississippi oil & gas companies in state efforts to fund education reforms to a broader discussion on the global oil economy of the 70s and 80s. as a start, the teacher mentioned the drastic drop in oil prices during the 80s - this happening after the confrontation with the state government over educational funding (the governor at the time wanted to raise the severance tax on oil to fund public schools - specifically kindergarten programs. the oil & gas companies wanted nothing to do with it). then, a student asked about the gas shortage in the 70s, and whether this had anything to do with the companies's opposition to the tax raise. the teacher said that while the gas shortage played a major role in the exploration for oil in mississippi, he had no idea how this may have related with the industry's response to the severance tax. what is more, this person worked on the governor's staff during this very period. in contrast to the jarring equivocation earlier that day, this person's very honest admittance of limitation seemed particularly impressive.

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in other news: i bought ten ties today at a thrift store.