Ostaszewski: Planet of the dogs - Milford Daily News
It's bad enough that America's youth are falling behind other nations when it comes to our math ability and knowledge. But things are looking grim when dogs start outperforming U.S. students in math.
This fact isn't widely known yet. So I would like to be the first to point it out and start the requisite hand wringing and general panic. What we need to be concerned about is news about a math genius Labrador Retriever living in Montana that goes by the name of Beau.
Beau, it seems, is a super intelligent dog.
Normally, calling a dog super intelligent refers to any dog that manages to avoid getting its head stuck between the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinet. A dog of average intelligent gets some part of its body stuck somewhere in the house on a weekly basis.
Another thing dogs of normal intelligence do often is fall for the old fake fetch trick. That is when you have been playing fetch for some time and the one time you don't actually throw the tennis ball, the dog goes running after it anyway. Then it walks around where it estimates the tennis ball should have landed, sniffing the ground and generally becoming extremely puzzled.
In fact, that is how most dogs go through life: extremely puzzled. Look deeply into a dog's eyes next time you get the chance. What you are seeing in there is extreme puzzlement. Specifically, the dog is puzzled as to why you are staring so intently into its eyes. It hopes this means food or a car ride will be coming shortly. Before car rides were invented it is unclear what, other than food and fetch, dogs got excited about.
This general puzzlement among dogs is why it is both amazing and a little terrifying - in a "Planet of the Apes" only with talking dogs sort of way - that dogs are now learning math.
According to Beau's owner, as quoted in the disturbing MSNBC article I read, "He (Beau) counts, he add and subtracts, he can do some division and has memorized square roots."
If you're a math teacher, you might be highly skeptical about this claim. Especially the part about square roots. It is a known fact that 95 percent of all former U.S. students who have successfully graduated high school over the past 40 years could not tell you what a square root actually is, nor have they memorized any of them. All they can recall is that "Square roots have that symbol that kind of looks like the number is wearing a helmet, right?"
Beau the dog, however, is much more advanced than that. One eyewitness explained seeing Beau in action:
"A group of us were standing there and Dave (Beau's owner) asked Beau, 'How many girls are here?' There were two and Beau barked twice. Next, Dave asked, 'How many boys?' Beau barked five times even though there were only four guys. Then it dawned on us. Beau is a boy, and he was counting himself."
If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, then you're not paying close enough attention and should start reading this column over again from the beginning. I'll wait. For those following along, not only can Beau count people and distinguish between genders, he also identifies himself with human males.
If you placed six dogs in front of most of us and asked us how many were girl dogs and how many were boy dogs, we would be clueless. At least we would be without first "checking under the hood," so to speak.
And by their actions, most dogs are in the dark about gender, too, including having no idea that many inanimate objects, such as a sofa arm, are actually genderless.
Then there is Beau. That super intelligent, math genius dog from Montana, the dog that could one day lead all other dogs in a worldwide, canine uprising. I suggest playing fetch or taking Beau for a car ride. That should distract him.
28 Aug, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGpZrN-X-WfMyv8ZRJTaWq_nb-6fQ&url=http://www.milforddailynews.com/opinion/x1752170584/Ostaszewski-Planet-of-the-dogs
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com
