Thinking Outside of the Positive Hemisphere

I'm always talking, and worrying, about the reality of our family, where the children are so much smarter than their parents. My worry is primarily for the parents.  The children should be able to survive any mutiny they might attempt, and pilot their way to full adulthood, taking the parents along for the journey, if they ever resolve to undertake this project.

But now we have the parallel chaos of a situation where the child is smarter than the teacher - the Math teacher, no less - and I mean the after-hours, expensive "Russian Math" teacher - this isn't the ethereal New Math of the local elementary school.  Daniel's paper was marked wrong (yes - this does freak me out a bit) for an answer that was quite correct.  But even more stirring than the factual inaccuracy of that grading, is the different plane of consciousness of the two-dimensional teacher and her visionary student.

Question:  What number is less than 1?

Daniel's Answer:  -5

(October, 2012)