Sunday, May 02, 2010

Mathematics Haunting Me!


Pertama kali ketika dimaklumkan tentang kejayaan temuduga saya untuk bergelar sebagai pendidik di sebuah sekolah rendah Islam, hati saya sudah berdebar-debar. Masakan tidak, saya tidak pernah ada pengalaman mengajar, apatah lagi mengajar pelajar sekolah rendah. 

Saya sedar, semakin rendah tahap umur seseorang pelajar, semakin sukar  untuk memahami pemikiran dan memahamkan mereka tentang sesuatu topik.

Pening kepala memikirkan kaedah-kaedah yang diperlukan bagi menambah kefahaman mereka nanti. Saya sendiri tidak pasti bagaimanakah cara yang berkesan untuk menarik minat mereka belajar subjek Matematik. Bukan mudah, lebih-lebih lagi selepas matapelajaran tersebut diwajibkan ditukar pengajarannya ke dalam bahasa Inggeris setelah PPSMI diwujudkan.

Langkah pertama yang diambil adalah dengan mengusahakan satu perbincangan bersama guru-guru yang pernah berpengalaman mengajar Matematik sebelum ini. Sememangnya permasalahan 'darab' dan 'bahagi' nombor-nombor besar masih lagi merupakan masalah berulang yang dihadapi oleh pelajar-pelajar tersebut.

Akhirnya, saya mengambil inisiatif untuk mengumpulkan formula-formula yang pernah dicipta oleh adik Adi Putra, genius Matematik, dalam membantu menambahkan kefahaman pelajar-pelajar.

Permudahkanlah urusanku Ya Allah!


Genius

Genius, like gold and precious stones,
is chiefly prized because of its rarity.


Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.


Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth.


It is probably on account of this
that people who have genius
do not pay their board, as a general thing.


Geniuses are very singular.


If you see a young man who has frowsy hair
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress,
you may set him down for a genius.


If he sings about the degeneracy of a world
which courts vulgar opulence
and neglects brains,
he is undoubtedly a genius.


If he is too proud to accept assistance,
and spurns it with a lordly air
at the very same time
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life,
he is most certainly a genius.


If he hangs on and sticks to poetry,
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him,
he is a true genius.


If he throws away every opportunity in life
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot,
and finally persists,
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense
but not any genius,
persists in going up some infamous back alley
dying in rags and dirt,
he is beyond all question a genius.


But above all things,
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse
and then rush off and get booming drunk,
is the surest of all the different signs
of genius.

By: Mar Twain