He aint heavy, he's my brother ......

I was on the bus today. It was about half full. We pulled up to a bus stop and a man aged around 50 tried to get on.

He was thin, haggard and bent over and gripped onto a soft drink bottle containing orange liquid. He appeared intoxicated. He fumbled with his bus card which failed to activate.

As he searched his vagabond clothes for money he pleaded with the driver that he was in pain and needed to see his doctor.

I began to make plans to intervene.

To my left and forward in the bus a young handsome Pasifika boy aged about 19 shifted uneasily in his seat.

The driver, annoyed, shook his head and told the man to get off.

Before I could say anything, the young lad shouted out "I'll paid for him". He strode to the front of the bus and did just that.

In Genesis 4 there comes a question, perhaps the most question in the Bible: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

That young man clearly answered this question.

1st John puts it another way: "Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."

The song alluded to in the title of this post goes on ....

 If I'm laden at all, I'm laden with sadness. That everyone's heart isn't filled with the gladness of love for one another.

I am not sure what happened to the man. I hope he is undergoing a carefully managed detox. But I think I can guess something of his singular story.

Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you

The biggest problem in education is the identification of scores, grades etc obtained in a paper and pencil test/exam with actual skills, practices, competencies in real life contexts.

Smedley's equation: scores \=\ skills.

I was in hospital recently. I constantly came across nurses who said they were no good at maths. In fact not one said they were good at maths.

And yet they were constantly doing some pretty skilled maths at every turn. Blood pressure, temperature, medications, drips, injections, .......

OF COURSE when they said they were no good at maths, they were reflecting on their high school experience and their scores in tests and exams.

The Ministry of education is soon to try and map adults' numeracy skills in Nu Zulun.

What will they use? Paper and pencil tests! What will they find?

For most adults, the maths they do daily is invisible. It is so much a part of every day life.

I offer here today a challenge.  Can anyone find a subject, discipline, or topic that does not involve number or geometry in some way.

If you can, post it in the comments. The first person gets $100 from me. Maybe meditation, so I rule that out.

We are all in some small way mathematicians. Our world is saturated with numbers.