Wherever you are, there you are.

Introduction

This week we studied the Real Numbers in the high school math class. These are reflections about this experience.

Real Numbers

It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that Richard Dedekind and Georg Cantor developed the theory of Real Numbers; as Leopold Kronecker said: “God created the integers, all else is the work of man.” I tried, not very consciously, nor successfully, to communicate this work to teen agers.

I remember how excited I got when I first learned these facts more than
forty years ago. To this day I consider this to be one of the deepest thoughts of the human mind. Is space like Cantor and Dedekind envisioned it? I did not do justice to these men this week. I am struggling just to get the students to pay attention, this reminds me of that other experience in the same city. The teachers did not like the way I taught the students. Something similar happened at another high school before. I live in an abstract world that not even the children’s parents or my teacher colleagues perceive. Here I try to analyze the events of this week.

I teach in a barrio school. Some of the students are either in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, or they belong to gangs. I want to make my own club, with a few dedicated students in pursuit of an intense mental life.

As backdrop to my experience, I can say that I did not stay teaching
college students in Mexico because I did not publish. My thoughts have not settled on something worth communicating to other theoretical physicists.

By all measures, leaving the University of Puebla and teaching very young underprivileged persons in Illinois, is not a smart move. But us Carl Frantz writes in “The Peoples Guide to Mexico”, wherever you are, there you are.