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We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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    Monday, June 27. 2005

    The New New Math

    The latest Math educational fad is the new multicultural math, as discussed by Diane Ravitch in Opinion Journal. You didn't know it, but your math is a tool of capitalist oppression. (But then why do the kids in China seem to learn it fairly well?) Educational fads, like ebonics and new reading methods, damage kids. I was subject to the "new math" for two years in the 60s and it took me years to get back on track, and I still resent having been a guinea pig for that fiasco.

    The challenges of math education are several:

    1. It's not "fun": Sure it is, with an enthusiastic teacher.
    2. It's rigorous, with right and wrong answers: Gee, too bad.
    3. You have to master tedious basics before you can move forward: Just like life
    4. Sines and cosines can be too abstract for concrete thinking kids: True. So if you    don't "get it," you memorize it. It's called "learning it by heart."

    Read her piece. This New New math is as racist as anything I have ever read: there is no better way to guarantee that "people of color" and women will never master basic life and work skills. You won't know whether to laugh or cry. But I feel sorry for the kids - when they hit trig and pre-calc they won't know what hit them. And God knows, you'll never figure out how to price bonds. Of course, I feel that it is a tragedy that you can graduate from college these days without passing calc and statistics, but I know how it is: They need to fill those seats with "consumers."

    Posted by Bird Dog at 06:14 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

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    Moral Relativity in Mathematics
    -------------- MaggiesFarm has a link to a Wall Street Journal article appearing in the Opinion Journal section. Scroll down to "The New New Math." Diane Ravitch describes what the critical studies theorists are doing to make mathematics education into a political action platform. Multi-cultural moral relativity and deliberate distortion is no surprise in the social sciences. But who would have expected basic mathematics to become…
    Weblog: The View From 1776
    Tracked: Jun 27, 23:40

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