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Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Teachers:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

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Mykala, after recently graduating from her 200 hour instructor training at Core Power, is now (almost) certified to teach yoga. By summing up the whole experience in one sentence, I fail to describe the amount of energy required to get through the training. As Mykala was gone for many nights and weekends, I did my best to be supportive, but I got a chance to actually help when her class of budding instructors was required to bring in a novice and teach a class. I was the novice.

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Afternoon appointments at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry are scheduled from 1:15 to 4:00 in the afternoon. Here’s something you quickly learn: unless you have a really good reason for taking that long for one patient, you’d better finish up well before four in the afternoon. Expediency makes both the patients and the supervising dentists (under whose licenses we work on patients) much happier. So, in the three o’clock hour, only those dental students experiencing extenuating circumstances (impossible prophy, crown prep marathon, treatment planning issues) remain on the clinic floor, patiently working away. Some days, that’s me; other days, it isn’t. Today, I fixed the problems in my progress note, got it signed by the supervising dentist, and then turned in my dirty instruments and clinic gown to dispensing. Before everyone left at 4, I slipped downstairs to seventh floor to sign up for a radiological interpretation session.

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Nice to put some numbers to that which I am always complaining about. Paul Krugman, in “The Uneducated American”, about the United State’s continued trashing of the educational system:

Of those lost jobs, 29,000 were in state and local education, bringing the total losses in that category over the past five months to 143,000. That may not sound like much, but education is one of those areas that should, and normally does, keep growing even during a recession. Markets may be troubled, but that’s no reason to stop teaching our children. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing.

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