I’m not going to give some holier-than-thou exegesis of social ills or anything like that. There are too many others out there who’ve already done that for me. Besides that’s not how I roll. I’m going to leave up to you, the informed reader, to decide how you feel. I just want to situate his comments so that we’re in a better position to judge it. To begin, though, here’s what the AP reported Hardaway said:

You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.

The fact that Hardaway is commenting on gays is almost irrelevant. Let’s see how his words sound when we make a few substitutions.

You know, I hate black people, so I let it be known. I don’t like black people and I don’t like to be around black people. I’m blackophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.

Now how about another go at it?

You know, I hate blue-eyed people, so I let it be known. I don’t like blue-eyed people and I don’t like to be around blue-eyed people. I’m blue-eyedophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.

That could be funnier. Let’s fill in something outrageous.

You know, I hate iguanas and carrot cake, so I let it be known. I don’t like iguanas and carrot cake and I don’t like to be around iguanas and carrot cake. I’m iguana-and-carrot-cake-ophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.

Now, let’s try just one more time. Then you can go back to work.

You know, I hate dignity, so I let it be known. I don’t like dignity and I don’t like to be around dignity. I’m dignophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.

That’s it. Mull over what you’ve read, and report back on what you’ve learned from it.

Technorati Tags:tim hardaway, homophobia, society, hatred, racism, carrot cake, iguanas, basketball, miami, mad libs

Technorati Tags:bbc, new year, holiday, france, nantes, protest, 2006, 2007, 2008

Technorati Tags:same-sex marriage, marriage, massachusetts, law, family

People who go into the high-paced financial markets, well, they really can do very limited damage. Right out of school, few of us are in a position to ruin countries economically or otherwise. They keep the harm to themselves. High levels of stress combined with few hours to sleep leave the worker mentally and physically drained. Then, in those few hours they do have to themselves, many seek refuge in drugs or alcohol. Not all do, of course. But even those who do don’t really leave a lasting gash on society. Ah, but then there are those like me. The quiet, horrible types who try to help out others.

At least in business, there isn’t any real pretension to altruism. In education, that’s all we claim to do. Invest in the children today to save the world of tomorrow, and the like. However, it’s seldom that easy. Oftentimes, people deign to do charitable acts which tend more to harm than to help. Remember that obnoxious girl who tried to order her food at Boca Grande in Spanish? It took her fourteen times as long as everyone else and made everyone in the restaurant (except, possibly, the girl—she didn’t stop, after all) feel uncomfortable. That sort of thing happens a lot in education, but the effects are more permanent. Try as we might, people like to simplify complicated processes because, well, that’s human nature.

I freelance for a publishing company in the math textbook division. Right now I write tests for an accompanying middle school textbook series. And let me tell you, while it’s hard to write a good math textbook problem, it’s very easy to write a bad one. Many states, and indeed the country at large, have pushed for more so-called real-world math. These over-contextualized problems do wonders to confuse and hinder understanding. The research shows how bad they are, but people seem to love them. Or, rather, they love to make their children do them. No one actually loves to do them. That’s why many parents won’t help their children do their math homework. (And whoa, what a message that sends the kids: math is unimportant; it’s okay not to be good at math; do it now and soon it’ll be over. Why don’t we accept a similar level of ignorance in other fields? It’s embarrassing not to be a “reading person” but perfectly fine not to be a “math person.”)

Motivated by the enthusiasm and reward real-world problems brought Agatha Christie (to be honest: I don’t know anything about Agatha Christie aside from this quotation, which pops-up in math education reading from time to time. In fact, up until recently I thought she was Angela Lansbury), I rely on her words. They float around in my head and guide my writing:

I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours I found it quite enthralling.

And so I try to sneak in problems that use only thinly veiled real-world examples, but are secretly robust, real math problems. I’d include some examples, but I’ve signed a non-disclosure contract.

Some of my problems don’t have numbers at all, and even ask students to draw and label their answers. Of course, for every problem I come up with that I think is mathematically constructive, I submit six or seven others that I think are damaging. And here’s the problem: I actively hurt children. I help to spread and reinforce American mathphobia, one problem at a time. Because of me (and those like me), children learn to believe that math is boring, calculation according to some magic set of standards that devious, smart, and totally absent people make up. Still, it’s nice to know that I’m fighting back the cancer of classically construed middle school math, albeit not by much.

And the textbook series that I’m writing for isn’t extremely terrible. The authors sprinkle in short and extended response questions among the rote drill calculations. Some of the questions are open-ended. And they’re big on listing the standards each problem uses. Yet the text introduces the meat of each standard through by example, leaving the student to abstract and generalize rules on his own. (This is quite generally a dangerous practice.) Obvious over-contextualization aside, these margin notes do encourage basic metacognitive reasoning. In a small, roundabout way, they ask the studenst to think about what they’re thinking about. More practically, the kids (and their parents) know up-front what material they’re accountable for. And they get to see that these problems weren’t made up completely at random. Someone thought about them. So the cost of the materials is justified, right? Yes, I think it’s a political ploy. A good one, though.

And this is the most frustrating part about it. The standards trick people into thinking that there is some golden set of content and skills that a person should have in order to be considered mathematically competent or numerically literate or whatever fashionable buzzword you can come up with. The fact of the matter is, there isn’t. Math isn’t about what you know, it’s about how to organize what you know. I don’t know much graph theory; does that mean I’m innumerate? No way. I can do more geometry than plenty of professional graphy theory mathematicians, I’m sure. They know what they like; I know what I like. The crazy thing is, I know how to reason the same way as the graph theorists. The take home: the mathematical content of a textbook is really a vehicle for the abstract reasoning behind it all. For this reason, curricula can really be a lot more flexible than they are. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to say that kids shouldn’t learn arithmetic. I will argue that maybe they should learn it another way. Even when we publish fancy standards in our books but forget to change the way we approach those standards, we really haven’t done anything. Kids have been learning how to add in just about the same way for over a century. Meanwhile there’s been lots of ground-breaking research done on how people learn, think, and understand over the course of the last one hundred years. Why do we so willingly ignore it?

But I do have a curriculum, and I use it. Meanwhile, I can only do so much to take into account the kids who’ll be using my books. We’re never going to meet. I don’t know anything about them, except, possibly their average age and vague geographic location. It’s important to have a good sense of what they know, how they understand it, and how they learned it. Projecting two years into the future about strangers is hard stuff. I have to write blind to my reader.

Whatever its impact, I’m very lucky to have the opportunity to work on textbooks. With some careful thought and hard work, maybe I can make a small contribution for the better in middle school education (before running back into academia to play for the rest of my life).

Technorati Tags: mathematics, textbook, publishing, math problems, writing, education, contextualization, real-world, education policy, mathphobia, curriculum, teaching, learning, careers, politics, charity

Last night, I pointed out to my roommate DJ that a Democrat has finally smartened up and done the same. Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick, whose website browser icon is funnily DP—I wonder if his marketing team are aware of this—, has used similarly effective however empty campaign slogans. The weakest of his tag lines claims that Patrick is No Ordinary Leader. Now this is good, sure, but it’s not great. It tries to exploit the constant dissatisfaction that most of us harbor against whatever we currently have (be it our government, job, or any other part of life). More than that, it presumes that ordinary is bad and that unsual is good. Just to keep us in line, I’d like to point out—and I know that I’m using an unfair extreme–that Hitler was No Ordinary Leader. I’m not going to argue with you now, so take it at face value when I say that Hitler was bad. A good leader, sure; a bad man, certainly. But like I said, Patrick’s got better ones.

Next in order of efficacy, I think, comes his invitation to join him. Together We Can his posters say. My sister’s boyfriend Andrew finds this one particularly stirring. Last night he told me, “It evokes a partnership between me, the common man, and the candidate for the leadership embodied in the State’s chief magistrate,” or something. “Also, this guy went to some farmers out west somewhere and told them, ‘I’m not a farmer. I don’t know about this stuff. Tell me what I should do to help you.’ He’s really thinking out of the box,” he went on to tell me. My roommate DJ nearly drowned in his own tears (of laughter) upon hearing this.

Andrew proves my point. Perhaps now I should make it.

Together We Can is genius simply because it promises nothing. Patrick’s team were very careful never to use punctuation after any of their slogans on any of their signs. Of course not. They’re fragments. You can’t put a period after a fragment, after all. Doing so might point out raise the attention of a lazy reader. Then he’d realize that you haven’t said anything at all. To Andrew I asked, “Together we can what?” Patrick doesn’t tell us. Instead, he lets our imaginations run wild. That’s right, I am going to help run this State. I am important. Wrong. This slogan is so compelling because it calls on the reader to finish the sentence according to his personal whims and then pretend that it’ll happen, that he’s effected the change, and it spares him the hassle of doing any, real work. People love to feel like they’ve contributed something useful; on the other hand, they hate to exert themselves. This slogan let’s you think you can have your cake and eat it, too. (I’ve never understood that saying.)

But undoubtedly the best slogan I’ve heard so far, Patrick saved for until after he won the primary. Now it’s showing up on bumper stickers. Patrick asks us to Believe Again. I can’t begin to explain how impressed I was when I read this slogan. I wanted to run up and shake him and cry and clap my hands uncontrollably. It’s really quite amazing. This slogan reaches the largest audience possible. Being the most devoid of content, it has the greatest reach. Believe Again entices the voter to conjure up the most romantic, idealized form of government possible. But it doesn’t stop there, the implications are unstoppable. It’s an easy jump from government to general quality of life. Improving one naturally improves the other, right? No matter what you believe in, Patrick does, too—at least according to this slogan. And shouldn’t you support someone who holds such a coincident and intimate commitment to those things you hold so dear? It’s hard to argue against him, because you’d have to argue against yourself. Imagine a leader who would allow you to Believe Again.

To test my claims that these are, indeed, worthy of the Republicans, DJ asked quite blankly, “Are you suggesting we Cut and Run?”

To which I answered, “It’ll take No Ordinary Leader.”

To which he countered, “But don’t you Support Our Troops?”

But then I hit him full-force with, “Together We Can. I want to Believe Again.”

It was over. The conversation left both of us stunned.

DJ then noted that we should write for the Colbert Report, or, maybe I should write for the Colbert Report, or, possibly, just to them, to let them know that someone else figured out how to play the word game.

What’s worth mentioning is that Patrick’s slogans are even more sinister than the Republican’s because they aren’t immediately negative. (No Ordinary Leader comes closest to being overtly aggressive, but is pretty sissy when flanked by Cut and Run and Support Our Troops. Notice, however, that Support Our Troops also makes the people who say it feel like they’ve really accomplished something even though they’ve taken no physical action.) Patrick’s tag lines get stuck in your ear, and, while there, make you feel better about him and about yourself. How empowering! I really can’t get over just how brilliant they are.

Moral: If don’t want people to disagree with you, don’t say anything that they can disagree with.

Aimed at low-income expectant parents, couples volunteer to complete a 12-hour course during which they learn, review, and discuss what it takes to stay in a long-term relationship. I believe much of their time is devoted to ever important communication techniques. It’s hard to know what if any effect OMI and others programs like it will have. And we won’t know for years, but it’s worth trying, I suppose. Studies show that as a group single mothers hold some of the most conservative family values. They believe that being a mother is one of, if not the single most important thing a woman can do. They want a traditional, nuclear family, and the majority [in the study I can't remember below] oppose abortion.

While you may not be suprised to learn that even poorer people don’t want to sabotage their own lives, many critics of the 1996 law were afraid that low income women would have more and more kids in order to up their monthly check from the state at the expense of tax-payers and their hypothetical children. Some ground-breaking research, which I can’t name off the top of my head, in which about 160 single, low-income mothers were interviewed, shows that these women didn’t get married not because they somehow lack morals and values—as others might suggest—but because they revere the institution of marriage as holy. They’re holding out for someone who can provide a stable, healthy environment for them and their kids. The only difference, it seems, between them and their middle- and upper-class counterparts is resources.

Professor Skip Gates of Harvard’s Afro-American studies department recently produced a several part PBS documentary on blacks in America. He found that many boys in impoverished areas grew up to do what their role models did: sell drugs and go to jail. But why? Because they didn’t know what else to do. Why go to school and learn things that might be useful years from now and make no money in the interim when you could sell some drugs and make a few thousand dollars in a few days? The problem of immediate gratification is ruining large portions of society. The sort of education we need here is of the utmost personal kind. It is important that children, as President Bush says, be exposed to as many possibilities as, uh, possible. If a parent tells a child that he can be whatever he wants to be when he grows up, the statement has very little empowering effect if the child can’t think of things to be.

So when I say that these women’s middle-class counterparts have more resources, I intend more than material means; I’m also talking about psychology and education.

If these women believe that motherhood is the highest form of success they can acheive, it’s no wonder that most low-income babies, while perhaps not planned, are purposefully not prevented. Among other things, we need to get more and different kinds role models and mentors to work especially within low-income populations.

Even when presented with alternatives, it’s easy to believe that you’re born into your part in society, that lots are cast. In America, parents reinforce this misconception all the time. When interviewed, American mothers will list innate ability as the single most important factor in determining a person’s long-term success. Chinese and Japanese mothers, on the other hand, choose effort and persistance. As a result, American children can easily believe that those things which come easy to them are the things that are meant for them, and the stuff that’s hard isn’t. Again, pretty unsuprisingly sociologists suspect that one reason kids join gangs is a thirst for immediate gratification. Gangs will get you where you want to be fast.

And that’s why good math education is so crucial. (I could see you waiting for it, so I won’t disappoint.) Math is the sort of subject that requires lots of forethought and whose reward is delayed gratification. Of course good mathematical training won’t cure all of society’s ills, but [because this post is already long I'll keep this brief and end abruptly claiming wildly that] the psychology of mathematics couldn’t hurt.

Yesterday, the Associated Press published an article explaining “a growing national debate over whether the nation’s newest education experiment is — unexpectedly — encouraging school segregation.”

Because of the penalties listed in the No Child Left Behind Act, schools who “underperform” lose funding. If you’re a public school administrator, and your school’s doing just fine, what are you going to say to a poor, stereotypically troubled and troubling child who wants admission? No way. It only makes sense, right? If you take him, his tests scores could jeopardize your already delicate budget. And that kid who just immigrated and can’t yet speak English and so will almost certainly fail the mandatory state assessment — well, she’s out, too.

It’s economically advantageous to segregate against poor students under the law. So, now we see school doing just that. But to say it’s unexpected, as the AP says, is simply just wrong.

The same sort of argument came up when there was a big push for vouchers for charter schools. It’s true, test scores generally rise when public schools have to compete with charter schools. However, it’s a zero-sum game. For every student who jumps ships from a public to a charter school [or the other way around], that students state allocation leaves with him. Some say this puts the onus on schools to be the best they can so that they don’t lose students. But that’s a fairly unreasonable expectation unless you provide sufficient funds.

Imagine a doctor denying a patient treatment, “Oh, no. No medicine for you, not until you get better.” That would teach America never to get sick again. Sure, we ought to have standards, but this is ridiculous.

Charter schools were bad, but they weren’t everywhere. They were only a local evil, plaguing, for the most part, cities and large metropolitan areas where there are enough students and therefore government subsidy. My small hometown of 10,000 residents can only furnish enough kids to graduate less than sixty each year — not nearly enough for the economics to provide us with a charter school. Our partner school, the one with which we share football, hockey, and my senior year, cross-country teams, is even smaller. [To be fair, each class starts with about 120, but after you figure in attrition to private and vocational institutions, drop-outs, and death (there are less than a handful in the last category), it's suprising if there are more than 50 students left in good standing by senior year.]

No Child Left Behind is worse: it’s national. No one can escape it. [Even if a state tried to, they'd forfeit almost all federal support. So while it's not compulsory to comply in theory, it is in practice. Isn't that tantamount to extortion?] The flow of well-to-do, advantaged populations to well-to-do, advantaged schools will continue, as it always has. But now, schools are going to be [and this article says they are] on even more careful watch to keep the disadvantaged out.

What we need to do, you see, is get rid of the many millions of dollars it costs to develop, administer, assess, and analyse large tests like the MCAS [which, despite the lone open-ended math essay question still ask SAT-type, multiple choice which do not prove a kid understands anything other than how to take a test; the AP sucks less, but still an awful lot. They let me take a TI-89 calculator which can do symbolic manipulations to the exam in high school.]. Instead, we need to invest it in the teachers. Less than 1% of school budgets nation-wide are dedicated to professional development. I can’t wait to be a comfortable, gentleman academic.

It looks like the creationists got me this time. I would like to apologize to my readers to posting something before checking its authenticity. Professor Eric Pianka does not advocate the mass extermination of the human population. [I can't believe I just wrote that sentence.] He’s not crazy, I am, for believing the story.

But even more, I should apologize to Professor Pianka. And if I thought many of you read my blog, I would. Luckily, and sadly, my sphere of influence exerts very little power on the unfathomably large internet.

According to the local NBC affiliate in Austin, Pianka has received death threats targetting him and his family.

Sean of Cosmic Variance has reported on the misrepresentation yesterday. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but I should be more wary of outlandish claims against evolutionary biology. In recent history, evolutionary biology has had nothing to do with it. Gosh, those creationists are everywhere into everything. Texas! Bah. It was a dead give away.

I can’t believe how completely had I feel.

Technocrati Tags: creationism, ebola, Dr Doom, and evolution

Not long ago I finished a book which treats social trends as epidemics and fleshes out the implications. The book, should any of you have a few hours to spare, is Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Reading it fits nicely with my new year’s resolution. Even more than that, it’s helped me to frame an after-school math program. You can read and critique what I’ve come with [rehashed and stolen] in glorious PDF here. Bear in mind that it is what it claims to be — a skeleton — and nothing more. It’s almost vague, but still specific enough to be useful, I hope.

Whoever is in charge of fate must’ve be working overtime today. For he must’ve directed me to this bizarre and terrifying article in the Citizen Scientist. Now I blog a lot [for me] about the terrible misappropriation of science by nefarious and sneaky groups all around the world. But it is seldom that I have the opportunity to strike out against scientists who misuse science. For the most part, the self-regulated, moderating nature of professional scientific investigation keeps scientists from going to far astray from the reason. But not always.

Today let’s take a impromptu trip to [surprise!] Texas. No, we’re not condemning stem cell research or homosexuals bent on abortion of good, Christian babies. Many of you have forgotten that today is Opposite Day. According to the article, Professor Eric Pianka of the University of Texas at Austin is concerned that humans are over-populating the planet and have been at an increasingly alarming rate since the Industrial Revolution. His specialty lies in environmental and conservational studies, and he loves lizards. It is only natural that he’d be concerned. After all, he studies the problems first hand. And like many other scientists, it’s not suprising that he happens to be personally invested in the subject he’s spent decades to pursue. So, during the 2006 Texas Academy of Science Distinguished Scientist of the Year award lecture, its recipient, our friend Professor Pianka outlined the problem as he sees it and a very novel solution.

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

He then showed solutions for reducing the world’s population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.

…After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We’ve got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”

That’s right: he wants to knock out about 5.9 billion people with Ebola.

Pianka doesn’t want to uphold the sanctity of life. He’s extreme. He’s conversative. And he gives an illustrative example of the diversity of forms fundamentalism can take. Religion is getting a bad rap. Crazies, it seems, can come from any where at any time. The religious fundies just happen to be the best organized and most popularized group of extremists in the States. Of course, crazies acting under the guise of patriotism have emerged more recently, too. We should do well not to underestimate any of them.

The article continues to explain that Pianka has a following. One student even publically wrote that he worships the man. And as Pianka notes, just one passenger on a plane to Europe could wipe out the entire continent. That one passenger could be a former student, who, after graduating, goes on to med school. After some training, a few accolades, and community respect, the incog crazy could get near to the virus. My college roommate Alex used to work in an Ebola lab at the Harvard Medical School. As far as I know he still does. Alex worked with the most unholy mix of Ebola, rat cancer, and glow-in-the-dark jellyfish genes. Of course he didn’t have clearance to work with a live strain. It’s hard even to get parts of the beast. And the rat cancer was thrown in actually as a precaution. [I hear that it's hard for humans to catch rat cancer.] Alex isn’t crazy. But all it takes is one crazy to sneak in to do serious harm.

That’s the point of the Tipping Point. Large, sweeping gestures aren’t always necessary to effect tremendous change. All you need to do is know which nut to unscrew in a big machine in order to cause it to come crashing down.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is a smart, influential man. In England. Unfortunately, his words are a wash on our Fundies, who, have broadened their attack to include the big bang, not just evolutionary biology and global warming — note: that guy who claims to have a degree from Texas A&M in not-science actually never graduated, and so, doesn’t have a degree even in that.

The Archbishop calms me down slightly, and he reminds me that I need to reevaluate the enemy in this War Against Science. Look at how reasonable he is:

“I think creationism is … a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories … if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there’s just been a jarring of categories … My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it,” he said.

Yes! That’s right. Good argument. Not only is creationism not the same as base, secular science, to put it there side-by-side with godless biology would be to defile it. Okay, so he’s not exactly saying that. But really, science doesn’t purpose to say anything about religion; religion ought not to say anything about science, except maybe in fluffy theological treatises where tenuous and often wrong analogies are drawn between the two. They’re simply not in the same category. [Ah, yes, what a good word.]

I’ll leave the dead horse alone now.