Oh there are a million fingers out there pointing every which way for someone or something to blame.
How about the parents? Absorbed in their careers, neither husband nor
wife has the time or energy to help Scooter learn to count beyond his
toes. However, busy parents are never too busy to blame the schools.
Firmly grafted to the U.S. Department of Education, the schools need
someone to blame. They don’t want to lose their federal funding. So who
gets to star in a game of
dodge ball (hazardous
for children – prohibited in some school districts)? Aha… The Teachers!
Rant and rave at them! They aren’t doing their jobs!
Baloney. From pre-school until graduation… or dropout… every child is
faced with a mix of incompetent and brilliant teachers and everything
in between. It’s part of the learning experience. Either way, it is not
the fault of the teachers that on math tests, children regularly score
lower than that unsightly shrubbery taking over the Rose Garden.
For the most part the teachers try their best, intend well and find
their hands tied by school administrators, by the demands of the
parents, and hamstrung by the curriculum provided.
Gone is the reliance on
teaching.
“Programs” are all the rage. School administrators and parents are
always on the lookout out for new, exciting programs complete with the
latest
bells and whistles that are
guaranteed
to raise test scores and grades. As a result, our schools are pouring
forth a society of illiterate nimrods… like my dogs, Nimrod and Little
Brain. I can’t wait until
these cretins get into the White
House and Congress. No, I don’t mean Nimrod and Little Brain even
though it would be an improvement. Anyway,
it’s already happened. Cretins are already
running rampant in our government.
So what about math? I hated it in school. Who didn’t? Until it becomes
a practical tool in life, math is one huge pain in the
sit upon. However, we survived. Some of us can even use math! But our kids can’t!
I may not be a math teaching whiz. But I can see clearly where the deficiencies lie. It’s called
The Basics.
You know, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Even the
simplest one-digit operations can throw a child into total confusion.
This is something of a contradiction in our hi-tech era. Your child
spends hours playing computer games based on a binary system that ties
him in knots.
Administrations and parents are being sold a whole lot of hooey when
they spend thousands of education dollars on flashy programs. The U.S.
Department of Education has a
budget of $88.9 billion and you-know-who paid for it.
Someone is getting rich. But it sure as hell isn’t you or your children. Fortunately for the
education grifters, your children won’t have the know-how to see it… let alone catch them.
One such program is
Everyday Mathematics
created and published by the University of Chicago Mathematics
Project. Due to its confusing nature, within the teaching world
E.M. is also known as
“fuzzy math.” And fuzzy it is, but not the warm, snuggly kind.
Everyday Mathematics boasts a “spiraling system” (hey if they
don’t get it the first time, maybe they won’t get it the second either…
or the third, fourth, fifth, etc.).
E.M. also uses bizarre terminology unfamiliar to most parents. That means that busy parents must master
Everyday Mathematics in order translate that which they already know how to do into
E.M.’s new fangled lingo for the purpose of explaining it to their children… if they
can.
Confused? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! It’s kind of like learning how to
“speak” a foreign language… without having a clue what you’re
saying.
E.M. even has geography lessons (I don’t get that either… unless
they are to help find Middle Eastern oil deposits)! I suppose counting
states
is math. Unfortunately for the students, there are more than twenty.
It gets better.
Everyday Mathematics
is chock full of alternative algorithms. What, you ask, are those? For
those of you out there who suffer from “mathematics deprivation
syndrome” (MDS, the new plague replacing bird flu), an algorithm is a
“method to solve problems.” Your basic method of adding two digit
numbers through “carrying” is an example of an algorithm.
E.M.’s program is brimming over with “alternative methods” giving children a miasma of choices from which to be baffled further.
Well, if it ain’t broke… better fix it. Traditional methods are passé.
Unfortunately, the old-fashioned methods only offered one way to solve
a problem and another way to check it.
Everyday Mathematics makes attaining a lucrative career as the Village Idiot all that more challenging. Too much competition.
Everyday Mathematics ensures that it will be nearly impossible
for parents to help their perplexed offspring. Will there be federal
funding for No Parent Left Behind? I sure hope so! Additionally,
continued use of
Everyday Mathematics is a sure fire method to hardwire children with indelible hostilility towards math.
It makes me long for the good old days of
Tom Lehrer and New Math.
Not convinced? Here’s an explanatory video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
For education officials who have to buy a program, there are alternatives such as
Saxon Math, Progress in Mathematics and Singapore Math, all of them highly effective in actually teaching… math.
I suggest concerned parents raise a full-blown, bovine stink to get
Everyday Mathematics
tossed out of their children’s classrooms and into the dumpster where
it belongs. Or… we can look forward to longer lines at the Chum Bucket
Sea Food Buffet waiting for our change.
And remember this.
Your children will be the ones to pick out
your rest home and pay for it! It might help if they can add up the bill correctly.
Special thanks to Linda Schrock-Taylor.
Elizabeth Gyllensvard contributed to and edited this story.
Writings 
Have you ever waited for your change at some fast food joint? Of course you have. Even if you’ve not recently indulged at a fast “food” bloat buffet, you’ve had to wait for change in other shops. You know how it goes: you stand there holding back an aneurism while the cashier struggles to figure out how to break your twenty-dollar bill. What a toughie.
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