Authority by Mary Boole

I was first introduced to Mary Booke in "A Boolean anthology: selected writings of Mary Boole on mathematical education" which was compiled by by old Maths Tutor at St Lukes, Exeter, Dick Tahta.

Mary Boole (1832-1916) was an influential mathematics teacher and educator. Here are is an interesting pieces which give a flavour of how she saw pedagogy. It some ways, she was unusual, an independent thinking on the margins of the mainstream, but also, in her day, influential.

Dick himself was not exactly what you might call a standard prosaic mathemathics teacher, but he was inspiring, challenging and making you look at mathematics in a different way. I can remember the names of only two teachers from my time at Exeter, and one was Dick, so he obvious impressed me. His written work, now alas lost in mathematical journals, should I hope be collated one day, and re-released, as I think it would still interests students of mathematics. It took me ages to track down a copy of his piece "Idoneities". A Kindle edition would be good too!

Authority
by Mary Boole

Three main symbols of authority have shared between them the attention of the world: the slave-driver's whip, the shepherd's crook, and the conductor's baton. A reasonable man should make up his mind which of the three he prefers : which he will submit to when it is his turn to submit and wield when the time comes for him to rule.

The slave-driver's whip has various modifications, conventionalised disguises: the sceptre, the mace, the truncheon, the cane.

The appeal of them all alike is to immediate impressions on the senses. Their message is brutal but honest: "If you will obey my will, your sensations shall be more agreeable than they will be if you thwart my will."

The shepherd's crook is modified into a bishop's crozier. The functions of the two are similar: to keep the sheep from strenuous exercise in high altitudes, where their limbs grow fleet and their tissues tough; to keep off wolves who might dispute possession of any portion of the flock with the man who considers himself its rightful owner; to lead them into plentiful pasture, so as to make them fat and their flesh tender, and guide them cunningly at last into the yard of the slaughter-house. The whole system is simply one long deception-often of sentimental self-deception.

The conductor's baton exerts no control except during certain hours of practice and of performance. Once the appointed time has expired, every man is free to go where he likes and do as he chooses. He is freer (because more able) than he would have been without his occasional episodes of servitude, to play by himself whatever tune he chooses, or to enter into effective combinations with musicians not known in that conductor's orchestra.

Friends, under which symbol will you serve? And by which will you prefer to rule?

“Seeing is not always used to mean looking with your eyes. The double meaning reminds us that when we use our eyes we often see what we have already foreseen. We look at objects and see them in a perspective that we have learned to impose on our view. It has taken the experiments of modern artists, and the study of psychologists of the child’s view of the world, to remind us that it is possible to see in many other ways... “ (Dick Tahta, 1970)