In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jay Warner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm sorry, I can't help adding $0.02 to the discussion of what is >clearly a hot button for this group.
>1) if (primary & secondary) schools provide what the more vocal parents >claim they want, is this not what they are supposed to do? There is no more reason that children should have to have the exact same type of education just because they are the same age and live in the same geographical area than they should eat the exact same type of food and wear the exact same type of clothing. This was imposed about 70 years ago by the educationists. There are vocal parents who do object to what is going on in the schools, but the response is that they are getting the education they should get, and in the way they should get it. The school boards are effectively powerless to do anything about it; handling the budget, parking, etc., is about all that a half-dozen or so members can handle in an unpaid job (except for expenses) which is considered not to conflict with normal income-producing activities. >2) If the professional educators who design, select & deliver >curriculum do not/cannot explain to said parents the implications of >what the parents claim to want, where should we look for improvement in >the 'product'? Removing schools from government control, and providing for affordable alternatives. The teachers here must not be required to take courses in the schools of education. >3) The No Child Left Behind thing is definitely misguided or worse. > The frustration from which it was born remains real, however poorly >expressed and misdirected. The racism and elitism inherant in its >execution may be structurally embedded. Very definitely the case. >4) I fully agree, & can add my own horror stories, of the sorry state >of education in math. My own opinion, IMHO, is that neither the >curriculum developers and/or those delivering said curriculum seriously >understand what 'math' constitutes. If not this broad generalization, >then I submit these good folks don't understand how to communicate >'math.' As a non-math major & professional, I have to rely upon >Devlin's description (The Math Gene), which is consistent with my >observations of weak students in a local Child Care center & my business >stats students. I believe that I could teach most primary school students to communicate "math"; the needs are linguistic primarily. The language extension known as "variables", which was difficult for people to discover, is easy to teach early. The "new math", poorly taught as it was, taught children to communicate mathematics better than the teachers could understand. It also taught them concepts, which were almost erased by the fallback to mindless computation. >5) I _think_ that what we call 'gifted' students include those who >manage to understand 'math' because/in spite of their early education. > If we were to teach math differently, many more students would get it, >and much of the hair-pulling experiences college instructors have would >go away. Agreed. And we cannot wait to get a supply of teachers who can teach it to all, as the present teachers prevent it by their teaching. But even the not-too-good teachers did a much better job in teaching those going to college when that required a strong algebra course, "Euclid" geometry, and usually for those going into fields using mathematics, college algebra as well as trigonometry, where they learned about induction among other things. Also, grammar schools taught grammar, and language courses were grammar based. >Enough soap box for today. >Jay >-- >Jay Warner >Principal Scientist >Warner Consulting, Inc. >4444 North Green Bay Road >Racine, WI 53404-1216 >USA >Ph: (262) 634-9100 >FAX: (262) 681-1133 >email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >web: http://www.a2q.com >The A2Q Method (tm) -- What do you want to improve today? >. >. >================================================================= >Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the >problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: >. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . >================================================================= -- This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University. Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
