Got a minute for some nostalgia on nostalgia on nostalgia for today’s Happy Friday post? Yeah? Donald Duck will be there – yeah, I figured you’d like that. Also we’re doing some math – NO WAIT COME BACK! Not math math. More like “your teacher is hungover and therefore will be replacing the lesson plan with a movie” math. There ya go. Have a seat; you’ll dig this.
I don’t remember when I first saw the 1959 Disney short “Donald in Mathmagic Land,” but my best guest would be 5th grade. My G/T math teacher was cool like that. (What up, Mrs. Colman?)
Q. You were in G/T math?
A. Look, I can’t explain it either. Although I’ve always said it’s not that math is hard, per se; it’s that math is harder than I am interested. Perhaps if Donald Duck had presented all math concepts as arguments with an omniscient Paul Frees throughout my academic career, I would be an astrophysicist right now.
Alas, all we have is this, a wonderfully oddball 27-ish minutes of living pencil-creatures, jam band Pythagoras, the golden rectangle, an extended billiards sequence, and of course, pi. By consequence, this is all the math I know. Let’s make like we’re in Epcot in the ’80s and do some learnin,’ shall we?
Followup question: WHY is “Donald in Mathmagic Land” not on Disney+??? Heritage video, this is!
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