What is going on?

I was talking today a person who knows a lot about the school system and school law. This person was of the opinion that the recent financial errors in the district are more than enough cause to ask for the resignation of our superintendent with out having to buy out his contract.

While this person is certainly savvy enough to know this information accurately I would want a lawyer's advice before thinking it was anything more than idle speculation. Not of course that I have a thing to say or do about it all. I am just sort of in a state of shock. Watching what is going on and wondering how out of whack the the world can get.

What has happened to the concept of personal responsibility? Of doing the right thing? Of keeping the best interests of the students first? How can anyone who has a clue of what they are doing misplace $1,000,000+? And then get an $18,000 raise? And then claim she has earned every penny of it?

Absolutely mind boggling. And more, apparently this is all perfectly acceptable now - Heck the local newspaper editorial even said that we should keep the superintendent just because he has now been on the job for this now being his third year. There is a lot to be said for consistency, especially when there had been none for a long time, but a million dollars is a lot money we could have used for our students, and with the very low raises teachers were given and the obscene raises given at central office...I fear we can't afford any more consistency.

Is This Decision the Best Decision for This Child?

Part of the problem in education is that decisions are not being made with the above filter in place. Very rarely do the people making the decisions about the education of a child ask themselves if this is the best decision for that child.

Most often the decisions are made based on what is easiest for the adult involved, and frequently what is easiest for the adult is what creates the least hassle, regardless of what is best for the child. And who can blame them?

If you look around around you, parents make choices for thier kids based on what is easiest 30 times a day. It is easier to give the kid a candy bar than it is to hear him whine for an hour. It is easier to let them watch tv than to turn it off and insist they find something more wholesome to do.

When it comes to education it is easier to let the child slid with less homework, less rigerous math, easier teachers, than to insist on the child staying in the more difficult class. We make it so easy for the kids to do nothing and get by. Because it is easier and we get tired of fighting. Fighting other teachers, administrators, board members, parents, and the kids themselves. Yet we know...really know, that when the children are held to high standards they perform wonderfully. They feel better about themselves, and are truly successful.

A teacher friend of mine used to have a sign on his wall "Self esteem comes from doing difficult tasks well. Self esteem comes from behaving in an esteemable manner." (or something quite similar)

Studying Math - How Important Is It?

Recently BBC published an article by someone (names escape me really easily) who claimed that we should stop teaching math to students by age 14 at the latest, and really, he thought we could stop by age 11.

As a math educator I want to say WRONG! As a thinking person, with 9 years of experience trying to teach every child as much math as I possibly can, I fear he might be right. And he is not the only one I have heard say something similar. I have had a Superintendent ask me why we bother trying to teach algebra to the kids, that he never took algebra, never needed it, didn't see why we insisted on teaching it. I have had a principal say to me "Can't we just call it Algebra?" The number of parents who have told me they never could get math, were never good at math, who hated math, how their kids were taking math they never saw, even all the way through college and the kid is in 9th grade.

As a high school drop out, I can say I took algebra 1, and geometry in school before I dropped out, and I used every single bit of that math through 30 years of construction, and did not start to operate a profitable construction company until I went to college and continued to study mathematics. I do not believe that it was all the studying of math that allowed me to become profitable, but I am sure it did not hurt. And here is my real question -

Which does a child more harm - to be thrown into math courses year after year after year and being unsuccessful - even with caring, helping, supportive teachers and parents, or to get through school with out learning what we now have as a required math curriculum and quite possibly/probably not reaching their potential?