I have been a teacher for many years and have the textbooks that lead seamlessly from one important concept to another, in an elegant procession of ideas.
Lately, my students have come to me with a feeling of frustration because the newer programs are chaotic and unfathomable. This worries me greatly because one of my favorite subjects to teach is math. I love it and I hope my students can feel happiness about it, too.
What has gone wrong?
Congress!
Education is supposed to be local. A teacher teaches the students. You can’t get any more local than that. The federal government should have little or nothing to do with it. I have always wondered why we expect a bunch of lawyers in Congress to know how to teach mathematics. I’ll bet they don’t do very well on standardized tests themselves.
A friend of mine had been a classroom teacher for 35 years. She had a file cabinet of materials, much of which she had created herself. The students were very successful and continued on to the best schools at higher levels. Education has to be grown and nurtured at every level. Politicians can’t or shouldn’t come in and mandate change.
The “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” left, as most of my colleagues attested to, every student behind. The act was to provide standardized testing nationwide. Schools with poor performance were punished and this led to teachers greatly modifying their programs and teaching to the test. Never a good thing.
That was democrat Ted Kennedy and republican George W. Bush’s great idea for getting a bill passed that would show they could shake hands across the aisle. It was a feather in both men’s hats. But it and other bills have led the way to educational disaster.
Where are we now? We have the Tower of Babel. We have Singapore math and Russian math and all manner of programs designed to teach math but leave the student dreading and hating the subject I love most.
Good old American math built the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, freeways and monuments. American math is clear and thorough and offers each student a complete education, each concept leading seamlessly to the next. The end result is an educated person, even one which may develop each of the higher theories further into the (at present) unknown.
Recent Comments