Keachie Again Misreads Rebane

June 2011
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Keachie Again Misreads Rebane

21 June 2011

George Rebane

Mr Douglas Keachie is a loud voice in the community and on local blogs. A man of progressive persuasion, he is also a sometime commenter on these pages. In his latest effort he attempts to reveal “three fatal flaws” in my 11jun11 Union column ‘Entrepreneurship 2011’. His revelation was published as an Other Voices submission in the 21jun11 Union (here).

Mr Keachie launches his piece with the devastating deduction that I claimed the tax rate to be 100% (confiscatory) for all earnings above $250,000 – “The tax on net income above $250,000 is not 100 percent.” It is easy to verify that nowhere in my column do I make such claim or anything that remotely resembles it. From that point of departure Mr Keachie proceeds swiftly downward in his displayed comprehension of what I wrote, and in his understanding of the entrepreneurial enterprise in general.

There are two possible explanations for such errors. The first is that Mr Keachie is among the many who have been short-changed by our public educational system. And that would explain why his remarkable conclusions fall into the lower categories as documented in the longitudinal National Adult Literacy Survey that is conducted every ten years by the National Center for Educational Statistics. As the record shows, this is not the first time that Mr Keachie has had trouble understanding what I write. (I have reported extensively on adult numeracy and literacy on these pages – RR keywords ‘numeracy’, ‘adult literacy’.)

The other explanation is that Mr Keachie is taking a page from Saul Alinsky’s manual of political discourse, and simply fabricating a set of ‘facts’, attributes, or other characteristics that can be ascribed to a person to be denigrated. Such characteristics, derived from whole cloth, go on to serve as the ridiculed targets for the remainder of the presentation. The reader, unfamiliar with the original, is then at the author’s mercy.

As to why The Union so prominently published Mr Keachie’s article, one can only guess. Perhaps, through their over-worked editorial filter, my column represented an ideological bias that had to be ‘balanced’, and the Keachie piece was the only one at hand – any port in a storm.

Posted in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Happenings, Nevada County, The Liberal Mind

187 responses to “Keachie Again Misreads Rebane”

Bonnie M

25 June 2011

When I read Mr. Keachie’s article in the Union my impression was that he doesn’t understand what it’s like to operate a business. Employees can’t possibly know the expense and effort it involves in order for a business to survive. Even more detatched from economic reality when they are employed by the government. Many don’t connect with the fact that money they earn and taxes they pay comes from taxes first collected the private sector. Political Scientist’s acknowledge this as the weakness that can be used to encite class warfare…workers against employers. My dad was a Union man who despised employers until he became one and realized the hard work and risk required to be in business. Pretty obvious as to why our government is in big financial trouble. Incompetent people who don’t care about economics…Spend like charge-card drunkards, and then raise taxes is their answer to good economics.

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George Rebane

25 June 2011

GregG, please reread my comment. I made no claim that Illig was a school teacher, only that the education she received (that would cause her to utter such a statement) was faulty.

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Douglas Keachie

25 June 2011

Greg, Steve K considered Harvey Mudd, and Glenn A. Smith, best friend in HS, went through Pomona, so I am somewhat familiar with the Claremont Colleges. I make no excuses for for the unprepared, but I really doubt that many who get into a credential program are unable to add, subtract,multiply, and divide,at least certainly not in my day. I see you missed have Kirkpatrick during his first year of attempting to teach Algebra. I was one of the victims. Are you aware that 50% of those who go into teaching drop out inside 5 years? I watched a freshly minted Spanish teacher wash out in eight weeks.
I think one of the problems that I have with your mindset is that you assume that anyone who didn’t go into engineering or the “hard” sciences obviously was unable to handle the rigors of the material,and is therefore lacking in some gray matter. Would you be willing to admit that some folks who don’t pursue your favorites just might be as smart, or even (GASP!) smarter? Inquiring minds want to know.
If you insist that I know nothing of what I haven’t personally experienced, then you will have to disqualify yourself from being an expert on how to teach in the K-12 public schools. You never done that, now have you?

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Douglas Keachie

25 June 2011

“I did say that they are unable to teach their concepts well.”
This should be amended to read:
“I did say that some of them are unable to teach their concepts well.”

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Greg Goodknight

25 June 2011

“I think one of the problems that I have with your mindset is that you assume that anyone who didn’t go into engineering or the “hard” sciences obviously was unable to handle the rigors of the material,and is therefore lacking in some gray matter.”
No, I suspect the problem you have is that you were and are unable to handle it. I’ve known and respected many of high caliber who are not in the sciences, you’re just not one of them, though you have a high respect of your ability to google a bit and quote something you really don’t understand.
“You never done that, now have you?” Wrong again, Keach. I spent a year teaching algebra in a public middle school, and I’ve never held myself up as an expert on how to teach K-12. I do have claim to have a good handle on what needs to be learned in K-12, and if I hadn’t intervened in my son’s math education in the 1st and the 7th grades, he’d not have been prepared to choose any path he wanted in college. You see, Keach, in the sciences much of the knowledge is hierarchical, and without a solid foundation you can’t progress.
In short, if you all of a sudden want to minor in history in your 3rd college year you can and still graduate in 4, if you can read and write acceptably. However, if you want to minor in chemistry, physics or math you might need to set the wayback machine 8 years and try again.

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Douglas Keachie

26 June 2011

the key words here are:
“The new teaching concentration is designed to increase the number and quality of math teachers. It requires the completion of three new courses: Math 151, 152 and 153. It also includes a modification to the typical pure math major sequence.”
This would seem to imply that the courses at one of the most prestigious universities on the planet, have been not providing adequate instructors of high school mathematics. You may have been able to understand every prof you’ve ever had, but here is an admission that not every student did, and that there as been a problem at the source, the universities themselves. Like I said, thinking clearly in higher mathematics is no guarantee of being able to teach Algebra or even common fractions and decimals well.
If this were not the case, why would they have bothered to set up such a program?
P.S. I started using ERIC back in 1974, on a network that was an offshoot of the Space Program, and that’s where I learned about doing searches effectively and efficiently.

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Douglas Keachie

26 June 2011

The was a previous comment about researching the Dept.of Mathematics at UC Berkeley, that seems to have not posted for some unknow reason, perhaps because of the size of the paste. I will try again:
Requirements for the Major with a Teaching Concentration
The new teaching concentration is designed to increase the number and quality of math teachers. It requires the completion of three new courses: Math 151, 152 and 153. It also includes a modification to the typical pure math major sequence.
Following are the required courses for the teaching concentration:
Statistics 20 or 25 Probability and Statistics
Mathematics 1A-1B Calculus
Mathematics 53 Multivariable Calculus
Mathematics 54 Linear Algebra & Differential Equations
Mathematics 55 Discrete Mathematics
Mathematics 110 Linear Algebra
Mathematics 113 Abstract Algebra
Any two of:
Mathematics 128A Numerical Analysis,
Mathematics 130 Classical Geometry, or
Mathematics 135 Set Theory
Mathematics 151 Mathematics for the Secondary School Curriculum I
Mathematics 152 Mathematics for the Secondary School Curriculum II
Mathematics 153 Mathematics for the Secondary School Curriculum III
Mathematics 160 History of Mathematics
In addition, students are encouraged (but not required) to take Mathematics 104 Analysis, Mathematics 115 Number Theory, and Mathematics 185 Complex Analysis.
Following is a brief description of the Mathematics 151-153 series:
Mathematics 151 treats fractions, rational numbers, basic number theory and the Euclidean algorithm, rigid motions, dilations, geometry of similar triangles, and linear equations and their graphs.
Mathematics 152 treats linear inequalities and their graphs, simultaneous linear equations, functions (quadratic, polynomial, rational, exponential, and logarithmic), basic Euclidean geometry, and discussion of axiomatization.
Mathematics 153 treats trigonometric functions, the least upper bound axiom, limits and n-th room, area and volume, basic mensuration formulas, the theory of calculus up to the abstract definitions of exp and log.

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Greg Goodknight

27 June 2011

Back from real life to find another less than competent google search passing for Keachie research. No Keach, you got that entirely wrong. Not a surprise because you apparently have no context besides ‘improving math teaching must be fixing that problem the mathophobes have with math’ mindset you seem to have.
That’s a perfectly solid set of classes for a prospective competent math teacher, not someone planning on mathematics graduate work. My own math education ended with a class like that recommended but not requred “Mathematics 185 Complex Analysis” which used the same text as the current Cal class does, and I was never happier to get a gentleman’s C. There’s a reason someone only planning on teaching high school might not want to tackle that subject, as applied complex analysis is one step away from pure magic. Dangerous for amateur sorcerers.
The early ‘oughts was something of a Return of the Jedi moment in math education. In the ’90’s the Education college pedagogists got control of K-12 math education though the education side of the NSF and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the whole math/fuzzy math/constructivist math excesses of the 1989 NCTM “Standards” and the 1994 California Math Frameworks that were the ’89 “Standards” to an extreme. I use scare quotes because these were not standards about what math topics needed to be learned by the students, but almost entirely about how kids were supposed to learn it, with teachers “no longer a sage on the sage, but instead a guide on the side” crap that Ed schools still cling to. In essence, the Socratic Method without Socrates, since Socrates clones are in very short supply in K-12. In the “Promising” (see below) Mathland curriculum rolled out in Grass Valley schools in ’95 (and Nevada City in ’96), even the 1st graders worked on problems in groups with calculators on their shared worktables to make sure the lack of knowing how to add and subtract wouldn’t interfere with the “mathematical power” that was being developed by the kids trying to discover 2000 years of knowledge by themselves.
Cal’s esteemed Dr. Hung-Hsi Wu was one of the math professors (think Jedi) who helped lead Mathematics back into K-12 math with the State of California Math content Standards. One watershed moment was the open letter to Clinton’s Education Secretary Riley denigrating the “Exemplary and Promising” curriculums, which was signed by Dr. Wu.
http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/riley.htm
I was asked to be included as an endorser by Mathematically Correct (a parent’s group) founder Dr. McKeown, who, when I was first recruited as something of an MC member, was a Salk Institute professor of virology, but looking over the other endorsers, I felt out of place… Over the first 10 years of my involvement of the Math Wars I had multiple contacts with the first three signers, but never with Dr. Wu.
The Math 152/153/154 sequence apparently use a text by Dr. Wu that is congruent to the California Math Content Standards which was what math professors like Wu and Stanford’s Jim Milgram and CSULA’s Wayne Bishop helped pull into place. In short, Dr. Wu has written that the best way of making mathematics teaching better is to ensure math teachers are competent in the mathematics they are teaching. Imagine that.
“What needs fixing is the teacher qualification problem. NCTM
should find (diplomatic) ways to express this fact correctly”
http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~wu/inv-paulo.pdf

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Douglas Keachie

27 June 2011

Well Greg,
On the one hand you’ve been arguing that math majors are perfectly competent to deliver math curriculum, clear as a bell, and that’s the way it’s been since time immemorial, with the exception of a brief hiatus during the 1990’s, and on the other hand, you now accept a two tiered approach to being a math major:
Those that breath the rare but solid and hard core math, destined for glory in engineering, physics, and the exotic temple of pure math itself,
……………………………………
and those merely destined to go teach it to the youngsters in K-12
Sine most math teachers of my K-12 days had no access to time machines with which to avail themselves of the curriculum now available, I still maintain, that math majors have, until this New Age, 40 years too late for the age of Aquarius (but that’s cool, whenever) been rather poor teachers of their subject, as many of them assumed, “it’s all so obvious and clear” forgetting their days in the fog bound Valley, before they burst into the sunshine above Auburn, near Graduate Math School Land.
BTW, pretty good music, yesterday at the Pioneer Park bandshell. I enjoyed the pickled trumpet section piece.

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Greg Goodknight

27 June 2011

Keach, you are near-perfect ass, congratulations. It’s the same hand, there is no other. I realize it’s a fine point that you might have a problem with, but there’s a difference between being prepared for further study, and being prepared to go out and do something with what you have. Like the difference between the chemistry a Pre-med or other life ‘science’ major takes and the chemistry a Chemist or other scientist would study.
And tell me, of those classes a Cal math major planning on teaching has taken, how many did you pass? Did you make it to Math 1A? What prepared you to teach your artist wife to deOutside of the MathEd sequence, I took about half of those, including the most advanced.
The classes regarding curriculum are a review in context of secondary teaching of the math a Cal math student would already have down pat. Good math teachers need to have a thorough grounding in order to counter the pedagogues in their districts, a point you’re trying to ignore.
Yes, many folks like the Nevada County band. I had to take a break from the incessant flow of show tunes played too loudly with weak intonation a few years ago, you may well be the target audience. Checking the program, I see my friend Gene Graves, a fine percussionist and retired music director was the conductor, so I expect it was one of the better recent ones.

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Douglas Keachie

27 June 2011

“Good math teachers need to have a thorough grounding in order to counter the pedagogues in their districts, ”
Which “pedagogues” are you referring to? Do they act as referees in the math classes?
I took college algebra at Sierra, and Statistics 1A at Cal. My score of 613 on the 1960’s version of the SAT, allowed me to bypass Math 1A, as they had more people in those classes than they knew what to do with already.
As for teaching binary, I learnt it all by myself, and then came up with a much “clearer” packaging than what I was forced to deal with. Hexadecimal and Octal are merely simple extensions of the concept.

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Greg Goodknight

27 June 2011

“College Algebra” at Sierra is not much removed from the California Math standard for 8th grade Algebra 1 texts, you really have not taken any university level mathematics. As I’ve written previously in the local blogs, while AP Statistics was touted as the zenith for mathematics at NUHS best taken as a senior, I counseled my son to get it out of the way fast because it’s a dead end, so he took it in the 10th grade and he did fine.
I was competently taught non-base 10 arithmetic in my east of LA public school in the 60’s, and I still vividly recall one lesson as a 5th grader (rationalizing a repeating decimal) that blew me away with the power of what I later learned was algebra but done in the format of a subtraction problem. Thank you, Joe Gascon. It may be you were shortchanged by your public schools, which all too often have unqualified teachers misleading elementary math students and ruining their chances to enter high school ready to learn geometry, advanced algebra, trig and calculus, which if they don’t have under their belt as an entering college freshman they have virtually no chance of earning a mathematically based BA/BS in only 4 years.
Sorry, Keach, while you might have muddled through teaching yourself base 2, 8 and 16 arithmetic, I wouldn’t expect you to do a competent job teaching it. You just don’t have a clue about how much you don’t have a clue about.
Keachie Again Misreads Everything.

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Douglas Keachie

27 June 2011

And there goes our Greggie again, the absolute expert on everything, including stuff he’s never even seen. BTW, for an early version of Microsoft Media Group’s software, they had me do an animation of the technique I used, which was presented by Bill Gates himself at a convention introducing the software. A rather incompetent professor in a college borrowed the tape and “lost” it. But who cares? Greg is so much smarter than Gates, so the whole idea must be rubbish. Somewhere I do have stills of my students going through the exercises.
BTW, the concert pictures are up. Just go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keachie/collections/72157627003553262/
and then click your way down into NCity Events.

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Greg Goodknight

27 June 2011

“My score of 613 on the 1960’s version of the SAT, allowed me to bypass Math 1A”
Math 1A at Cal is (and very probably was in your time) the first semester Calculus for mathematicians and scientists. A decent SAT allows a student to enroll in the course skipping the entry exam, placing out of it takes previous AP Calculus with a score of 3 or better on the exam. So, Keach, the question remains… what math, if any, did you take at UC Berkeley on your way to a degree in what… history?
That you did something cute with a Windows app does not make you as smart as the guy who you claim took your idea, Keach, and made many billions along the way. Really, Doug, you should stop listening to those voices in your head that force you to write such incredibly silly things.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

Lots of comments have obviously been deleted here. In summation, I made the point that part of the reason this country has done poorly in math has been because mathematicians have, in the past, been supremely self confident that if they learned it and it was as clear as a bell to them, then obviously anyone who cannot not learn it the way they were taught, is obviously not capable, or lacks the ability, to learn math.
It seems clear to me, that if the University of California has chosen, just in the last couple of years, to create courses specifically for those planning on going on to become teachers, then at least some mathematicians are aware that perhaps there is more than one gate to the Kingdom of Math, and that it is worth spending several hundred hours of study, to insure that any future teachers of math in K-12 will learn the secrets to many of gates, instead of just one. This will allow these new teachers to nurture more and better equipped students for the “hard and solid” sciences, and their esquire, engineering, and of course the pre-med students.
This is seen as a panacea by some for our current economic woes, but I would caution that the world may find itself with many unemployed hi tech experts, until more concern is paid to what the needs of 6.9 billion people are on a finite planet 70$% covered by water, with most of the desirably regions well stocked (some would say, “too well stocked”) with people.

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George Rebane

28 June 2011

DougK, there have been no comments deleted here. If you have evidence to the contrary, I want to be the first to know.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

When I first brought up the page, they were missing, now they are back. I had purged my temp files this morning, so I do not understand just why this happens, as this is the second time.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

Regarding cute stuff, “I made no such claim.”
What I did indirectly claim is that a technique for learning binary that you poopoo’d simply because I was the source, was looked upon kindly by others….I am in passing acquainted with Bill Gates, brief conversation in person and live once, and I am no Bill Gates.
Happy?

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Greg Goodknight

28 June 2011

Keachie, you made a wild assed guess that courses added to Cal’s math program fit your template for bad math teaching. I gave you background to show you (and more importantly, everyone else) you misread that one, too.
You write “In summation, I made the point that part of the reason this country has done poorly in math has been because mathematicians have, in the past, been supremely self confident that if they learned it and it was as clear as a bell to them, then obviously anyone who cannot not learn it the way they were taught, is obviously not capable, or lacks the ability, to learn math.” As usual, you’ve constructed a straw man that no one in math departments says or thinks.
The #1 problem in math ed, especially the lower grades, is teachers who don’t understand the math very well. There’s another problem, in that in the US it’s all too common for parents to accept their kids aren’t doing very well in math because it’s hard. As opposed to some other cultures where if the kids isn’t doing well in math they’re pushed to work harder.
The problem with math teaching in California’s public schools are kids being taught fractions and other elementary math by elementary teachers who have a poor command of elementary math. Liping Ma referred to “profound understanding of elementary mathematics” as being key, and most agree with her. Even Dr. Wu made a bold step of suggesting the NCTM diplomatically handle the teacher qualification issue, which, of course, they have not done. Like for other K-12 subjects, lousy math teachers get more inservice training, not the boot.
Specifically, the Wu material is NOT learning many different ways to tickle all those imaginary ‘multiple intelligences’ in order to be able to teach 160 kids 160 different way; that’s what the NCTM has been pushing for decades. Wu covers the hierarchical nature of the material. Traditional approach, not fuzzy. You’d be disappointed.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

And stuff seems missing again? very odd?
In summation, I made the point that part of the reason this country has done poorly in math has been because mathematicians have, in the past, been supremely self confident that if they learned it and it was as clear as a bell to them, then obviously anyone who cannot not learn it the way they were taught, is obviously not capable, or lacks the ability, to learn math.
It seems clear to me, that if the University of California has chosen, just in the last couple of years, to create courses specifically for those planning on going on to become teachers, then at least some mathematicians are aware that perhaps there is more than one gate to the Kingdom of Math, and that it is worth spending several hundred hours of study, to insure that any future teachers of math in K-12 will learn the secrets to many of gates, instead of just one. This will allow these new teachers to nurture more and better equipped students for the “hard and solid” sciences, and their esquire, engineering, and of course the pre-med students.
This is seen as a panacea by some for our current economic woes, but I would caution that the world may find itself with many unemployed hi tech experts, until more concern is paid to what the needs of 6.9 billion people are on a finite planet 70$% covered by water, with most of the desirably regions well stocked (some would say, “too well stocked”) with people.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

Well here I am in Internet Explorer, and not only is the stuff still missing, the post I just made is missing.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

Amazing how thew posts come and go, and of late, mostly go.

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

So Greg, what you are rally saying is that the USA culture is dysfunctionally mathwise, and the cure would be to fired any teacher who isn’t up to your standards in math?
I guess what you fail to see is that math is not the only thing being taught in school, and that teachers poor ion math may have strengths in other areas, and I rather doubt you’ll be able to find instant replacements for the one who are poor in math, because as you have pointed out, the USA culture as a whole is dysfunctional in math.
Having identified the problem as a cultural one, why not go about fiing it, as you would racism?

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Douglas Keachie

28 June 2011

Fub with pretzel crumbed keyboard and no glasses. Switching between houses is getting old.

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Paul Emery

29 June 2011

I recall my 5th grade math teacher in Altus Oklahoma teaching us how to invert fractions. She did this every year so we were waiting for it. She picked up the shortest boy in the class by the leg and held him in the air upside down. The lesson was well taught. I have fond memories of my Oklahoma grammar school days. By the end of the sixth grade you knew enough math to build a barn or run a small store.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

Post toasties are not working this morning? Does it require two lines to get something posted? Let’s try.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

It seems to work like this. If you click just on the title of this in the right hand side, you get a foreshortened version of the comments. If you comment several times, until one finally does stick, and then you click on the recent comments, then all of them show up. I guess this makes it look good for history.

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George Rebane

29 June 2011

DougK, I’m at a loss as how to advise you about your recent experience in posting comments here. Others don’t seem to share those inconveniences. TypePad may be to blame; sometimes a combination of their software and the cookie set on a client PC cause a problem that then gets fixed in their next release. Please hang in there.

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George Rebane

29 June 2011

My own mathematical tipping point came with math (arithmetic) teacher Mr Finch in the 5th grade at Ben Davis Grade School in Indianapolis. The man was a genius and had us all competing at the blackboards for his pocket change. And I was blessed to have a full year of Mr William (‘Wild Willie’) Wooton for analytic geometry and calculus as a high school senior in Tujunga, CA. William Wooton was WW2 B-29 pilot who soon after he taught us went to the university level and became the nationally celebrated iconic author of secondary school math books for the next 20+ years.
Sadly, my experience with high school math teachers during our own kids’ forays through high school math gave me little to celebrate. Their teachers had limited knowledge of what they taught, and were extremely defensive in having this be discovered. Nothing will discourage one more about the general academic qualifications of California teachers than to have been in their midst as they prepared for and then assembled en masse to take the dreaded C-BEST examination required of all who wish to become teachers in California. (A large fraction of ed school graduates have to retake the test more than once before passing.)
I had the eye-opening privilege of being part of the process and taking the exam as a teacher’s union requirement in order to tutor students and conduct seminars for science/math teachers at Santa Monica High School. Invited by the school’s administration to volunteer my time, the union saw me as their ‘enemy’ who might make known the actual skill sets of the school’s science/math faculty. Their last ditch defense was to reject my academic and professional credentials, and require me to pass the C-BEST before being admitted into their midst. The test is a low grade hurdle, and its requirement underlines the paucity of the state’s K-12 educational system.
For the record, part of my teaching experience already included teaching various math and science classes as a young officer to GI’s in the Army who were completing their GSE requirement after duty hours. Before our first child was born, Jo Ann and I both volunteered our time to teach various high school level courses.
Over the years, we have found the public school teaching profession to be a suspicious and defensive cabal. Their wagons are permanently circled and for good reason. The heartening part is that here and there solitary and dedicated professionals with the impeccable credentials and experience are still willing to stick it out. The stories they tell in private would be jarring to parents and taxpayers alike.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

Yup, that seems to be the story. Click on the title in the right side, and you get the shortened version of the comments. Make a comment, it ignores it, make a second comment, it takes it and then shows you the rest of the story. It has done [recisely this, twice in a row now. I will now copy this comment, as it will not post.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

I left out a step, you have to go to recent comments to get it to work and show you everything.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

It would seem if indeed Greg is right, that mathematics is hierarchical, and there is only one sequence, and Dr. Wu is the Grand Jedi, then it might be worth while to have her do videos of her teaching each concept at each level, and a complete set of FAQ’s. The classroom teacher could then run the presentations, and translate the students’ questions into a choice of the correct FAQ. Is this the classroom of the future?
IMHO, it may well be, except that, for any given section, there will be twenty or more presentations by Dr. Wu like experts, each of who will have their own little “hold the kid upside” like memnonics. The student can now access this information, out of class, as well as in class. Will teachers still be needed? Yes. Why? To provide guidance for the materials, and to ride herd on the social interactions of the students, and to supervise testing, such that the students can’t cheat. Scoring? hey, that’s all in the computers, so that it is all, “no child left behind” compliant.
BTW, at one school I know of, they have been trying to force the teachers, to upgrade their grades, on a daily basis. So far, the techies haven’t been able to have the computer working on any sort of reliable basis, so this is FAIL, but then, they don’t have enough techies, and they pay the ones they do have poorly. As soon as they learn the ropes, they jump ship for higher paying jobs elsewhere. So much for visionary teaching of mathematics in public schools, because the Tea Party wants to cut funding even further..

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

“It would seem if indeed Greg is right, that mathematics is hierarchical, and there is only one sequence”
You made up the last part, Keach.

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

George, even the CBEST, which is apparently easier than the current high school exit exam, continues to be opposed by the unions. FairTest (aka NoTest by detractors) believes that since certain socio-economic groups do poorly on CBEST, that’s evidence that it’s “racially biased”.
http://fairtest.org/california-teacher-testing

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

Here’s a quote from someone who agrees with Keachie about math teaching. Jack Price, then president of the NCTM stated
“What we have now is nostalgia math. It is the mathematics that we have always had, that is good for the most part for the relatively high socio-economic anglo male, and that we have a great deal of research that has been done showing that women, for example, and minority groups do not learn the same way. They have the capability, certainly, of learning, but they don’t, the teaching strategies that you use with them are different from those that we have been able to use in the past when young people, we weren’t expected to graduate a lot of people, and most of those who did graduate and go on to college were the anglo males.”
http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/roger.htm
Dr. McKeown, the parent on the program, was at the time a professor of Virology at the Salk Institute, co-founded Mathematically Correct with a few other parents who found themselves gobsmacked after a parent’s night at a La Jolla high school where CPM’s (the misnamed College Preparatory Math from Davis, loosely connected to the Education department of UCD) Brian Hoey made it clear their kids wouldn’t be learning much math after the CPM adoption.

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

George, my first remembered “aha!” moment was in the 5th or 6th grade in a lesson that rationalized repeating decimals using algebra but in a format like this:
10x = 8.88888…
x = .88888…
(subtract)
9x = 8.00000… = 8
x = 8/9
This was the coolest thing I’d seen in mathematics in elementary school. The power of al-jabr incarnate. The teacher was Joe Gascon, who died too young some years later and now has a school named after him. A couple years before that class Mr. Gascon, being unable to tell the difference between me being absolutely bored with the math and not understanding it had put me in a slow class. I was still bored stiff but saw a need to excel just to get out of the endless long division problems the slow class was getting, and a few weeks of 100% on homework and quizzes did the trick. Got moved to the ‘high average’ class, then later to the ‘superior’ track, back in the bad old days when ‘tracks’ were still possible in California schools.
The last time I saw Mr.Gascon was when I visted his school during my undergrad years, and he asked me what I was studying. Informed physics, he again apologized profusely for that placement, but I assured him there were no hard feelings, it’s hard for a teacher to tell the difference between being bored out of one’s gourd, and not understanding the material. It’s easier as a parent, and I was able to intervene in my son’s education when was caught in the same trap.

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George Rebane

29 June 2011

GregG, Since CBEST is already pretty low grade ore, I had no idea that even that test is under fire as you describe.
This reminds me of the bitching and moaning heard from teachers that they don’t get enough respect and commensurate pay as the nation’s “educators”. It appears that this unionized profession has been part and parcel of the socialized full employment program with the government again serving as the employer of last resort. I wonder how many parents know what they are exposing their kids to in the pursuit of education.

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

A barely passing CBEST score is middle school level at best.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

this comment necessary to reach real end of comments.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

New finding, when you reach the area of the later comments, you then can scroll up and discover the earlier comments are gone.
“You see, Keach, in the sciences much of the knowledge is hierarchical, and without a solid foundation you can’t progress.”
Another annoyance. I wanted to go up an cut paste the part where Greg says that ‘i made up that last part” in reference to there being but one sequence to learn this hierarchical subject material.
So Greg does agree that there are many gates to the Kingdom of Math?
I notice no yea or nea to the notion that the Jedi Wu and others similarly endowed should do videos?
Shouldn’t one intelligence be enough for most people?

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

BTW, CBEST is a joke. If your essay isn’t politically correct, even if it is written well and grammatically and punctuation-wise correct, you may fail, depending on the reader.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

“I wonder how many parents know what they are exposing their kids to in the pursuit of education.”
They obviously don’t give a damn, or simply choose not to pay the taxes required to attract top talent. Or maybe their employers don’t spread enough wealth around for them to afford the taxes?
If it takes money for the best athletes and CEO’s and lawyers and doctors, why do you assume it doesn’t take money to get the top teachers?
“If you use inferior materials, you get inferior demons.”

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

Opening with a cut in paste seems to lead to an automatic deletion:
“I wonder how many parents know what they are exposing their kids to in the pursuit of education.”
Perhaps the parents don’t give a damn, or don’t want to spend the money, or don’t have the money to spend, because the employers don’t spread enough around?
“If you use inferior materials, you get inferior demons.”
When hunting top people in athletics, music, corporate leaqdership, law, and medicine, $$$$’s help. why should it be any different in the teaching profession?

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

Quirky WordPress, vanished the post, so I recomposed it.

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

Keachie, with a little thought you might actually be able to make a point in one post, rather than fall short of one point with 6 posts.
“Another annoyance. I wanted to go up an cut paste the part where Greg says that ‘i made up that last part” in reference to there being but one sequence to learn this hierarchical subject material. So Greg does agree that there are many gates to the Kingdom of Math?”
Yes, I’m sure it’s annoying when you’re sure I wrote something and then, by reviewing it, that I really didn’t. This is Keachie’s way of saying “I’m sorry, Greg, I was wrong, you didn’t write that.
“I notice no yea or nea to the notion that the Jedi Wu and others similarly endowed should do videos?”
They are playing to a different audience than you, Keach.
“Shouldn’t one intelligence be enough for most people?”
Even one is a reach for some.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

So you liked the softball?
“”I notice no yea or nea to the notion that the Jedi Wu and others similarly endowed should do videos?”
They are playing to a different audience than you, Keach. ”
If they can’t do it themselves, they have no business teaching others how to do it. I find http://www.Lynda.com, such a teaching site for graphics software of all kinds well worth the money, about $400 per year.

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

Paul Emery wrote “I have fond memories of my Oklahoma grammar school days. By the end of the sixth grade you knew enough math to build a barn or run a small store.”
Paul, sorry for missing this thoughtful note. Yes, solid arithmetic used to be a hallmark of good grammar schools. A sixth grade level was once a hallmark of basic literacy and numeracy; many great books were accessible and one had a good grasp of virtually all of the measurements and arithmetic (including fractions) that one would find in the trades and Main Street commerce.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

I was was taught fractions in a German school, as I didn’t speak the language, but I could follow the steps on paper. That was high fifth and low 6th. The teacher did attempt to teach me German, but he spoke almost no English. I spent happy time parked in woodshop. My hearing loss with no hearing aides didn’t help any.
I came back to classmates who learned decimals during that time period, and were just beginning to learn fractions. As near as I could tell, both countries were running at about the same level. At that time period, however, the typical graduating class from Berkeley High showed 25% of its students in the top 2% on national tests. White flight to Orinda and beyond was just beginning. Darmstadt, Germany was also a university town, but I have no idea where their averages were with respect to the rest of Germany.

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Douglas Keachie

29 June 2011

So I’m kinda curious. During what time period did the USA have a “Golden Age” for the teaching of math? Was it back when single female teachers were not permitted to date, and students brought lumps of coal for the school stove?

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2011

No “golden age” was mentioned, Keach, so why make it up?

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