we don t need no stinking history

[oldr_n_wsr]

"It's so simple, so very simple,
that only a child can do it."

Is that like childproof caps on medicine bottles and changing the clock on the VCR (yes I still have a vcr).

[rubato]

After he quit performing Tom Lehrer taught math and musical theater at UCSC and Harvard until he retired a few years ago.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer

Despite holding a master's degree in an era when American conscripts often lacked a high school diploma, Lehrer served as an enlisted soldier, achieving the rank of Specialist Third Class (later retitled "Specialist-4" and currently "Specialist"), which he described as being a "corporal without portfolio."[11] In 1960, Lehrer returned to full-time studies at Harvard[citation needed], but in 1965 gave up on his mathematical dissertation about the subject of modes in statistics, after working on it intermittently for 15 years.[2]

From 1962, he taught in the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[12] In 1972, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching an introductory course entitled "The Nature of Mathematics" to liberal arts majors—"Math for Tenors", according to Lehrer. He also taught a class in musical theater. He occasionally performed songs in his lectures, primarily those relating to the topic.[13]

In 2001, Lehrer taught his last mathematics class (on the topic of infinity) and retired from academia.[14] He has remained in the area, and in 2003 said he still "hangs out" around the University of California, Santa Cruz.[15]

Lehrer has commented that he doubts his songs had any real effect on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin kabaretts of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."[26]

In 2003 he commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban land mines... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them."[15]

86! How have we let him get so old? Couldn't we have done something about that. Careless.



yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

Here is a link to some common core math questions with the way to solve them. Seems a little convoluted to me (someone who did take advanced math and did very well in it even though I hated it. Graduated summa cum laude with a BSEE)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/3 ... lec-torres

Actually, it isn't convoluted at all, they are solving the problems using the thought processes of a child of that age. The first one, for example. Kids very quickly learn how to add when the answer is no more than 10, why? Because they can use their fingers (do you imagine that designing our number system in base 10 was a coincidence?) So they are doing with pencil and paper what a kid adding 7+7 has to do on his fingers - 7 fingers, plus..wait, I got to ten using the 3 fingers I have left...how many remain of that second 7...4, ok. I got to 10, so 4 more is 14. That, or something very similar to it, was what was going on your head when you first learned addition. It may seem convoluted to you now precisely because you don't have to think about it anymore.

The second one - place value and regrouping, absolutely fundamental concepts, but completely abstract. You can't get a kid to understand what is happening using nothing but a column of numbers, you have to draw it for them - one 10 breaks down into ten 1's, and so on...

I marvel at these supposedly intelligent people at the National Review, whose intelligence has apparently made them incapable of remembering what was happening in their six year old brains.

[MajGenl.Meade]

That's true. By our age(s) we 'know' that 9 + 7 is 16. We surely learned that by 'borrowing' 1 from 7 to make ten and then adding the 6 left over.

Still today in adding columns of numbers don't we do the same thing? We make tens as we tot 'em up.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Thanks for the explaination but it still seems convoluted to me. But then again, I learned this stuff way back in the 60's and 70's and don't really want to learn new tricks if I don't have too. My kids are out of college and I don't have to help them anymore (at least with school anyway).

[Big RR]

Scooter--while I think you may be right, my only question is whether there is a benefit to students in teaching math concepts this way. There might be, but I really don't immediately see it (which is why I would like to see the view of elementary school math teachers on the curriculum).