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Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

theguardian.com

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Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#51

Post by pdonis »

jrockway wrote: post #34
pdonis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought his description of the principle behind the New Math was priceless: "In the new approach, as you know, the point is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer."

Is that a bad thing? I don't make a lot of arithmetic errors in M-x calc or whatever.

> Is that a bad thing?

It's a bad thing if you never learn how to actually get the right answer. Which unfortunately seemed to be a common consequence of the New Math as a teaching method.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#52

Post by gopher_space »

bitwize wrote: post #25
jrockway wrote: post #17

I still have some Tom Lehrer songs in my playlist. They sound like they're a product of their time but are still relevant today. I am also amused that I learned "new math" in elementary school, but I think it's actually different from the "new math" in his song of that name. I didn't hate it, honestly. "Now the book wants you to do it in base 8." This is actually relevant to my day to day work. (Though in base 8, I h…

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

Are you involved with studying pedagogy as it relates to math at a graduate level? If so, where and how long ago?

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#54

Post by CuriousCosmic »

aebtebeten wrote: post #30
bitwize wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

To be fair, New Math is a perfect intro to graduate-level* maths; it's just a poor fit for people who (because they don't have calculators? or even slide rules?) would like their children's maths courses to cover arithmetic. (I had a geometry teacher who had been excited because his daughter wanted him to sign something saying she'd be allowed to take "Sets Education". Imagine, finally sets being introduced at the Jr…

New math was actually pretty successful at the lower grades. The issue was that when it came to rolling it out to middle and high schools, they just kind of said "here's the textbook, figure it out" instead of going through a coordinated process of teaching the teachers while helping them develop their new curricula (which they did for elementary school).

So you had this really ugly failure of teachers not really necessarily being prepared to teach the material combined with the rush to roll out the curriculum across the board instead of expanding it year by year so there wouldn't be a sudden change in expected education.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#55

Post by bambax »

Analemma_ wrote: post #47
bambax wrote: post #21

The article is nice and interesting but doesn't answer the question of why did Tom Lehrer stop. It's possible he thought he didn't have anything more to say. But I doubt that's the whole reason he stopped making songs and performing. He lived through a time when the US defeated Nazi Germany, and then... hired prominent Nazis to work for them. This is what the Wernher von Braun song is about. My take is, he thinks hum…

I vaguely remember seeing that part of the reason he quit was that he felt satire had no purpose and no possibility of success in a country which elected Richard Nixon. Which may have been sort of brilliantly prescient of him, considering how popular stuff like The Daily Show / The Colbert Report was in the 2000s and yet how toothless and impotent they seem in the face of current political developments.

The article does address this:

> we do know that he believed satire changed nothing. He quoted approvingly Peter Cook’s sarcastic remark about the Berlin cabarets of the 1930s that did so much to prevent the rise of Hitler and the second world war.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#56

Post by 082349872349872 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #47
bambax wrote: post #21

The article is nice and interesting but doesn't answer the question of why did Tom Lehrer stop. It's possible he thought he didn't have anything more to say. But I doubt that's the whole reason he stopped making songs and performing. He lived through a time when the US defeated Nazi Germany, and then... hired prominent Nazis to work for them. This is what the Wernher von Braun song is about. My take is, he thinks hum…

I vaguely remember seeing that part of the reason he quit was that he felt satire had no purpose and no possibility of success in a country which elected Richard Nixon. Which may have been sort of brilliantly prescient of him, considering how popular stuff like The Daily Show / The Colbert Report was in the 2000s and yet how toothless and impotent they seem in the face of current political developments.

> He could just about stay detached enough to be funny about Eisenhower’s America.

compare "Our Long National Nightmare": https://legacy.npr.org/assets/news/2013/onion-bush.pdf

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#57

Post by kragen »

etc-hosts wrote: post #50

evil Dark Enlightenment mathematician Eric Weinstein posted a photo on Twitter of himself and Tom Lehrer, with a blurb about how arranging the photo with his son was a great highlight of his life. I can't find it anymore, he must have taken it down. edit: found a copy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeTFuNkUQAAHIwa?format=jpg He posts a lot about Tom Lehrer! https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40ericrweinstein%20lehr..…

eric weinstein is not from the dark enlightenment (the neoreactionaries who want to re-establish monarchy) but the intellectual dark web ('a term used to describe some commentators who oppose identity politics, political correctness, and cancel culture'). i know the culture war can be confusing, and it's hard to keep all the subversive factions straight

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#58

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

petsormeat wrote: post #49
bitwize wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

I have lingering bitterness for the irresponsible New Math experiment in my elementary education. I couldn't tell time on an analog clock until I was 12, thanks to the blithe dismissal of "rote" multiplication tasks.

Just out of interest and if it's not too personal, what's your age/generation? I'm in my mid twenties and I don't have any peers that couldn't more or less always read analog clocks as far as they remember.

edit: I just googled it and apparently New Math was during the 1950s-1970s. This confuses me even further since reading an analog clock seems even more important in those times?

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#59

Post by harry8 »

jrockway wrote: post #17

I still have some Tom Lehrer songs in my playlist. They sound like they're a product of their time but are still relevant today. I am also amused that I learned "new math" in elementary school, but I think it's actually different from the "new math" in his song of that name. I didn't hate it, honestly. "Now the book wants you to do it in base 8." This is actually relevant to my day to day work. (Though in base 8, I h…

Octal is essential in x86 assembly encodings. They make little sense in hex.

https://gist.github.com/seanjensengrey/f971c20d05d4d0efc0781...

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#60

Post by emmelaich »

What a fantastic quote..

>You had to admire these folk singers,” he says on the live LP. “It takes courage to get up in a coffee house or a student auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood, and so on.”

It's pretty much my reaction to every protest or social concern story in the media.

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