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Re: How Bad it Is
Posted:
Jun 7, 2012 1:01 PM
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On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:31 AM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com> wrote:
<< SNIP >>
> In my niche little world, some of the focal points I think most
> important, having to do with polyhedrons and such, simply are not
> covered in the curriculum, and so the products of this curriculum are
> not "world class" in the sense of "employable without remediation".
> It's all about remediation over here, including with math professors
> and physicists or whatever i.e. I don't, in the normal course of
> events, meet adults who know the basic 3rd grade level math I would
> like them to know. No one taught it to them. They never learned it.
>
To fill that out a little more, here's a link to four focal points. I
think most would find only Pascal's Triangle to be especially familiar
and even that seems obscure.
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2006/09/focal-points.html
No, I'm not trying to base all of mathematics on these four topic
areas, as if they were axiomatic or made other pretentious claims to
completeness in some way.
The NCLB Polynomial (as I dubbed it, to piggy-back on DC's PR) solves
to Phi, whereas the NCLB Polyhedron is very phi-based, a diamond faced
affair.
Lastly, I'm into quantizing volume in terms of the tetrahedron. This
alternative caught the attention of humanities writers, starting
mostly in the 1970s, though in the 1960s with Arthur Loeb (Math
Teacher: Remarks on Some Elementary Volume Relationships
Between Familiar Solids, Vol 58:15 ).
A corollary is the tetrahedron may be consistently developed as a
model of 3rd powering, as opposed to the cube (so we would NOT say
"cubing" at every turn, when 3rd powering something).
A payoff here is a "mental geometry" (a right hemisphere ally of
"mental arithemetic") with streamlined relationships and ratios, a
stronger mnemonic than any currently offered, well worth the
investment, even if there's some added overhead when converting to /
from XYZ.
Indeed, to develop more mathematical sophistication and the idea of a
"namespace" (set of language games), it really helps to have
elementary examples of alternatives, precisely for the purpose of
comparing them with a prevailing orthodoxy. One sees the status quo
more clearly in light of the possibilities it displaces.
My subculture is not without resources or clout, but we're definitely
a tiny minority, so need to work with others in networking type
relationships. We've been doing that, for several decades.
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-bfi-pr.html (steering by
challenge / award process)
By this time, I think we're ready to open some more schools, though
I'm not sure how much more we need brick and mortar. Washington High
School (lots of bricks) will need to be vacated soon, as there's a new
developer in the picture with other plans.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=17157315@N00&q=HQS
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/6300595391/ (for #OPDX)
Speaking of Washington High School (a local HQS), I just attended
Cleveland High's commencement ceremony the night before last, which
was right after Grant's at the Memorial Coliseum near the Steel
Bridge. People lined up outside, awaiting their turn:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/7344203110/in/photostream
Portland Public Schools has an interesting approach to the party after
graduation.
In some communities, the students glom into cliques and disperse to
different unsupervised locations, some of them getting into trouble,
often with alcohol involved.
In contrast, Cleveland High grads boarded a fleet of waiting buses
around 10 pm and were whisked off to an undisclosed location where PPS
itself threw the all night party (including with swimming pool). The
phantom buses returned the kids, somewhat disheveled, to the high
school parking lot at 5 am, where some parents were waiting in cars
(others let kids make their own way home -- a student ID doubles as a
free bus pass in this town).
That's how the "Education Yakuza" has arranged things around here.**
Kirby
** "education yakuza"
http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7830183
> To me, that's a deficiency and it's world around i.e. it's like an
> epidemic of ignorance. So I don't just sit back and feel comforted by
> test results that bleep over so much stuff that's important to my
> subculture.
>
> Kirby
Message was edited by: kirby urner
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