Good Commentary on "Reform Math" by Katharine Beals

Source: http://oilf.blogspot.com/search/label/math%20wars

Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The conspirators that keep Reform Math in place

1. The education schools, of course. Nearly all of them have Progressive Education pedigrees, and the theory behind Reform Math, Constructivism, is the latest incarnation of educational progressivism.

2. Their student indoctrinees who become teachers, principals, curriculum consultants, curriculum developers, and grant readers for the deep-pocketed education division of the National Science Foundation.

3. The media, for whom classrooms of students in groups doing hands-on projects (and people who talk about what a great new idea this is), make for more attention-grabbing news than classrooms of students in rows doing pen and paper exercises.

4. Postmodernists and Critical Theorists, suspicious of the rigid truth and authority of traditional mathematics (and the idea that 2 + 2 necessarily equals 4), and seduced by Reform Math's open-ended problems, multiple strategies, meta-cognitive reflections, and resistance to single correct answers.

5. The many mathematicians who haven't looked closely at the curriculum but tend to like (and trust) what they hear about it. Here a whole separate paragraph is necessary:

More than others, mathematicians tend to remember traditional math as gratuitously tedious: perhaps for them the drills and algorithmic practice were especially tedious, and perhaps they weren't as dependent on others are on doing these things in order to obtain mastery, making drills seem pointless to boot. As teachers of college students, mathematicians are also constantly looking at the end of the pipeline, where what emerges are college freshman who increasingly lack conceptual understanding. Told by "education experts" that Reform Math emphasizes conceptual understanding over meaningless rote learning, they conclude that Reform Math is the remedy, rather than being part of the problem.

6. Those at the opposite end of the mathematical spectrum: mathphobes and their parents. People, that is, who don't value rigorous math and who themselves, and/or whose children, are not mathematically inclined and do "better" with Reform Math's version of mathematics.

7. Lay people who either know little (or care little) about mathematics, or don't have children in school, or don't examine their children's homework assignments and compare it to what they were doing in math at the same age--and who subscribe to current middle class cultural truisms. Such people tend to love buzzwords like "hands-on", "conceptual understanding," "no one right answer," "multiple intelligences and learning styles," "child-centered," "taking ownership," and "making math relevant," as much as they flinch at "worksheets," "drill and kill," "mere calculation," "teacher-centered," "one right answer," and "dry abstraction."

8. Liberals of the knee-jerk variety who find anything traditional and authority-centered to be politically suspect; and/or who believe that traditional math instruction doesn't work for disadvantaged and/or nonwhite and/or non-Western children, and/or privileges privileged white children, thus widening the achievement gap .

On the other side? Nearly everyone who understands math deeply (at least through arithmetic, algebra, and geometry), cares about math, has taken a close look at the Reform Math curriculum, and has school-aged children.

Unfortunately, however much more qualified members of this second group are to assess Reform Math, they're far outnumbered--and out-buzzed--by those populating the educationist / postmodernist / out-of-touch mathphilic / in-touch mathphobic / middle class populist / knee-jerk liberal fronts.

Katharine Beals' blog "Out in Left Field" is always excellent and always a great source of information for those with a desire to learn about the non-trendy side of education.

Sneaky Tax Increase Proposed By Pine-Richland Board Director & New Global Studies Center

It is unclear whether the budget under consideration with NO tax increase will be approved at tonight's (June 13, 2011) school board meeting, or if a tax-increase budget will win. I sent in my email protesting the new idea of a tax increase in time for the June 6, 2011 special finance committee meeting, but it did not show up on the list of correspondence for the meeting agenda. Here is a link to that agenda. http://www.boarddocs.com/pa/prsd/Board.nsf/Public%20%20%20

(I hate the Boarddocs program. Everything is embedded. When there is a new and improved PR website I cannot understand why this is used.)

Several Board Directors were either surprised at the lack of people at the May 23 meeting or said that no one was telling them that they didn't want a tax increase, but the final budget version had already been put forward after two months of discussion and compromise. This whole time there was a theme that taxes would not increase this year, so why would people start writing in about it? Hopefully people will show up and complain, as miraculously only people in favor of a tax increase in the district seem to know that it is even being considered. Here is a link to an article about this: http://pine-richland.patch.com/articles/school-budget-decisions-come-down-to-next-mondays-vote

Patch isn't bad for local news, better than Post-Gazette or Tribune-Review (Pine Creek Journal) for school info so far, but it is owned by AOL and started censoring the comments that were critical of Pine-Richland.

I also wondered how many parents really thought about the meaning behind this "Global Studies Center" and how a whole bunch of classrooms (maybe 40 if I read the drawing right – and there's even a PLANETARIUM room which seems excessive) are devoted to this effort. Our kids turning into Global Citizens transferring the wealth from the evil United States from themselves and their future children to other countries who still treat their own citizens like crap. How noble. Here is the link to the presentation. http://www.boarddocs.com/pa/prsd/Board.nsf/files/8G9H8J4742CE/$file/Proposal_for_Pine_Richland_High_SchoolGlobal_S.ppt

I do have more on elementary level issues – the Muslim prayer rugs being made by kids during the so-called "Seasons of Celebrations", new constructivist enVisonMATH, whole language program of Guided Reading) and some thoughts about COEXIST – you see how well Anonymous bitter progressive liberal wants to get along with Christians and how fair her views are – and how it is meant to compromise the Christian faith which does not consider other faiths equal to itself (one God, one way to heaven through accepting Jesus Christ as Lord), although we support the right of others to follow whatever religion they choose.

What’s Up with the HS Summer Reading List?

Well, it is out – the 2011-2012 Pine Richland High School Summer Reading List. It looks the same as the 2010-2011 list.

 

http://www.pinerichland.org/hs/Summer%20Reading%20Handout%202010-2011.pdf

 

 
 

"The House on Mango Street" for 9th grade: I do NOT want my 14 year old discussing - with a mixed sex pre-AP/honors English class and a teacher who may not share my values - a book that involves: a 13 year old having sex with multiple boys, the rape of the 13 year old main character, the widespread beatings of girls and women by their fathers or husbands, the generally anti-man/husband viewpoint, the negative view of a poor Hispanic community, and the shots taken at Catholicism - at least as I interpret the book.  It is a feminist book.  It also has girls behaving inappropriately toward older men and older men who also behave inappropriately toward the girls (e.g. old man gives 13 yr old a hard kiss on mouth).  A friend thought her daughter didn't understand this, but it turns out she did and said she "thought it was gross". 

 
 

"Alas, Babylon" (9th) is about the aftermath of nuclear war, also for 9th grade honors/pre-AP; apocalyptical, some consider this topic to be pro-environmental, anti-war indoctrination.  Book itself seems ok. 

  
 

THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin (pre-AP 11).

I read "The Awakening" and can find no redeeming literature value in this book where the main character commits adultery, abandons her children, and finally commits suicide when her preferred lover who is not her husband  leaves her, which is her final freedom from the oppressive 1900s society.  She says she could never sacrifice her own desires for her children, and the author portrays this as ok.  It's a feminist book, clearly known as a book about SEXUAL Awakening and freedom.  Is also puts a POSITIVE spin on the main character's SUICIDE.  My edition, 2003 Barnes & Noble Classics: The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction, mentions the lack of birth control for author Chopin when telling she had 6 children, notes Chopin had an affair with a married man after her husband died, and mentions how poor Margaret Sanger was imprisoned for a month for starting a birth control clinic (recall she is founder of Planned Parenthood and advocated eugenics of blacks thru abortion). It's not a good read, either.

 
 

THE BEAN TREES by Kingsolver, Barbara (12th)

Book includes the rape of a baby girl, very feminist, uses Christ's name in vain, uses profanity, single motherhood is the norm, pro-illegal immigration, pre-marital sex is a given-main character avoids getting pregnant not for morality but for freedom, see www.books.google.com to read parts for yourself, e.g. pg 36.  Some examples:

Chap 1: "I knew what a p--ker looked like."

    Bloody post-crime ER scene

    "Why not, my daddy's been calling me a slut practically since I was thirteen, so why the h-ll not?"

    "Sh--t" I said.  "Sh-- fire son of a b-tch!"

    When bathing the baby Native American girl someone gave the main character in a parking lot: "There was a bruise twice the size of my thumb on its inner arm....When I pulled off the pants and the diapers there were more bruises.  Bruises and worse.  The Indian child was a girl.  A girl, poor thing.  The fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine.  I thought I knew about every ugly thing that one person does to another, but I had never even thought such things being done to a baby girl."

 
 

 Chap 2: "[The amputated limb] had a smooth defenseless look to it that reminded her of a penis..."

    "[Mexicans] were trying to take over the world like the Catholics."

 
 

Chap 8: Missy/Taylor and LuAnn speculate whether God has a "pee-pee" - most of the religious discussions are irreverent, signal familiarity with Christianity but no characters exhibit having real faith.  LuAnn's family has anti-Catholic bias, and anti-Hispanic as well.

 
 

Chap 9: A character tries to kill herself.  Describes terrible murder and kidnapping by folks opposing the teachers union in Guatemala.  Taylor is tempted to sleep with married man but resists. 

 
 

chap 12: baby gets raped/molested again

 
 

It's actually a good read, something you could read with your kids (or not!) because the many, many sensitive topics would get mangled by the wrong (i.e. secular humanist) group leader.  

 
 

--following review excerpt is from "The Slate" on THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy (honors 12th)

 
 

"We see it first I believe in an equally horrific scene in the first great work of the new nuclear genre: Cormac McCarthy's The Road. McCarthy's 2006 novel is not the airport type. It's an uncompromising achievement that transcends the nuke porn genre and yet, despite the horror at the heart of it, broke through to become an Oprah's Book Club selection—and of course, now, the soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture version can be found featured in stacks at airport bookstores. The Road is the high-culture incarnation of the nuke porn nightmare, and more power to it.

 
 

In case you missed it, The Road takes place in an unspecified future several years into what seems like a final fatal nuclear winter that will extinguish the survivors of the human race, left stumbling through ash-choked roads looking for canned goods in gutted supermarkets to stave off starvation because nothing will ever grow again. (Or will it? I'll get to the mystery, or deliberate ambiguity of the ending later.) As far as I recall, the word nuclear is never used in the novel; there is just one memory, a quiet horror, of some dim flashes and thumps in the far-off night to indicate that this hellish wasteland is the product of nuclear war.

No causes or triggering incidents are discussed. No Islamic or Serbian villains. It is a charred On the Beach for our time with that film's romanticizing of doom stripped away. It focuses on a man and his son wearily pushing a shopping basket along a road south, hoping to escape the pursuing winter and the hungry rivals for the last remaining edibles.

 
 

One of the things they come upon—and you know it's coming and dread its coming; there's almost a kind of pornographic buildup to this unbearable money shot—is an act of cannibalism so horrific I refuse to describe it further. (I wonder if the movie will depict it.)

Take my word for it: You'll never be the same after reading this scene. I've been trying for two years to erase it from my memory without success. It may be the ultimate anti-nuke statement; the demonic version of the insipid "War is not healthy for children and other living things." (Once you read it you'll see the precise inversion of this slogan it represents.)"

 
 

I have actually read this book, the act above starts with the characters observing 3 men and a pregnant woman walking together.  Later, they come across their abandoned camp and find the headless newborn's remains from being roasted and eaten.   The book includes many gruesome scenes of burnt bodies, headless corpses, ongoing threat of cannibalism, suicide, violence, spirituality - the boy does not pray to God but to his deceased father.  This book is considered a great work, an important work in advancing the radical environmental agenda, even though the source of the worldwide catastrophe is unidentified. The movie was R rated.

 
 

Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" is considered somewhat controversial, another apocalypse theme. 

 
 

And finally, "Brave New World" is for all 12th graders and is written by Aldous Huxley, whose brother helped start the UN.  This book involves mass promiscuity.  It seems to be a staple of HS reading lists.  It's not clear to me if it's a warning or a promotion of the idea that humanity will be so distracted that when changes come to the system they will be accepted or ignored (sounds like the public school system).

 

And here is what the Academic Achievement Committee's response was to a revised list by the HS English Dept: from January 24, 2011 meeting: http://www.boarddocs.com/pa/prsd/Board.nsf/files/8EG2XJ04513A/$file/Minutes%20Academic%20Ach%20Com%201%2024%2011.pdf

Summer Reading Change

The English Department proposed changes to the summer reading list for 2011.

 

Committee Recommendation

The committee questioned the rationale for the proposed change and recommended that the reading list remain the same.

 

The following persons were present; Board Members: Banyas, Dawson (chairman), Herko, Nigh, and Sundo; Administrators: Bucci,

Foley, Davis, Davis, Welter, Delp and Pietrusinski.

With the retirement of Ms. Boice, I am not sure how we will get such informative and complete details of the Board meetings…