The Methodology of Frustration

This is not quite as catchy as The Tactics of Mistake. Yet, it is one of those things that is equally true in terms of what defines my approach to life.

I've come to realise that when I deal with an audience, a class, or a discussant, I tend to use an indirect-fire approach. It is like slinging rocks up and over using a trebuchet. The sheer mass and volume of the load ensures that fundamental restructuring occurs on the other side, but you might not be able to see the effects till later.

That however, tends to lead easily to frustration in this modern age of education. One of my peers once commented that I had managed to teach an entire Chemistry lesson using nothing but Socratic reasoning. However, he cautioned, such an approach takes up too much time, and it might be necessary to do it more directly. Some students might get frustrated.

Personally I think that some people ought to be, and would benefit by being, frustrated. These are the ones whose unchecked growth would probably lead to disaster. Sometimes, however, a period of slower growth is important for consolidation. Things like forcing students to derive from basic principles can actually allow them to work out the commonalities underlying a broader range of truths.

Notwithstanding all that, I do of course have other weapons besides this 'methodology of frustration'. I have been known to deploy a ballista instead of a trebuchet. I sometimes have to lay siege to the citadel of the guarded mind, and in such situations, siege projectors of all kinds can be of great value.

Word of the Day: Frust

A long long time ago, when I was in school, I used to think that 'frust' was a convenient way of shortening the word 'frustrated'. Little did I know how appropriate this particular formation really was.

The word 'frustrate' comes from the Latin fraus, which means 'injury' or 'harm'. That word descends into English as 'fraud'. Fraus was the Latin goddess of treachery and deceit; essentially, if something failed to happen or some objective was not reached, it was her fault — you were 'Fraused', I suppose.

However, the intermediate stage between fraus and 'frustrate' is the word frustum. Whether in Latin or English, the word means 'a piece broken off, normally the lower remnant of a perpendicular object'. That is, if you have something upright, and you break the top and bottom apart, the remaining stump is the frustum. In mathematics, this applies to cones; you divide a cone in two by a plane parallel to the base and remove the top (apical section) — what remains is a frustum, a frustrated cone which no longer has an apex.

And that really is the definition of 'frustrated': you are chopped off and prevented from progressing towards your apical goal. The emotional state that you are in when you have been frustrated is best described as 'frust'.

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Note: 'To frustrate' is in some ways synonymous with 'to disappoint'. You will note that 'disappoint' can mean 'to remove a (better, higher) point (that was already given)'; it is very similar to chopping off the top of a cone.