You Say You Want A Revolution? Try Some "Inconvenient Truth" About Deformers

                                  Brian Jones and Julie Cavenaugh:
                                  Two Courageous Teachers

I had the pleasure and privilege of attending the premiere of THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH BEHIND Waiting For Superman on Thursday night and hearing the excellent panel discussion afterwards. This is a movie that, as Diane Ravitch said, needs to go viral. Go here to request a copy: http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/ Consider showing it wherever you can. And think about this: we're individuals, working collectively, to fight a small number of billionaires and their pawns and puppets. There are vastly more of us than there are of them. Our futures and those of our children and grandchildren are at stake. The very essence of democracy and the role of free public education therein are facing serious threats, not from foreign forces or terrorists, but from corporate interests and the super-rich. Every major US city, particularly where there are a lot of poor and minority people, faces a direct threat from privatization, but ultimately, if the deformers are allowed to win, they will spread their poison everywhere.

Consider making versions of ITBWFS that focus on your city or region. LAUSD, Chicago, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Miami are some of the most immediate, obvious targets, but no doubt there are many others.

Diane Ravitch said on Thursday that no billionaires are coming to save us or do the hard work for us. We have to do it ourselves. And it's about time we did.

Fear and Loathing in Calcville: Who Makes Kids Anxious About Math?

Recently, another study (Researchers Probe Causes of Math Anxiety: It's more than just disliking math, according to scholars) has appeared proposing to explain the causes of mathematics anxiety. It shows up as part of a book called CHOKE: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, by Sian Beilock. If what's in the article is an accurate depiction of what the study has to tell us, there's not much new to see. 


On my view, math anxiety is obviously not something many people, if any, are born with: for the most part, we catch it from others. However, it is worth noting that there are many carriers who are not themselves suffering from the disease. Contemptuous, arrogant mathematics teachers can readily drive someone into math anxiety, and frequently do, I strongly suspect. So can rigidity about what doing and being "good at" mathematics entails. Given how most US teachers present the subject in K-12, math is only or primarily the following: calculation, arithmetic, and speed (with accuracy, of course).


Yet none of those things are particularly what mathematicians deal with. No mathematician is judged by speed of calculations - arithmetic or otherwise. Calculation may not even be a particular strength of a professional mathematician. Mathematicians by and large deal with abstractions, patterns, connections. Of course, some deal with applications of mathematics to sciences and engineering and other "real world" problems and situations, some straddle the territory between "pure" and "applied mathematics," and most couldn't care less whether what they work on has applications beyond mathematics itself.  Calculation isn't their interest and they know that when it comes to pure calculation, it's hard to beat a computer for speed and accuracy. They also know that the computer won't offer  insight, leaps of heuristic thinking that connects seemingly unrelated ideas in two or more areas of mathematics, or the recognition of underlying structural similarities, etc. While by definition computers excel at computation, the fact remains that they don't think or "do" mathematics.


Unfortunately, neither do most American schoolchildren after a few years of exposure to what accurately should only be called "school math." Is it any wonder that, confronted in early elementary school with high-pressure tests that demand the calculation of 100 arithmetic problems (mixed or not) in 3 to 5 minutes depending on the teacher or school, many students just bail out of mathematics for the rest of their lives? The "stand and deliver" approach may work for those kids who happen to be quick at the given task demanded of them (I was one such kid) and enjoy the concomitant competition, but for many that's the fast track to tuning out mathematics permanently.


Of course, I was no more doing mathematics when I crunched all those numbers quickly and accurately than is a computer today when it does in a nanosecond what it took me a few minutes to complete. It took me close to another thirty years to find out what mathematics actually is about. And I'm one of the lucky ones: I stumbled into more useful viewpoints about the subject, along with learning a reasonable amount of mathematics. Most Americans don't: not because they were born deficient in the ability to do and appreciate "higher" mathematics, but because they were denied the opportunity to get anywhere near higher mathematics due to an approach to the subject that is demeaning, alienating, and clearly grounded in some sort of bizarre notion of competition and "winnowing wheat from chaff." Who knows how much mathematical talent is wasted every day in our country due to such absurd notions of the subject and its teaching? For how much longer can we afford to tolerate such an anemic view of  this vital, powerful, and - dare I say it - beautiful discipline?

Education Notes: I'm Boycotting change.org due to deceptive Rhee petition attacking teacher protections

Education Notes: I'm Boycotting change.org due to deceptive Rhee petition attacking teacher protections