Sudhakar has a blog HERE
It's Action Time
In my profession, I was tasked with constantly finding newer, faster, better, and cheaper ways of doing things. In this blog, I will be tackling issues other than related to my profession. The only common thread would be to pose this question to the reader - if there was one thing you would do to make the world a better place tomorrow, what would it be? Why not just commit to taking one small step towards it tomorrow? This is the gist of "It's Action Time".
I think you should draw a distinction between Singapore Standards and NCTM Standards. Standards should incorporate more than a vision and Singapore did this and successfully.
ReplyDeleteI favor shooting the messenger, in this case NCTM. If you discredit NCTM then you will be doing children a big favor.
Lets start with their statement that 40% of children are taking algebra in the eighth grade. How is this possible?
About 1/3 of Americans fail to graduate from high school and its mostly because the majority don't understand the math we teach in school. AND most adults don't either.
How about Burrill's comment that Singapore is a more homogeneous society? Really? I didn't know that. Perhaps because she thinks they're asian makes them homogeneous. This is the 21st century and they are a major city on the Pacific Rim - hardly homogeneous. Burrill is an idiot.
Perhaps she meant homeogeneous classrooms - like equity in education - success for all students. The access to quality education we keep hearing about.
US classrooms have a long way to go before they will ever be close to the standards set by the Ministry of Education in singapore. The world's best education system in the world.
The NCTM and NSF should reverse their policy statements or get out of the teaching business altogether. We should not accept policies that date back to civil war reconstruction and Jim Crow laws. Our leaders owe Americans a great big apology.