Hey board of education members! Read This!

I found a great story on Slate.com (link below) detailing the nation's problems with math and science education thanks to a friend and former co-worker of mine, Tasha Kates.

The story explains that technology is destroying the standard teaching method for math and science by making it easy (and fun) for students and teachers alike, while dumbing it down and using incorrect examples and analogies.

It says that many things worth learning in life aren't exactly fun and even uses a sports example:

“Some of the best basketball players on Earth will stand at that foul line and shoot foul shots for hours and be bored out of their minds,” says Williams. Math students, too, need to practice foul shots: adding fractions, factoring polynomials. And whether or not the students are bright, “once they buy into the idea that hard work leads to cool results,” Williams says, you can work with them.

The same analogy could have been made with musical instruments. I was bored as hell learning and practicing scales over and over again. But it drilled the fundamentals of music into my head. And because of that, 20 years after leaving high school, I can still pick up a trumpet and play it, as well as read music.

On the education level, the same analogy could be made with foreign language. Sure, teachers make it fun. I thoroughly enjoyed Bruce Stassburg's Latin class in high school. But there was no cheating. He drilled conjugations into our heads starting on day one ... and continuing for four years. If today's math teachers taught Latin, we would have used an electronic Speak & Spell, no doubt.

One of the things the story mentions is that the graphing calculators used in most schools today are completely unnecessary, something I've said for a long time. Amazing considering the nearly $100 every parent has to shell out for these unnecessary calculators.

Personally, I've always though the calculators were unneeded because after students leave the classes which use them, they almost never go on to talk about sine, cosines, etc. In fact, to be quite frank, I have no idea what those terms mean. I just remember that they go along with those calculators.

One telling point in the story is the fact that 89 percent of high school math teachers believe their students are ready for college math at graduation and only 26 percent of college math teachers believe their students are ready when they get there. That's a huge disparity. (63 percent for those of you without calculators)

I'm not saying that American math teachers are bad. And I'm not saying they're lazy. One teacher oft-quoted in the story had to rebel against his school board to be allowed to keep a chalk board in his class instead of going with one of the new "interactive whiteboards" that seem so popular today.

I think we get seduced by technology. I know I do. If it has electricity running through it, I like it. If it also has an Amoled screen, I like it even more. I'm hardly a technophobe. I read books and play games on my Android phone. I have a work laptop (Mac) as well as a personal one (Windows). I have the internet on my TV (GoogleTV) and I've been coveting a Kindle. But I still know how to use a typewriter, a pad of paper, and read a real honest-to-goodness book. Just because something is shiny and noisy and makes us go "ooh and ahh," doesn't mean it's a useful tool for education.

And it's not just math and science where technology is taking over. The Niagara Falls School District several years ago started giving laptops to all students. Tool or distraction? I don't honestly know. In the Lockport City School District, many students are using iPads on a regular basis. Are they learning with them? Again, I don't know, but my daughter told me she loves playing MineCraft.

The story even takes potshots at standardized tests, showing statistics that they don't actually help kids to learn anything and actually hurt in terms of teaching kids how to learn.

I can't really speak to "how things are" in high school now. It's been 20 years since I exited those hallowed halls. But I remember that when I was in high school, I didn't really feel like I learned much (aside from Latin conjugation). What it felt like to me was that I was in a holding pattern until I got to college and my maturity caught up with my brain. I felt like I was learning how to learn. So if we aren't teaching kids how to learn, but instead are making it "fun" and "easy," then what the hell is the point of education system?

Seriously, check out this story on Slate.com ...

(note: This column originally appeared as a blog post)

All the stuff I never needed to know, I learned in school

History is written by the winners, but that doesn't mean anyone will get to read it.

Such is the case in the state of Texas, where the Texas Board of Education is considering altering their history books to remove any reference to Cesar Chavez.

Cesar Chavez, if you don't know, is widely credited with many of the labor advancements of the 20th century, specifically on farms in the United States. His jacket hangs at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. And President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, a year after his death.

The Texas Board of Education, however, has decided that he is “inconsequential” to American history.

Chavez “lacks the stature…and contributions” and should not “be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation,” according to Gail Lowe, chairwoman of the board.

Now you may wonder why you should be concerned about the state of Texas removing a Mexican-American farmworker from their history books. Maybe you shouldn't, but maybe the thought of a state dictating a curriculum to their school districts should make you think.

Things aren't all that different here in New York, where the majority of school spending and decisions are made by some suits in Albany. Heck, ask any school board member, they'll tell you that a large portion of the decisions they make are actually pre-decided by state statute and funding rules. The annual budget you vote on? They only have control over a minuscule fraction of that. The rest, the state mandates.

Imagine, for a second, if the state of New York demanded that DeWitt Clinton be expunged from the history books. I mean, what'd he ever do? Well, expect for that whole canal thing?

Sure, maybe Clinton wasn't all that important to New York City (where he served as mayor prior to being governor), but he was pretty darn important to us folks here on the west end of the state. And frankly, he was pretty darn important to the country.

Personally, I'm somewhat offended by their being a state-wide school curriculum. What's important to North Tonawanda, for example, might not mean a hill of beans to North Syracuse. And vice versa. So why should some group of people in Albany get to decide what's taught in either of them?

My kids are constantly coming home with homework that I don't understand. Now, granted, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but these are things that the majority of the world doesn't need to know. Have you ever found yourself walking down the street and suddenly needed to know that the co-tangent of something was? Me neither.

That doesn't prevent every child in every school from the Bronx to Buffalo from being forced to learn it. Temporarily at least.

I'm all for a well-rounded education, but does every kid in school really need to take physical education? If my memory serves me correct, the ones who participated the most were the same ones that didn't need the exercise. Not to mention, if they weren't at home trying to figure out co-tangents, they might be able to go outside and play, thereby burning the calories they're supposed to be burning in gym.

I'm pretty sure every child in New York State has to take multiple years of a foreign language to get a diploma. I'll be honest, my four years of Latin helped me a lot. Do you get much use out of your French or Spanish? Honestly?

Think of the countless hours spent teaching kids stuff they don't really need to know that could have been spent teaching them things like how to balance a check book, change a tire and find a job – things we all have to do eventually.

Of course, we're talking about government here. They can't balance a checkbook, got their job from their brother and have AAA change their flat tire, probably on your dime.

Sadly, it all makes sense.