Wampum

Two minutes of Zen

The staff of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) regrets to inform you that the U.S. Department of Education will not continue funding for a national mathematics and science education clearinghouse beyond ENC's current contract year ending September 30, 2005. We believe that ENC has provided a valuable service to the nation's K-12 mathematics and science teachers over the past 13 years.

The ENC is $5,000,000 on the DoE's charge sheet. About 2 minutes of the daily cost of maintaining the Aggression in Iraq (and probably elsewhere),

Now before going non-linear on the moronitude of NCLB and vouchers-by-way-of-accountability and reactionary reedn-ritn-n-rithmitik ... ask yourself, what is the core position of the Democratic Party on the role of mathematicians and the curriculum, methods, and expectations for primary and secondary mathematics education?

You can skip this question if you think that the question is unimportant, or that the answer is safely left with the leadership[1] of labor[2] organized around the principles of a minimum age for wage labor, lukewarm support for wage labor for women and imposition of Anglo-American language and doctrines, religious and political, aka "literacy" and "civics".

Or you could read A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century by David Klein, or my favorite, Hung-Hsi Wu's Basic skills versus conceptual understanding: A bogus dichotomy in mathematics education. If that gets you excited, Hung-Hsi's homepage is http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/.

All it takes to be elected president in the United States is to take curriculum back from the RNC as an issue. Not vouchers, not accountability, not carrots, not sticks, not title grants, not block grants, just curriculum.

[1] The Maine Education Association did not endorse my candidate. They went with the Xtian prep-school civics-und-guidance track coach Dem.
[2] The AFL-CIO of Maine did not endorse my candidate. They went with the wage-cutting Dem pal of the brother of the current head of the AFL-CIO of Maine.

Posted by EBW at January 5, 2005 10:04 AM | TrackBack