Brontoforumus

Posted: **Sat Jul 26, 2014 9:56 am**

patito wrote:
Cait wrote:Yeah, "Show your work" was a thing I never really took to until college when it was complex enough to actually matter. I don't need to write out a line and a half of equations to say that x is 4 when 2x+3=11, it's just... there. It doesn't make sense for it to be anything but 4.

Dude, show your work on that is piss easy, so why would you skip it? I get it that you're probably good at math, but for someone who has barely any idea how that math works, knowing and showing the steps helps.

It wasn't easy for me at the time, though. It took an actual effort to try and put to paper those steps that I didn't use in the conscious process. It wasn't until I started tutoring math that I got a real feel for how some of the stuff breaks down; having to explain the steps to someone else is remarkably effective at getting a better understanding of them yourself. Which matches most of the literature about education, I suspect.

Posted: **Sat Jul 26, 2014 3:34 pm**

I just learned a transform->simplify->transform->simplify pattern that seemed to satisfy most instructors. It helped when you ended up with longer equations that had, like, 20 things that could be simplified in one step.

My own math horror story is being "advanced" from Algebra straight to Calculus by way of skipping trigonometry completely. I never got a chance to relearn any of that until around my sophomore year of college, and I developed an understandable resentment towards angles. Which is probably how I ended up not becoming a game programmer like I wanted to.

So that's cool.

Posted: **Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:06 pm**

Cait wrote: It wasn't until I started tutoring math that I got a real feel for how some of the stuff breaks down; having to explain the steps to someone else is remarkably effective at getting a better understanding of them yourself. Which matches most of the literature about education, I suspect.

In the adult education facility I was at, you had classes full of people studying the same topic (French, math, science, etc.) but everyone was at a different level. So if you had trouble with something, you could go to the teacher for a 1 on 1, or you could go to a fellow student who was further along than you were. So you didn't study just for yourself, you also studied to be able to assist other students later. It really adds a whole new layer of motivation and helps solidify knowledge even after you were tested on it. Of course the "kids are assholes" factor might be an issue in elementary and high school but it was still pretty amazing to see in action in ideal circumstances.

Posted: **Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:48 pm**

Students in Denver organized a walkout to protest a curriculum that is heavy on historical revisionism proposed by conservatives.

The school board proposal that triggered the walkout calls of instructional materials that present positive aspects of the nation and its heritage. It would establish a committee to regularly review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history, to make sure materials “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights” and don’t “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strike or disregard of the law.”

Posted: **Thu Sep 25, 2014 2:21 pm**

Looks like they failed; this curriculum has most definitely encouraged social strike. And it hasn't even been voted on yet.

Posted: **Thu Sep 25, 2014 2:24 pm**

That reminds me of some sort of Christian game review site I looked at out of curiosity a while back. They took points off review scores when games promoted "disrespect of authority figures".

Because Jesus was all about submitting to the dominant social mores of his time, amirite?

Posted: **Fri Sep 26, 2014 1:16 pm**

Protest has grown past 1,000 in the past few days.

One of the school board members defends the idea on Facebook:

APUSH rejects the history that has been taught in the country for generations. It has an emphasis on race, gender, class, ethnicity, grievance and American-bashing while simultaneously omitting the most basic structural and philosophical elements considered essential to the understanding of American History for generations.

...

Last, when it comes to history I believe all children graduating from an American school should know 3 things: American Exceptionalism, an understanding of US History, and know the Constitution.

Posted: **Fri Sep 26, 2014 2:17 pm**

If you actually understand US history and know the Constitution, you'll realize that Americans aren't exceptional for yourself. Problem solved.

Posted: **Sat Sep 27, 2014 6:29 am**

AP classes are supposed to prepare you for college. What's the one thing that you get in your first year of college? Critical thinking, critical thinking, critical thinking.

I am blessed in that the first year of college (at a community college) taught me the importance of critical thinking. Part of that was an actual, honest to god, frank discussion about the political system of the US and Texas in particular, the history of the US, in all its frightening glory (the British perspective of the revolution, writings of the defenders of southern secessionists in the 1860s, US's reluctance to enter BOTH World Wars, nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, the brutality of the retaliation against civil rights leaders), and several other things.

It's important to be able to see beyond American exceptionalism, because, right now, it's hard for anyone to call the US exceptional, given what happened to OWS vs. what happened to the Cliven Bundy supporters or Open Carry weirdos, Trayvon Martin, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Aurora, CO...I could go on.

Posted: **Sat Sep 27, 2014 7:33 am**

It's fairly Orwellian to dumb down education for the sake of American Exceptionalism.

Posted: **Sat Sep 27, 2014 12:39 pm**

nosimpleway wrote:If you actually understand US history and know the Constitution, you'll realize that Americans aren't exceptional for yourself. Problem solved.

The Constitution itself is a pretty exceptional document, despite its flaws.

That "despite its flaws" part is exactly the sort of caveat these people are angry about, of course. They don't REALLY want people to "know the Constitution", because that includes the whole "slaves count as 3/5 of a person" thing. They just want people to constantly TALK about how great the Constitution is, not actually remember anything in it besides the Second Amendment (and maybe, selectively, the Tenth).

Posted: **Sat Sep 27, 2014 9:35 pm**

So it's a lot like the bible.

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 12:04 pm**

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressiv ... ng-father/

Christian conservatives win, children lose: Texas textbooks will teach public school students that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible, and the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses.

On Friday the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education voted along party lines 10-5 to approve the biased and inaccurate textbooks. The vote signals a victory for Christian conservatives in Texas, and a disappointing defeat for historical accuracy and the education of innocent children.

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 3:57 pm**

the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible

I'm OK with this as long as they include the 3/5s thing because the Bible is all about slavery all the time, enslave your enemies, enslave your wife(s), enslave your defeated enemy's kids, enslave your neighbors, enslave your neighbors kids, basically just enslave every person you meet

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 4:18 pm**

"Moses as the inventor of Democracy" is kind of completely alien to me. As far as I'm aware the extent of Moses' political actions are "Went by himself where nobody could see him and came back with a bunch of laws that God had apparently written."

I think I'm running out of ways to reference 1984 and Metal Gear Rising tracks, guys.

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 5:18 pm**

The textbooks were written to align with instructional standards that the Board of Education approved back in 2010 with the explicit intention of forcing social studies teaching to adhere to a conservative Christian agenda. The standards require teachers to emphasize America’s so called “Christian heritage.”

Ugh. This is really important stuff, and kids need education about actual history to learn why this exact kind of thinking is so dangerous, but instead all they've got is a lot of hot wind blowing at them.

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 5:51 pm**

But let's be honest with ourselves, this isn't an isolated failure. It could only happen because of the concentrated, unchecked efforts of a political cabal that pre-dated its structural coalescing in the late fifties or early sixties. How much that has to do with other political alliances or how much it has to do with the failures of a more liberal agenda to sell itself in the eras of McCarthyism is kind of a moot point. It's now going to take an equal or greater political force acting concertedly for almost as much time to affect a reversal of this miseducation.

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 8:58 pm**

The company I work for, Pearson, and their direct rival, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (the one who laid me off a while back), are the ones publishing these inaccurate textbooks. I'm trying to guage how disappointed I should be with my company when they apparently have no qualms about allowing their clients to lie to children for money.

Posted: **Sun Nov 23, 2014 9:02 pm**

Well, they're gonna find someone to take their money and print their stupid idiot books no matter what, so in the best case scenario that someone will be a company that disagrees with them instead of a company that supports their dumb bullshit.

Posted: **Mon Nov 24, 2014 12:11 am**

I don't know that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt had a stellar reputation for "dumbing down" (which almost always meant whitewashing) history texts for secondary school students.

Brontoforumus

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