Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Not checking what I had written the previous day before typing out yesterday’s post, there was one more thing I wanted to say about the last finals that I gave in Trigonometry last Thursday.

Two posts ago I talked about the last question in my Trig finals not forming a proper triangle, much less a right triangle as some of them assumed (sure we talked about right triangles for most of the term, but I told them that the law of sines and cosines applied to ANY triangle, and nowhere in the problem did it state that the taut rope tying the hot air balloon to the ground was completely vertical).

It was also unfortunate that except for getting an “error” in their calculators, we did not discuss how certain given lengths and angles would not always make a triangle, except, probably, if the angles did not all add up to 180 degrees.

For these particular dimensions, one side would not reach the other side to form three points. And since I was reluctant to announce to the remaining students (who would just pounce on the opportunity to earn “free points”) not to work on the problem anymore, I gave them one “corrected” length, one that I knew would come up with a triangle.

This was when Deiv asked his question. He, along with one other guy, was smart enough to see that from the wording of the problem the observer measuring the angle of elevation could be on either side of the peg. The observer had a possibility of being on the side of the smaller angle made by the rope with the ground, or the larger angle (the one more than ninety degrees). Deiv, of course, asked which of the two was the case.

I just told him either.

On checking their papers though, William (the other excelling student), it seems, upon realizing the same possibilities, just solved the problem both ways.

If I had told Deiv to try out both to find out, he would have probably still asked me later which of the two correct answers he should consider, and maybe if he would get deductions for giving both.

If, on the other hand, I had written in the instructions about not asking questions and just writing their assumptions about the problem in his test paper, his brain might have either gone on an endless loop, he might have asked me whether his question was covered in the situation or not, or he might have just taken the easy way out, like he did with their final plate in Graphics One (“just eighteen cubicles” he asked, disregarding the “at least” qualifier and the “fit as many as you can” addendum).

There is a certain point when dependence on the teacher’s authority becomes more of a millstone than a crutch. Not considering when his questions are appropriate, whether he is already hindering his classmates from taking advantage of the teacher’s time as much as he seems to think he is entitled to, and the growing inability to make a decision himself are where he crossed the line.

Hopefully, if he becomes my student again in the future I will be more prepared to handle the circumstances. I will have to dissuade him (and others possibly) from taking that route all the time. That’s all for now.