Math Is Beautiful | A Love Letter to Learning

The Rhyme of Numbers and Creation

Our house was a house of books. Books stacked on tables, books squished into shelves, books by every bed. Bookshelf territory was staked and jealously hoarded.

We were simply a family of readers, every last one of us. Introverts, some might say, though I’ve never quite accepted that label. I think we simply loved to learn. Not learning for show, not learning for reward, but the pursuit of knowledge for its own quiet joy. Not only that to this day that legacy has held, for all of us remaining; reading, writing, science, math is beautiful.

At the center of the house was my father. Though he sadly passed away young, he was larger than life, and the biggest influencer of the direction of my path. By profession, he was a professor of physics, a dabbler in the arcane of antimatter, but that’s not really what I think of when I think of him, mostly I think of him as a kind, humble man who treated all people as his equal, fellow travelers around the sun in a fascinating universe.

His field of study was primarily in particle physics, and while the work he did was genuinely fascinating and groundbreaking, what he really was, was a teacher. That’s harder to put into a title than a PhD. He didn’t lead with credentials. He was simply a guide, with a deep connection to science and math, for anyone who chose to follow that path.

Wherever we lived he left a trail of science. He loved sharing physics with his students, and they loved him back. Mostly because he was kind, but also because he had a true gift for finding people who wanted to learn. When a student who had been wrestling with a concept finally got it, my father was complete. That was his real happiness, a first grader learning about Newton’s principles or a doctoral student working through their thesis, wherever he met a student, he was completely there.

My sister and I grew up at the center of all this, and I know how lucky that was. Our childhood had a Willy Wonka quality, a laboratory of oscilloscopes, slinkies, bouncy balls, and physics toys of every kind. He treated us as real learners, equal and worthy.

I carry some of that with me still. I mostly teach creative subjects, and one on one as a tutor, but my students all know I love science, and I work it in every chance it will fit in. My own happiness, as a teacher, is the moment a student catches a genuine itch for math or science.

Though I never became the astronomer that teenage me wanted to be, I still love math and science fiercely. When I teach, I work it into everything I can, and I too, see eyes light up. I like to hope that some of the children I have taught will remember and go on to be inventors and teachers themselves.

Which brings me to my pet peeve. So much math and science content made for children is too simple, too boring, or beaten so far into the ground it loses all its life. It was true when I was a kid, and despite more resources now, too much of it is still simplistic and poorly made.

Math and science should be exploration. They should be joyful. They should be challenging, even difficult, stretching the brain and making you reach for things just out of your grasp.

Children start with wonder and curiosity, and arrive at school eager to learn. They are filled with potential, and every last one of them could go on and discover wonderful things. STEM is not just a path to a high income, it is a way to explore what it is that makes us human. A good science and math program should be wild, catch the outliers, nurture talent, and build logic to carry into life. Not everyone will grow up to be a mathematician or a scientist, but every child should know how the universe works.

So I started writing what I wish I’d had as a kid, adding this little section to my creative website as ideas came to me, things I would have loved to find when I was a student myself.

Because math and science should be fierce. They should have a rhythm. They should demand something of the learner, not passive observation, but the urge to create, to question, to explore.