Remembering a Friend
and Colleague
By Aksel Telgmaa
"Still alive and kicking!" With this, Enn Nurk concluded
the last Christmas card he sent to my family. Recovering from treatment
for recently discovered diabetes, Enn was evidently feeling well enough
to make this claim in late 1998. Who could have guessed that he would
be "still alive" for less than two more months?
My collaboration with Enn began more than ten years ago.
By then, Enn had already been a well-known educator and acclaimed
mathematics teacher for some time. But Enn was more than just a
teacher. He was also the consummate researcher, someone whose main
interest lay in how different students learn, especially within groups.
Besides his strenuous teaching job at Vändra Gymnasium in Pärnumaa, he
assisted in the solving of problems in this field through numerous
papers and presentations at mathematics conferences.
Enn was an educator with excellent pedagogical
intuition, someone whose classes were visited regularly by students of
the Tallinn Teacher Training Institute. He served as an example to them
with his various pedagogical methodologies. It was only natural,
therefore, that I propose to Enn that we collaborate on the writing of
middle-school mathematics textbooks and workbooks. Due to his modest
nature, he expressed doubt at first, but still promised to give it a
try.
This try served as the basis for a sustained partnership
out of which our 5th - 8th Grade textbooks were born, as well as an
entire series of accompanying workbooks authored single-handedly by
Enn. In 1987, we won the Soviet Union's national competition for 5th-
and 6th-Grade mathematics textbooks. Twelve years later, these same
books were still being published when our partnership was cut short by
Enn's untimely passing. If our work has proved beneficial to Estonian
schools, then I must say that none of it would have been possible
without Enn's cooperation.
On February 3, 1999, a completed manuscript from Enn
arrived on my desk with a short accompanying note. Naturally, I could
not have known that by the time I opened the package and read the
letter, their sender would no longer be with us… and that I had no one
to whom I could respond. In his note, Enn had written, "I am sending
you one copy. I am not very happy with it." This last sentence was so
much like Enn! He always insisted on carefully finishing his work in
order that the editor might have less to do and so that the reader
(both teacher and student) would be satisfied. And he inevitably
succeeded in this endeavor.
Enn continued, "The structure and [an earlier] choice of
tasks should have been changed more, but this go around everything was
determined by the time factor." Enn most likely had some calendar date
in mind here, but within the context of his passing the sentence takes
on startling significance.
The admirable and fruitful life of Enn Nurk has been cut
short, but his work lives on. The memory of him remains.
-Translated from
the Estonian by Piibi-Kai Kivik
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