Diane's Blog - Education

Rant-N-Rave Tuesday

nospam@example.com (Diane C.) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:09:49 -0700

Do you have an issue, a small issue of no real importance that just makes you irritated as hell when the conservative-right choir starts singing their off-key opinion tune that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard? How about the Title IX is unfair to men tune?

Title IX says any educational facility that accepts federal funding must treat men and women equally. The complaints about Title IX are usually about college sport scholarships. This isn't about math or science scholarships...it's sports. State U. gives x $ amount of taxpayer funded sport scholarships to men...State U. must offer an equal amount to women. You take federal money for the football team...well you better have a women's basketball team..or soccer team. And as the townhall columnists types would say "THAT'S NOT FAIR"

From Echidne of the Snakes: New York Times columnist John Tierney complains....where are the men's lacrosse teams? I want my government to fund men's lacrosse. Those evil feminists...they have taken away men's lacrosse and replaced it with women's basketball..YUK..How dare you they take away college sports from manly-men..

My oh My...conservative blood runs rather thin in Bush-America. Why not ask for the federal government to stop funding education...FIRE that cabinet secretary. ... need lower taxes. Where is the call for private funding of college sports..it is a business isn't it?

Of course the problem is not lack of money for lacrosse, gymnastics, golf or wrestling...it's that money-sucking sport Football.

Read this post from Main Street USA Its Football Stupid not Title IX

Football is the Achilles heel of college sports programs. It is the ultimate sacred cow. Colleges routinely carry football squads at the Division I-A limit of 85 players. (The maximum number of players who can actually suit up for a game is 40.) A large proportion of most college sports programs funding goes to football. So, colleges need to balance out football.

Pro football is really big business..as a good friend of mine likes to say...millionaires owned by billionaires. Why can't those billionaires fund their college farm teams? Then there will be plenty of money for other men's sports. Problem solved!

And by private enterprise...Eh Conservatives.

Just the Facts Mam

nospam@example.com (Diane C.) — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:59:56 -0700

From the LA Times:

Sergeant Joe Friday has been hired to teach American history in Florida.

No, not really it's just that...

Last week, in an unprecedented move, the president's brother approved a law barring revisionist history in Florida public schools. "The history of the United States shall be taught as genuine history and shall not follow the revisionist or postmodernist viewpoints of relative truth," declares Florida's Education Omnibus Bill, signed by Gov. Jeb Bush. "American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed."

Read the entire article here.

Now why is it that with evolution in biology class, one must teach the controversy and take alternate viewpoints into account. But in history class...no interpretation is allowed. JUST THE FACTS.

Story tip from Butterflies and Wheels.

Ages of Rocks

nospam@example.com (Diane C.) — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 19:35:20 -0800

From the Arkansas Times comes a story of educational hypocrisy with historical precedent.

Reporter Jason Wiles goes looking for the missing link in Arkansas biology education, evolution and finds that teachers are afraid to use the E-word, even though evolution is part of the official state science curriculum.

From the story:

I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD ... but I am NOT to say that these rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old.”

As a person with a geology background, Bob found this restriction hard to justify, especially since the new Arkansas educational benchmarks for 5th grade include introduction of the concept of the 4.5-billion-year age of the earth. Bob’s facility is supposed to be meeting or exceeding those benchmarks.

Amazing....the teacher can't teach what he is supposed to teach because the school is afraid. The school and teacher are stuck between the conflict of state standards and radical parents with a passion for lawsuits. I wonder why anyone wants to teach science in the public schools anymore. Why put up with that when there is more money to be made in the private sector.

The historical precedent, at least the hypocrisy part...substitute biology teacher John Scopes was teaching from the official approved Tennessee high school biology textbook, when he broke the law for mentioning the E-word.

It's deja-vu all over again!

Thanks for the link to Bartcop

Flunking Common Sense

nospam@example.com (Diane C.) — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:40:11 -0800

What good is algebra in the real world? The editorial in the Thursday Washington Post What is the Value of Algebra? has the science bloggers angry that the author would suggest that algebra isn't necessary for all high school students. The editorial was a response to the The LA Times story A Formula for Failure which chronicles the difficulties of requiring algebra for all high school students in the LA school district and the fallout from an increased high school dropout rate.

One question that needs to be asked is why did the LA school district (and now the entire state of California) set such a high goal without proper preparation. If the kids can't learn fractions and percents in the earlier grades, doesn't it seem rather silly to push them into algebra? The requirement of algebra for students who have received poor instruction in basic math does not make sense. The usual comments from the ed. pundits tend to run like this... schools need more MONEY...the parents need more SCHOOL CHOICE ...we need more TESTING and closing bad schools...Mom needs to stay home where SHE belongs...and so forth. Yeah maybe so but it still won't get everyone to pass algebra.

But maybe we need to ask the orginal question again...Why does everyone need algebra?..To compete in the global economy you dumb kids! Is that the only reason? Is it a good enough reason?