[Edu-sig] Fwd: The 'Certified' Teacher Myth (long)

[Edward Cherlin]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 11:27 AM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm forwarding this, enqueued with Math Forum moderators, as it gives
> some background perspective of potential utility to edu-sig
> subscribers, plus indirectly expresses my gratitude to Stef Mientki
> for his promising project.
>
> If you're embroiled in USA "math wars" at all and want to do
> background reading on this thread, here's a link:
> http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1869138&tstart=0
>
> I'd recommend staying blissfully ignorant of a lot of it though,

+1

> lest
> you get caught up in dinosaur flavors of "should we allow calculators
> in math class?" kinds of debates (nothing at all about computer
> languages), angry mud slinging that's been going on for decades and
> going nowhere (lots of energy sinks, time sucks, not worth your
> attention).

Now that we are embarked on creating interactive textbooks for the
OLPC XO project, (_not_ CAI-style, but more along the lines described
in Seymour Papert's book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful
Ideas), all of those arguments are irrelevant.


> On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Michael Paul Goldenberg wrote:
>
> << SNIP >>
>
>>  As we prepare for what well may another world-wide depression thanks to the
>> GRUNCH of the giants that Haim doesn't want to discuss here (we're supposed
>> to believe that it's teachers' unions that got us where we are, I suppose),
>> we should be spitting in the faces of people like Haim and their
>> self-serving, utterly bankrupt views and policies.
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> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig

Plenty of people can be blamed for the current mess in education
worldwide. I have a better idea. Let's invent something that they
can't prevent infiltrating the system. Wait, we've done that. Well
then, let's get on with it.

"Living well is the best revenge."--George Herbert

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."--Thomas Edison, who
was evidently an optimist. Really good ideas can take the rest of your
life to work out, or in the truly exceptional cases, the lives of
multitudes for centuries, even millennia to come.
-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai