The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Education

State school standards vary dramatically

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This is a very troubling study.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government’s first-ever comparison of how states test for student progress in school shows big variations across the nation.

For example, a reading score that rates a fourth-grader “proficient” in Mississippi would be a failing score in Massachusetts, according to a report released Thursday by the Education Department.

I am very concerned about the quality of public education in this country. We don’t pay our teachers enough and in my experience we are not working hard enough to get the best teachers. A poor educational system impacts us all.

That is not to say that one cannot find good schools in every state, but there are too many weak spots for my taste. Not good, not good at all.

The iPod & I Are Going Back To School

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A short time ago Apple began offering iTunes U. Here are two excerpts about it:

iTunes U has arrived, giving higher education institutions an ingenious way to get audio and video content out to their students. Presentations, performances, lectures, demonstrations, debates, tours, archival footage — school is about to become even more inspiring.

and

already, more than half of the nation’s top 500 schools use it to distribute their digital content to students — or to the world. Any school can open all or part of its site to the public, from alumni to parents to anyone.

Sounds interesting to me.

The Evolution of Math- A Joke

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Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried.

Why do I tell you this? Please read more about the “History of Teaching Math”.

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Teaching Math In 1950: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

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Teaching Math In 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
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Teaching Math In 1980: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
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Teaching Math In 1990: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees? (There are no wrong answers)

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Teaching Math In 2005: El hachero vende un camion carga por $100. >La cuesta de production es…………. :-\

Update: Just to be clear, I am not the author of this joke. It is currently floating around the net.

Is Homework Hurting Our Children

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Boing Boing has a story about some women who have written a book called “The Case Against Homework.”

“Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish 2006 book “The Case Against Homework” is a fine and frightening explosion of the homework myth: that giving kids homework improves their educational outcome. The authors start by tracing the explosion in homework since the eighties, and especially since the advent of the ill-starred No Child Left Behind regime, which has teachers drilling, drilling, drilling their kids on math and reading to the exclusion of all else.”

It sounds like an interesting book that I’d be curious to read. Not unlike most things in life there is a need for moderation. There is a point to homework, but there is also a point at which it loses its educational value and effectiveness.

One of these days I am going to have to blog about the over programming of children. As a kid I participated in many different extra curricular activities, but what I see now blows my mind. The children of some friends and family haven’t a moment of free time, in large part because their parents have them engaged in something all day long.

I don’t think that this is a healthy practice, but as I mentioned this is a post for a different day.

Magazine Renewals

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I subscribe to about six different magazines. Newsweek, PC World, Consumer Reports, Better Homes and Gardens and a couple of others. I am good about reading them. It is rare that I don’t spend some quiet time flipping through and not unusual for me to read them from cover to cover.

Frankly I spend too much time here at the PC so it gives me another excuse to get away and disconnect from the net. There is something quite nice about sitting in an overstuffed chair to do nothing but read.

There are a couple of problems with that. The first is trying to find the quiet moments in which do said reading. The second is that every time I open a magazine I spend the next ten minutes cleaning up the 27 subscription cards that pop out. That leads me to my next comment.

Is it just me or does every magazine begin soliciting a renewal from you two weeks after your subscription begins. Newsweek does this all the time. I sign up for a year and then three weeks into the new year they begin bombarding me with special offers for renewing my subscription.

It makes me wonder how much money they spend on filling the magazine with content I want to read versus how much they spend to try and grab more eyeballs. There is something not quite right with this formula.

New Textbook To Teach Bible In School

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It should come as no secret to long time readers of this blog that I believe wholeheartedly in the separation of church and state. I think that mixing the two creates multiple issues and many problems that need not exist. We have discussed the problems with intelligent design and why it is very possible that our existence is due to the flying sphagetti monster.

I have offered my thoughts about appropriate holiday greetings and religous misunderstanding and religious hyperbole. So based upon these items you probably think that you know exactly what I am going to say about using a high school textbook to teach the bible in public school.

Well, this may surprise you but based upon my understanding of this book I am not automatically opposed to it. If it adheres to the description in the story I linked to I would be open to it.

“Now, a new textbook for high school students aims to fill a gap by teaching the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, in a non-sectarian, nonreligious way as a central document of Western civilization with a vast influence on its literature, art, culture and politics.”

However I am skeptical about the schools and instructors within the schools. Specifically I am concerned that there will be teachers who deviate from the curriculum and teach the course as in a religous manner and that is unacceptable to me.

From the perspective of understanding the influence of it on literature, on art, on society in general I can see a purpose in such a course. But in the end I am greatly troubled by the potential for misuse and abuse and this may be yet another time where the smartest and most judicious move would be to err on the side of safety and not teach this course in public schools.