George Rebane
If you 'don't do numbers', you don't do critical thinking.
[This is the linked edition of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 26 October 2012.]
Regular listeners to my little harangues are aware of the very large iceberg with which our ship of state is about to collide. It will not be a glancing blow, but a head-on impact that will crumble the current geo-political structure of the world. I am again talking about America’s systemic unemployment, and the chances for halting its rapid rise. Last week California pounded the latest nail into our country’s prospects for economic growth. But we’ll return to that in a moment.
Our country is accelerating into a centrally planned socialist state with California leading the way. In the world’s index of economic freedom, the United States has slipped into tenth place and is continuing to descend. We consider ourselves to be the freest people in the world, but that is also slipping away fast. And among the 50 states, California ranks 48th in the personal freedoms it allows its residents. It holds the same rank in economic freedom, worsted only by New York, and New Jersey.
Today we busy ourselves in misspending vast amounts of public monies on insane projects ranging from high speed rail to so-called green energy. Businesses are leaving the state, and new ones are opting to start elsewhere. AB32, California’s cynically named Global Warming Solutions Act, is the premier job killing legislation in the land. Now we are told that all of the state’s law enforcement agencies are being specially trained to ferret out AB32 infractions in local counties and towns. Meanwhile Sacramento is adding legions of bureaucrats to administer the lists of added regulations, fees, levies, and mandates, including cap and trade, that California will now live under. All for no impact whatsoever, save to curb, corral, and tax us more.
We are overly regulated, mismanaged, politically calcified, and close to intellectual bankruptcy. And we allow this to happen to ourselves because we have become a citizenry without the critical thinking skills that allow us to use reason before voting for our politicians and propositions. We base our decisions on second hand emotions gleaned from the media or the even more emotional.
As a nation we are innumerate. Our Department of Education regularly publishes the sad statistics on America’s numerical literacy or numeracy. America’s students have sunk to 32nd in the world, well below all the developed nations with which we must compete in global markets and ideas.
And nationwide, California students reside near the bottom of that sorry stack – for example, our middle schools rank 46th in math proficiency. And that brings us back to what Sacramento most recently did to guarantee that California’s students will become even less proficient in math and the critical thinking and career skill sets that are based on math.
Governor Brown has signed SB1200 which summarily dumbs down the state’s math curriculum by mandating that all California schools adopt a single low standard for getting kids into algebra.
Calwatch reports that
…SB1200 is so poorly drafted that it doesn’t just roll back the expectation of Algebra 1 in grade eight. It does more than that by requiring “one set” of standards “at each grade level”, and precluding typical mathematics course options for students in high school.
California high schools have always offered different math classes to students in the same grade who have different levels of preparation. Accordingly, California historically has adopted course-level math standards for high school — preserving local control at the district and school level to decide when it would be best to offer rigorous courses to each student based on the student’s ability. But SB1200 would outlaw that practice by mandating only one set of mathematics curriculum- content standards, textbooks and training and teacher materials for all students in each K-12 grade.
Numeracy is the toolbox for critical thinking, and the fundamental skills of numeracy stand on being able to understand and manipulate symbols that are placeholders for numbers. Algebra is the name of that skill, and dumbing down the state’s early algebra education dooms all downstream learning in math, and the job opportunities for which our young people will qualify. The result is an even greater disparity of incomes among our residents. Consider these points carefully as you cast your votes.
My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes in my Union columns and on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary with related links is posted, and where these topics are debated extensively. However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
rebanesruminations.com 
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