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Re: Traditional versus reform
Posted:
Feb 23, 1999 10:47 PM
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Annotations by Jerry Uhl
At 7:55 PM -0600 2/23/99, Guy F. Brandenburg wrote:
>You know, Jerry, even so I think you are a bit off base.
>
>I am not a math-teacher-educator, just a classroom teacher who thinks a bit. I
>really liked a lot of the emphases of the NCTM standards when I first saw them
>11 or 12 years ago. But, unfortunately, I have seen a lot of stuff coming out
>of the fools who pass for curriculum experts in my own school district, that
>claim to be supporting the NCTM Standards, that is pure and unadulterated
>nonsense.
----That is a big problem. The fools are in charge. But we are not fools
and had better begin to assert ourselves. But not in the style of MC. But
turning the clock back will not solve anything.
>
>I don't really know the facts of what the various curricula are like in
>California, not having spent any real amounts of time there (I live & work in
>DC). But if the curricula in LaLa Land are anything like the piles of
>excrement that my own school system keeps coming up with, then I would
>probably be a pretty upset parent too. I have had to use some pretty
>ridiculous textbooks, too, that hop on way too many bandwagons and confuse the
>heck out of the students.
----The type of math education MC advocates has failed for most of this
century and it will fail as long as it's in place. We need to get beyond
current reform and get beyond failed teaching pratices and materials.
>
>On the other hand, I have said several times that those who harken back to a
>"golden age of math education" in the USA are swigging way too much moonshine.
>It didn't happen, ever.
----Right!!!!!!
So let us try to have a little bit of balance. No
>Wayne Bishop raving that all the NCTM types are crypto-racists; no Jerry Uhl
>saying that everybody who has problems with some aspects of the reform
>movement is a crypto-KKK'er.
---Wait a minute. I have lots of problems with reform as it is now practiced
>
>A bit more civility, please, on all sides.
>
>Guy Brandenburg
------------------------------------------------------------------
Jerry Uhl juhl@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Professor of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Member, Mathematical Sciences Education Board of National Research Council
Calculus&Mathematica, DiffEq&Mathematica, Matrices,Geometry&Mathematica,
NetMath
http://www-cm.math.uiuc.edu and http://netmath.math.uiuc.edu
"Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence,
To bore thyself and bore the students?"
. . . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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