Haim
Posts:
7,807
Registered:
12/6/04
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Re: Progressive Education at Its Best
Posted:
Jun 30, 2007 8:11 PM
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Pooper Scooper Posted: Jun 30, 2007 5:21 PM
>Almost as much as I enjoy thinking about your refusal
>to discuss teaching and learning school mathematics
>because you're utterly devoid of the ability to do so.
http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=5791489&tstart=0
>Pooper Scooper Posted: Jun 27, 2007 7:18 PM
>
>> People sometimes wonder why I rarely post about
>> serious issues of teaching here.
Pooper, in the past I have tried to explain to you that I am not Wayne. Clearly my mistake. I should be trying to explain that Wayne is not you.
People specialize in every profession. In medicine you have cardiologists and ophthalmologists, etc. In mathematics mathematics you have geometers and algebraists, theoreticians and applied mathematicians, and so on. Even in the furniture moving business, you have to call a specialist to move a piano. Well, people specialize in the Math Wars as well.
While some people get embroiled in the fine details of pedagogy, Professor Wayne Bishop of Cal State LA entered the fray to work on curriculum and textbooks. Why he ignores minutiae of pedagogy I do not think he has said (that I can recall). In other words, you pick your fights and he picks his. Perhaps he feels, as I do, that there are no interesting open pedagogical questions on how to teach mathematics at the K-12 level.
On the other hand, it is a pressing political question as to why elementary school teachers are required to teach math but are not required to know it, and how former language artists, who know little if any math, get hired to "coordinate" or "facilitate" or "develop" (or whatever might be the latest fashionable verb) math education in the schools, thereby considerably exacerbating the problem.
Let me put it this way. Wayne's clearly stated interest is curriculum and textbooks, and he discusses those all the time. My interest is mainly the political aspects of education, and I discuss those all the time. It is you who claims to want to discuss the fine details of math pedagogy, and you almost never do it. (See second quote, above.)
As we say in the 'hood, "What's up with that?"
Haim
Je me souviens
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