Continuation of a Theme
Random adolescent memory sparked by recent email traffic:In August of 1974, just before my senior year in high school, my family moved from Los Angeles to Fresno. That summer my friends in Los Angeles gave me a going-away party. I'm not sure whose house it was at -- Andy Mishkin's? Anyway, I do remember there was beer there; I think it was the first time I ever tasted it (at 15 years old). And I also remember the incredible gift they bought for me.
A Texas Instruments SR-10.
You may look at the SR-10 today and laugh, and I'll understand. But at the time, this was an incredible piece of equipment. Rechargeable NiCads. Square-root functionality. Exponential-notation display. And $150 retail, for a bunch of high-school kids in 1974, was a truly significant chunk of change.
If you didn't know me then, you might wonder why the gift. Most of us were in a "special" math program together. (Incidentally, Scooter, I mean "special" in a good way.) SSMCIS: Secondary School Mathematics Curriculum Improvement Study, also known as "Unified Modern Mathematics." It was a six-year experiment to see if math could be better taught in an integrated program, rather than a year of Algebra followed by Geometry followed by Algebra II followed by Trig followed by Calculus.
Going into Emerson (and Webster) Junior High, I suppose our sixth-grade teachers picked us out as those most likely to thrive in a program like SSM. It means we were guinea pigs. But we were willing and enthusiastic guinea pigs. And wow, was that program fun. Those who stayed the full six years never got to compare it to anything else. In Fresno I found myself in a very boring AP Trig class (absolutely nothing there I hadn't already learned, but they refused to put me in calculus even though I'd already started calculus in SSM), so I know what I'm talking about.
The calculator was, frankly, not much practical use to me. But it was a tremendous symbol of the bond everyone in the program shared.
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posted by MeanMrMustard @ 1:00 PM
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