Chapter 10 Section ten

You don't hear the word "imbecile" much these days, but it used to be a common term.When I was in the third grade of elementary school, the teacher once directly said that I was imbecile, so this is an unforgettable word for me.In Xiaodoudou's school, which is the Ba Xueyuan founded by Mr. Xiao Lin, no teacher would say such a thing to the students.But after the war started, this liberal elementary school was inevitably affected by the war.One day, a female teacher sent by the Ministry of Education came to the tram classroom as our homeroom teacher.This teacher hardly smiles, I am not particularly afraid of her, but more like a bronze statue.However, this teacher does not object to the teaching method of Ba Xueyuan. Every morning, she also puts

Questions for all the subjects to be studied in a day are written on the blackboard, and we can start with the subjects we like, just like in the past. However, one day, I did an arithmetic problem and showed the answer to the teacher.The teacher stared at my notebook for a while, then looked at me and said: "You are an imbecile! This is called an imbecile!" I also thought to myself: "Is it true?" The arithmetic problem is like this: a large gear has 20 teeth, a small gear has 5 teeth, and the small gear revolves around the large gear.How many revolutions does it take for the small gear to go around the large gear?The purpose of this question is probably to let children learn the operation of division, but I couldn't figure it out at the time, so I wrote a "7" as the answer.So the teacher called me "low-energy".The teacher told me about the relationship between 20 and 5, and then said:

"I'll come up with another question, changing the numbers. Take this as a sample question." So the teacher said slowly: "There is a large gear with 25 teeth, and a small gear with 5 teeth. How many revolutions does it take for the gear with 5 teeth to go around the large gear?" I went back to my seat and thought about it, but I still couldn't figure it out.I sat in my seat for a long time, when the teacher turned around and saw the word "9" written in my notebook, the teacher sighed.In my opinion, the teacher's sigh and "imbecile" mean the same thing.

Since then, my math has gotten worse.At first I wanted to do the math, but when I thought "I'm an imbecile anyway", I was discouraged again.However, even though I had nothing to say when I got home, I never told my parents what the teacher said about me being "imbecile". This is where children feel sympathetic.There have also been reports recently that some children were bullied by teachers or friends at school, but they kept their mouths shut when they returned home. I understand these children very well.This is because children don't want their parents to worry about themselves, and they don't want their parents to be sad.There are other things that children may think about more than adults, which is really pathetic.To say that I am imbecile can be said to be true to a certain extent, that’s all, but there are many things in this world that are not true, which is very unreasonable.

However, I am not a child who is just recognized as "imbecile".When I got home, I first made a large gear with 20 teeth out of cardboard, and then I made a small gear with 5 teeth.Then I tried to make the small gear go around the big gear.Doing it by hand, I found that problem very strange, because the small gear only has 5 teeth, and the spacing between teeth will be too large anyway, and there is no way to make it rotate around the large gear properly.There must be some rules here.But at least it seems to me that getting the two gears to mesh closely can only be done by imagination.I pressed my finger on the pinion and finally succeeded in making it turn.So I finally understood that if the large gear with 20 teeth needs to be rotated once, the small gear with 5 teeth needs to rotate 4 times.

Just because it was said to be "low-energy", I simply made the 25-tooth and 5-tooth gears in the example.Then I thought about it, the 5-tooth pinion, I can obviously use the one in the last question.For me, who is always clumsy, it is not easy to cut the cardboard into a tooth shape.The answer to the sample question is to turn 5 times.I put 4 gears of different sizes in a row and came to the conclusion that arithmetic is really terrible!However, I have made it myself, and I have a little understanding of the relationship between division or ninety-nine operations. After "that's called imbecility" though, I really hated arithmetic and numbers.Then I went to a girls' school, and my aversion to numbers got worse, and I always got a 0 in algebra.In contrast, geometry is almost always 100 points, which is really very strange.I think this is because I made gears out of cardboard, so I became interested in things that can be seen with the eyes.However, it would be too troublesome to see everything with the eyes, so I am not good at calculation until now.But if I use things to demonstrate, I can still do it.

For example, there is a question: 3+2 = ?I'll go and get some apples first, then put 3 apples with half an apple, then 2 apples with 3 of a quartered apple.Count these apples (the cut apples are also counted as a whole), and you get six and a quarter of an apple, which is 6.I don't know if the result of my calculation is correct, but it is actually like this when you look at it with things.Maybe people who like mathematics will think that there is no need to count apples one by one, just think about it in your head, isn't it all right?And the number of apples is not endless, and it would be too difficult to do arithmetic if it had to be.But there are people like me in the world.

Let's talk about geometry.Although this also requires numbers, but geometry has graphics, and I can find my own solution in the process of observing the graphics, so I like geometry very much.For example: "As shown in the figure, a circle O with diameter AC is inscribed in triangle ABC, find the length of BC." For such a problem, I don't use those fixed formulas to solve it, although I can't explain my method to others. But I was able to work out the answer.I usually get 100 points. The teacher will probably wonder how I got the answer?I always just write the answer under the question and hand in the paper.It stands to reason that it seems that the calculation method should be written, but the teacher seems to have no interest in it, and never asked me.I was talking to people about this a while ago, and they said that if the teacher took an interest in my solution, and thus paid attention to my unique solution, maybe I would become an Einstein-like figure.Made everyone laugh.

However, because I always get 0 points in algebra, and in one exam, I wrote on the answer sheet: "The teacher lies. It is not a good thing to lie to students." This made the male teacher in the girls' school Give me negative 10 points, that is, "-10".It must be that you don't want to have anything to do with me in the future.I put that on the answer sheet because the teacher clearly lied about giving us new textbooks. A few days later, I ran into the teacher in the hallway, and he stopped me and said: "Last time I gave you a negative 10. As a teacher, it shouldn't be. I cancel that score."

I asked: "Then how many points will it be?" "0 points." Hearing what the teacher said, I whispered: "Then there's no need to cancel it." Before that, when the teacher asked everyone "what's the problem", I asked: "Why should we learn algebra? Is it necessary?" The teacher replied: "I'll go back and think about it, and I'll answer you tomorrow." The next day, the teacher explained: "If you learn geometry, you can calculate the height of a tree without climbing up a tree, and you can know how many meters a bridge is without having to cross a bridge."

After hearing this, I thought: "Indeed, this is very necessary." But the teacher went on to say: "However, what use algebra is, I don't quite know." I feel very sorry.If it was useful, maybe I would still want to learn it, but it... just like that, even if I can get 100 points in geometry, I always get 0 points in algebra, and only 50 points in mathematics on average.I was one such underachieving student who grew up feeling "imbecile".I can only remember one or two digits of the phone number. I am not good at numbers at all, but I can remember the numbers that I am interested in very clearly, and sometimes I even admire myself.When I traveled to many countries for my work with UNICEF, I was able to memorize a lot of numbers without using a notebook at all.The journey of the goodwill ambassador's inspection is very hard. Together with the staff of TV Asahi, the photographer Mr. Takeno Tanuma, several reporters from the newspaper office, and the staff of UNICEF, we will conduct the inspection in about a week. About 100 hours of activity.Traveling all the way by car or small plane, visiting hospitals, schools, meeting children, sometimes meeting the president, inspecting refugee camps, deserts, landmines, destroyed houses, etc., in short, almost Check it out on the run.In the middle of the night we have to check the numbers, such as "how many people are in that refugee camp", and all the numbers have to be checked by the TV station, Mr. Tanuma, journalists and UNICEF staff.Because if there is a mistake when it is announced to the outside world, it will be terrible.At that time, I was the only one without a laptop.Because when I meet the kids, if I hold something in my hand, I can't hold the kids, I can't shake their hands.But for some reason, I can clearly remember the numbers at this time, which surprised everyone. In Angola, in the middle of the civil war, 375 out of 1,000 children died before the age of five.During the conflict in Rwanda, more than 500,000 people were killed, and more than 2 million people fled abroad as refugees. There were 384,800 Rwandan refugees in 35 refugee camps around Congo (Old Zaire). 1.5 million people became internal refugees.In Iraq during the Gulf War, 170,000 children were at risk due to severe malnutrition.The number of ground buried in Kosovo has reached 1 million.Every year, 10 million children die before the age of 5 in the world.A 12-year-old girl in Haiti sold her body for just 42 yen (6 guldens) in order to support her family.In Haiti, 80% of the population are unemployed adults 0%, because there is no opportunity for education, the literacy rate is only 15%.There are 1 million AIDS orphans in Uganda. Some people may think that these numbers are not very simple?In the past 16 years, I have visited more than 20 countries. The numbers are quite large, but I can remember almost all of them.In the last article I wrote that when I was in elementary school, I was a child with LD (learning disability), and this article wrote that I was very bad at arithmetic and numbers.But the numbers that matter most to me right now, the numbers about the children of the world, are neatly organized in my head. Even a child who is called imbecile has somewhere a potential that is unique to that child and is his own. (full text)