Introducing
myself
 

The first 30 years (– the flags, by the way, are there for purely decorative purposes ...): I was born in Hannover in (West-)Germany, and grew up in Hamburg and in Munich, (although I have always found myself out of sympathy with Bavarians and their way of thinking,) until I came to the UK at the age of 17 to attend Atlantic College in South Wales as a student, after which I did not spend much time in Germany for many years. After the two years at Atlantic College, I spent 11 very academic, very enjoyable years studying in the UK, first Mathematics for five years, where my special area was Relativity, and then Philosophy for six, especially Philosophy of Mind (psychoanalysis) and of Language (Chomskian linguistics,) although I was able to develop and pursue a wide range of other interests. During those years I went to the United States for a few months every summer to work at a 4H-camp on Long Island, not far from New York, which provided a good contrast to my academic life the rest of the year. I have continued to go to the US regularly, mostly to NY and the East Coast, where many of my friends have ended up. "... and know the place for the first time" Although I had never planned to become a teacher, when a friend mentioned that he had seen an advertisement for a position as 'assistant master' at Atlantic College, I decided to go for it – and I have never regretted it. So there I was in South Wales again, teaching Mathematics and beginners' Japanese; and for a number of years also Theory of Knowledge. Many people in their daily jobs have to spend much of their time doing things to which their personal ideas are quite irrelevant, or even to take decisions contrary to their personal values. One of the exciting benefits of teaching at Atlantic College, for most of the time I was there, was that one's own outlook, and to some extent even one's personal relationships, did not have to be separate from one's work – which made the work both more demanding and more rewarding. Another benefit of teaching at AC were the holidays: only two a year, but therefore quite long. I like to spend holidays travelling, mostly to visit friends, some of whom live far away. So each year I spent about a month in Europe (= continental Europe) and another in the US, and sometimes a week down under; but the parts of the world I have found most intriguing and have kept returning to are Japan and Africa (= sub-Saharan Africa,) and recently South America too. Like everyone else at Atlantic College I was involved in a variety of other activities. In my case, the main ones were for many years the Coastguard Service, which has become CAVRA and which I used to enjoy a lot, even though I am personally not very keen on climbing and hiking and such things; First Aid, which I regularly taught; webpage design and maintenance (w3S) and programming, which eventually became part of Media and Communication Service; and the Choir, in which I always sang and with which I went on tour every year in March. It used to work extremely well for me!

And now: Having spent half my life, quite precisely, at Atlantic College, as a student and a teacher, I have very recently moved to Berlin – one of only two cities in Germany I was considering: and it does not feel like 'returning' somewhere at all! –, but will at the same time be teaching at a school in Kigali (in Rwanda, not in the Rhonda ...) for the next few years. An exciting and liberating change. An important point, I have found, in teaching mathematics is to explain to students that (and why) certain forms of arguments are not valid. Examples: (a + b)2  is not the same as  a2 + b2, (except in special cases.) Thinking that they are identical is an instance of what I have heard being called 'Mickey Mouse mistakes'. If I know of a family that they have two children, and that at least one of them is a boy, (assuming the birth of a boy and a girl to be equally likely,) the probability of both the children being boys is not 1/2. It is not a valid proof of a proposition, such as a trigonometric identity, to start with that proposition and derive from it something that is obviously true, such as an identity of the form  a = a. Even though it is correct that   ∫ 1/x dx = ln x + c , it is not therefore also correct that   ∫ 1/x2 dx = ln x2 + c . This is a general point: part of the purpose, it seems to me, of the Theory of Knowledge course too is to make people more critical of things that they might otherwise just assume, even simple things like that "science proves things," or that "whether or not something is a work of art is just a question of liking it or not liking it." This critical thinking can then apply (if one is that kind of person ...) to a wide range of issues, some quite mundane, such as rumours: their very nature not only means that they are usually false or exaggerated, but also that they will spread more easily than any evidence against them. (Note that moral issues are never far away ...) Different people have different ways of learning. In my case, what have become my 'specialities' all started as personal interests, rather than through academic studies. My Japanese, for instance, (whatever little I know ...) is nearly all self-taught. This is how to write Hello. (Konnichi wa.) in what was at some time called "the devil's language." That is a bit of Swaziland in the background (– at WK: thanks, Donovan and Ramila.)