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CAT Tracks for July 27, 2014
WHY DO AMERICANS STINK AT MATH? |
Tradition...
...TRADITION!
"Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof!"
Or, in the words of Erick Erickson, editor of the website RedState, in an anti-Common Core attack:
Ha!
Guess bipartisanship over "education reform" works both ways...
...what with President Obama adopting the education policies of George W. Bush...
...and little ol' liberal me agreeing with "Eric the Red".
Or, in the immortal words of my favorite campfire song:
From the New York Times
Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
CAT Tracks Editor's Note:
"New Math", "Reformy Math", "Fuzzy Math" is not new, far from it, as dramatized by the excerpt from the 1965 Peanuts cartoon:
For almost 50 effing years, even cartoonists/comedians get it!
"New Math" is fine for "math people", but it goes even further in turning off those who are not.
I'll let comedian Louis C.K. have the last word:
"By God, is it such a horrific idea that we might teach math the way math has always been taught."
Oh give me a home where the dinosaurs roam,
A place where the smallest of students still play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And dedicated teachers aren't bashed all day.
...the young blond-haired Sally struggling to understand her new-math assignment: "Sets . . . one to one matching . . . equivalent sets . . . sets of one . . . sets of two . . . renaming two. . . ." After persisting for three valiant frames, she throws back her head and bursts into tears: "All I want to know is, how much is two and two?"
Louis C.K., who parodied his daughters' homework in an appearance on "The Late Show With David Letterman": "It's like, Bill has three goldfish. He buys two more. How many dogs live in London?"
