Re: "Passing Algebra"

[Arthur Hu <ArthurH@TANGIS.COM>]

Actually I was going off on a tangent, I knock out software
for a living, but some people do take courses as entertainment,
that's why I watch the history channel.

-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn [mailto:glenn@PEEDEEWORLD.NET]
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 5:12 PM
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Passing Algebra"


> What is the point of education? To simply be exposed and
> have fun, or to be tested and failed if you are not
> proficient at it?

How about to find out what you really, truly feel passionate about?  What
your strengths and weaknesses as a human being are?  Where you have been and
where you will go- along with the rest of your society?

Who suggested anything about testing on this stuff?  There's no test for
being a genuine, questioning, passionate person able to handle many
different situations and pursue whatever interests arise-- except life.

I'm not sure where you're reading into my comments that I somehow think
testing is a good thing-- I've never even remotely implied that and I find
it hard to understand how anyone might infer that from anything I've
written.

I do believe passionately that more students could find pleasure in more
areas if these subjects were taught with a bit more interest and insight.
"The medium is the message," and all that.

When you watch a movie, are you tested
> to see if you "got it?" Or are you your own judge of
> whether or not it was a waste or time and money?
>

Um, so what I do every day in my classroom is the same thing as watching a
movie?  I deliver entertainment?  What do you do as a profession, Arthur?
Would you like to have it compared to passive entertainment?

> Should it be left up to a student to decide s/he wants to
> take the class, and whether or not a A- or a D- constitutes
> failure?

Hey, I'm all about not having grades at all.  They're useless, meaningless
and reveal little more than if the student pleased the teacher.  It should
*definitely* be up to the student to develop goals and desired outcomes--
and the teacher should facilitate that.

Or is it up to the state to require that every
> student must take it, and must be proficient at a world
> class level to fulfull that requirement?
>

Again, it seems as though you are referring to something in your head and
not in my post.

Teresa Glenn

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glenn [mailto:glenn@PEEDEEWORLD.NET]
> Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2000 10:12 AM
> To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Intelligence, Genetics and Equality (was "The Paradoxes...)
>
>
> > argh.
> >
> > This is the whole idea behind the whole disasterous
> > NTCM mathematics "everybody can be a rocket scientist,
> > not the chosen few" standards. I wouldn't mind if somebody
> > had demonstrated that these ideas actually deliver, but
> > they're all being tried and deployed without any evidence
> > they deliver anywhere near this kind of results. The only
> > results vary from slightly better to nearly everybody from
> > an elite private school failing their college remedial
> > math placement tests.
> >
> > You show me a method that actually result is "all
> > succeeding", then we can standardize on it. It's
> > total madness to standardize on it first, and then see
> > if it works or not. That's the punch line of standards
> > based education. That's what happens when you require 100%
> > proficiency in algebra before you have any freaking idea
> > of how to get there.
>
>
> Hey, I'm on your side, buddy.
>
> All I'm saying is that, in my view from inside schools as both a student
and
> as a teacher, part of the problem of kids struggling with logic concepts
> (which is what algebra is) and writing and all that is the way they are
> being taught.
>
> Do I think *everyone* can learn algebra, needs to learn algebra and will
be
> lifelong losers if they don't learn algebra? Hell, no.
>
> Do I think the standards are stupid and hurtful and would I like to wring
> the next of the next standardized test I meet in a dark alley?  Hell, yes.
>
> At the same time, I don't think that high expectations and "standards"
(with
> the whole testing/ accountability component) are synonymous.  I expect
*all*
> my students to work at their highest level to become better readers and
> writers, listeners and speakers.  I expect *all* my students to engage
with
> literature that tells the stories and dreams and fears of people very much
> like themselves.  I don't go into the classroom *expecting* that some of
my
> kids will fail-- when they falter, I try to find new ways of approaching
the
> concept, and if they still can't get it, we move on and maybe I'll try
again
> in a different context.
>
> But what the tone of some of the responses about algebra seem to be is
that
> we should be *going into* classroom expecting that some kids will be dumb
> and can't learn.  (Yes, that's true of some kids working with some
> concepts-- but we shouldn't go into a classroom *thinking ahead of time*
> that there will be kids there who will fail.)  That doesn't seem very far
> from  the Standardisto idea that tests are normed so that a certain
> percentage of kids will fail.  Either way, you're expecting kids will
fail--
> and I personally have a lot more faith both in the human creature's need
to
> learn and its desire to succeed.
>
> I'm far from saying everyone succeeds in the same way-- I am saying that
> more folks succeed when we teach in a variety of methods, using every
> available mode of teaching to help kids learn.
>
> Teresa Glenn
>
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