Questions of how to support students in conversation across and about different perspectives regularly appear in discussions about civic engagement. Students with clear political positions and a desire to engage with political institutions, however, are themselves a rarified group on many campuses. The gulf between students who seek to engage…

Students sometimes have difficulty in mathematics because they solve problems mechanically, without understanding the ideas represented by their equations. This brief note provides mathematics instructors with ideas for rectifying this fundamental flaw in students' paradigm of problem solving. (Contains 1 footnote.)