Saturday, March 15, 2008

"Common sense ain't common anymore"

Sang Park of Vancouver, Washington, holder of three masters degrees in technical fields has the following thoughts on on what is happening:

"Common sense ain't common anymore" is what popped into my head while I was reading the NMP report. I am not sure why it required a presidential executive order, 20 scientists/researchers, and two years to come up with this.

And yet the US Dept. of Ed calls it a "ground breaking report". Everything, except computer-assisted instruction and teaching computer programming, was pretty much what everyone knew decades ago. I bet Dan could have written the whole report in a week.
Now that we have something on the paper (although they still suggest more research on some issues) what's next?

I'm hoping this report could be used as some sort of fail-safe mechanism that keeps the nonsensical math teaching from creeping back in, but when I look at the paltry $90 million allocated for this through the America Competitiveness Initiative act I have to wonder if this is just another one of those feel good political showcases that will be forgotten once the current administration is gone.

How do we turn the NMP report into the 11th commandment?

Sang

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

American 'common sense' isn't common-sense in the normal sense.

Putting technology into this equation isn't going to make things better, it'll just get worse and very expensive. I wouldn't trust anyone to come up with new ideas until we adopt better standards for research.

Choosing the best curriculum and putting more effort into training teachers to use the curriculum is the best strategy. Stick to Singapore and you will be in a curriculum that will never have to be replaced again and we can be done with the debating.

In this coming depression, we'll see how long it takes before policy makers start aligning to my style of thinking. That includes universal health care. What's the primary reason - people are sick of paying high prices for things that don't work.

Throw these knuckleheads out of office - they're stealing the futures of our children, stealing pension funds, and people's savings. Bastardized education that's what the US has invested its dollars in. UW ed department is a joke.

When enough people go broke and living on the streets maybe they'll start listening to reason, instead of their vanity. Maybe there's a need for teachers in prison. Get these fools out of public schools forever, we don't need to turn them into prisons.