Current Reaction: SO GLAD my kids are well past their public school education. The nutso proposals we're seeing in NYC, Virginia, and California (and how many other states?) to cut back accelerated learning for advanced students are so disturbing. Not to even mention the coming ethnic studies movement (i.e. know your identity group grievances or shameful history). Makes you want to burn down every university school of education, where these ideas seem universal. I thought my son's plan to homeschool his two kids was questionable, but now it's totally sensible.
"Verwoerd’s revenge" I don't know how I missed that when it was first posted. Very good. The woke seem to be very prone to stepping on rakes. Affinity groups is just one example. Another one is the trial of Derek Chauvin. If your people had been tormented with lynchings, you might want to be fastidious about due process in a way that Maxine Waters just couldn't understand.
My wife recently became a math support teacher in a local elementary school and she comes home with lots of what we call "math crimes."
For example, did you know that "a fraction cant be greater than the whole"? I think that is "true" in conversational English, but completely false mathematically.
Our theory is that the people who went to Ed Schools in the 80s and 90s and are now professors HATE and do not understand actual math. They have tried to write curricula that they think will work (at least for people like them) -- e.g. "Everyday Math" which is now part of common core. But these approaches are worse than the rote learning approach that Gen-X and before had.
Compounding the problem is that current teachers learned the math the "Everyday" way and have no idea what is going on. So you have curricula which don't work taught by teachers who are clueless.
The best thing to do is to dust off the 70s 80s textbooks and start from scratch. Also to close all Schools of Ed.
Current Reaction: SO GLAD my kids are well past their public school education. The nutso proposals we're seeing in NYC, Virginia, and California (and how many other states?) to cut back accelerated learning for advanced students are so disturbing. Not to even mention the coming ethnic studies movement (i.e. know your identity group grievances or shameful history). Makes you want to burn down every university school of education, where these ideas seem universal. I thought my son's plan to homeschool his two kids was questionable, but now it's totally sensible.
"Verwoerd’s revenge" I don't know how I missed that when it was first posted. Very good. The woke seem to be very prone to stepping on rakes. Affinity groups is just one example. Another one is the trial of Derek Chauvin. If your people had been tormented with lynchings, you might want to be fastidious about due process in a way that Maxine Waters just couldn't understand.
I love the new growth of Spring and wish the beauty I revel in wasn't misery for people with pollen allergies.
How do you pronounce Khan-splain, does it rhyme with mansplain?
"I recently had the pleasure of reviewing Marie Favereau’s new The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World for unherd.com. "
Is there a link? I couldn't find it.
Recommendation is Tal Yarkoni, the generalizability crisis and the potentially massive implications of it
Also re: "I hear the dam is finally going to break again on those after this slight pause during COVID-19. "
I really hope so. aDNA is my diversion from the problems of the actual world and I really need my fix.
Re: math.
My wife recently became a math support teacher in a local elementary school and she comes home with lots of what we call "math crimes."
For example, did you know that "a fraction cant be greater than the whole"? I think that is "true" in conversational English, but completely false mathematically.
Our theory is that the people who went to Ed Schools in the 80s and 90s and are now professors HATE and do not understand actual math. They have tried to write curricula that they think will work (at least for people like them) -- e.g. "Everyday Math" which is now part of common core. But these approaches are worse than the rote learning approach that Gen-X and before had.
Compounding the problem is that current teachers learned the math the "Everyday" way and have no idea what is going on. So you have curricula which don't work taught by teachers who are clueless.
The best thing to do is to dust off the 70s 80s textbooks and start from scratch. Also to close all Schools of Ed.
Love the kid's handwriting! Hard enough to do in the last century, but now they have keyboards.