deficits and percents...

It's time for everyone's favorite unit in the eighth grade: electricity! When lighting up light bulbs prompts excited screams and spontaneous bursts of song (from Flava Flav...)...you know it's been a good day :)

After I had JUST answered the same question from another student...
Flava Flav: What does "deficit" mean?
me: Well, what's attention deficit disorder mean?
Flava Flav: You can't see?
me: No, ATTENTION deficit disorder.
Flava Flav: You can't hear?
By this point the rest of the class was listening to our conversation (which wasn't hard since I was sitting at my desk and talking across the room to him) and they helped correct him...



In other interesting events, the math teacher related this story to me yesterday. They are finishing up percents in the eighth grade math class, and he felt that he had a pretty good grip on the concept, so he asked them to estimate what percent of the US population is African American. Once they had all guessed, they clamoured to know who was the closest. He told them that one of them was...but they were still pretty far off. The closest kid guessed 45%; the rest guessed higher! When he told them that the actual number is more like 10-12%, they didn't believe him! They couldn't understand how the number could be that low when almost everyone in their neighborhoods is black...as is everyone they go to school with...

The math teacher didn't even want to tell them the other statistics: that only 7% of teachers are African American and that only 1% of teachers are African American males. How are they supposed to believe that when he's standing right there in front of them (he's African American), and when they have black teachers for 4/6 of their classes?

I just thought it was interesting. How experience can affect your view of the world...and your assumptions about how your world is similar/different from the rest of the world...