02-05-2015, 04:40 PM
When I was in high school and college I had a retail job where the owner had been a rocket scientist. He put people into space, designed the fastest jets of the time... he wrote all the store's software and was clearly very good at math.
We were down the street from a high school, and high schoolers would often come by. One day he started ask them a math question in order to buy. Apparently there had been some issues where the teen customers couldn't figure out how much money to give him to pay for something. So he would ask one question. The number would vary slightly, but it was always something like "What's 48% of 100?".
Most high schoolers couldn't get it. It didn't matter if it was 73% of 100 or 25% of 100, they still couldn't get it.
So he decided to go down to the school and volunteer in the math department. He brought his resume. Keep in mind people trusted him with their lives to design systems that would allow them to travel faster than the speed of sound, or launch them into space. The school said no thanks. He had to have a teaching certificate. A college degree and ~40 years as a rocket scientist wasn't enough for him to even volunteer and sit in a class with a teacher there. They would rather their students not know what 50% of 100 is than have someone with his experience but no teaching certificate help the kids.
We were down the street from a high school, and high schoolers would often come by. One day he started ask them a math question in order to buy. Apparently there had been some issues where the teen customers couldn't figure out how much money to give him to pay for something. So he would ask one question. The number would vary slightly, but it was always something like "What's 48% of 100?".
Most high schoolers couldn't get it. It didn't matter if it was 73% of 100 or 25% of 100, they still couldn't get it.
So he decided to go down to the school and volunteer in the math department. He brought his resume. Keep in mind people trusted him with their lives to design systems that would allow them to travel faster than the speed of sound, or launch them into space. The school said no thanks. He had to have a teaching certificate. A college degree and ~40 years as a rocket scientist wasn't enough for him to even volunteer and sit in a class with a teacher there. They would rather their students not know what 50% of 100 is than have someone with his experience but no teaching certificate help the kids.