COLE (8th grade): Dada---in Japanese, we are writing a formal letter to a pen pal in Japan.
THANE: Interesting.
COLE: It has to be done very carefully. You start at the upper right-hand sheet of the paper, and write down the paper in a column. Then you move the next column to the left. To start a new paragraph, you indent a little from the top, a specific distance.
THANE: Your Japanese handwriting is very neat and precise. The letter looks like something I would see on the wall in a fine Japanese restaurant. But let's compare, shall we, this Japanese letter to your most recent math homework:
COLE: Ha. Very funny.
THANE: Yes, I find it intriguing. Your Japanese homework looks like it was prepared with very great care. It honors the ancient tradition of fine calligraphy. Your math homework, on the other hand, looks like the remains of a ink bottle explosion, or the scrawlings of hyperactive 2nd grader. Yet these two pieces of work came from the same hand! It's absolutely astonishing, wouldn't you say so?
COLE: Japanese symbols are fun. Math is just, well, math. Look at how we write the letter "a" [scrawls an abomination]. See, ugly. Ugly compared to Japanese.
THANE: All writing is holy. Japanese is holy. Math is holy. Why make either profane?
THANE: Interesting.
COLE: It has to be done very carefully. You start at the upper right-hand sheet of the paper, and write down the paper in a column. Then you move the next column to the left. To start a new paragraph, you indent a little from the top, a specific distance.
THANE: Your Japanese handwriting is very neat and precise. The letter looks like something I would see on the wall in a fine Japanese restaurant. But let's compare, shall we, this Japanese letter to your most recent math homework:
COLE: Ha. Very funny.
THANE: Yes, I find it intriguing. Your Japanese homework looks like it was prepared with very great care. It honors the ancient tradition of fine calligraphy. Your math homework, on the other hand, looks like the remains of a ink bottle explosion, or the scrawlings of hyperactive 2nd grader. Yet these two pieces of work came from the same hand! It's absolutely astonishing, wouldn't you say so?
COLE: Japanese symbols are fun. Math is just, well, math. Look at how we write the letter "a" [scrawls an abomination]. See, ugly. Ugly compared to Japanese.
THANE: All writing is holy. Japanese is holy. Math is holy. Why make either profane?
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