30 August 09 (am)

Politics
Yeah, there are always people who either talk about leaving the country .

Yes, this was at Daily Kos. Some of us took exception.

Then there are those who want to “secede” .

Here is what I have to say: I love my country; there are times when I am very disappointed in it (November 2004 comes to mind) and, well, our country has lots of morons living in it (example). But I am going to stay and try to change what I think needs changing. To those who think that things will be better elsewhere: what will you do when things get tough in your new home?

So, to the quitters and the secessionists: don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. We’re better off without you.

Education Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub points us to an interesting post on teaching:

When I spent a high school year abroad in Japan in 1986, I found myself to be nothing but a minor leaguer trying to play in the big leagues when it came to math and science — a real blow to my pride since I’d always been a first-team all-star back home in the United States. On the other hand, not a single teacher in that highly competitive school left any impression on me in terms of his or her teaching skills.

I was equally underwhelmed last summer when I was among 50 teachers from around the world who were invited to Japan to visit Japanese schools and learn about their educational system. The shocking truth is, on the basis of pure teaching talent, American teachers are superior to those in Japan. Whereas Japanese teachers are by and large more knowledgeable and stronger generalists than American teachers, they do not possess key qualities that are essential for succeeding in the American classroom such as creativity, resourcefulness and compassion.

Japanese teachers primarily deliver instruction with comparatively little interaction with the students themselves. American teachers not only deliver instruction, but must also differentiate their instruction, which is to say they must successfully contend with a far more diverse array of needs, skills and backgrounds. The point is, though Japanese schools are often assumed to be superior to American schools, if we could wave a magic wand and teleport Japanese teachers into American schools, you would see no improvement whatsoever in student outcomes. For better and worse, both the American and Japanese models of education produce results according to what their respective citizenries value.

You are correct…to a point. The problem is that we have some teachers that are just plain incompetent (e. g., teaching that the way to add fractions is to add numerators and denominators).
But once you have teachers that actually know the material that they are supposed to be teaching, well, the dirty secret that, on the whole, we really don’t make much of a difference. The smart students learn and the dumb ones don’t.

We do make a difference with perhaps 1-2 students out of every 30 or so.

What we are up against The sad fact that many of the parents are morons:

A band at Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia, Missouri had the cute idea of wearing tee shirts showing a sequence of human evolution that culminated in a trumpet player. We’re all familiar with these ape-to-human diagrams; Steve Gould even wrote an article about them. They’re somewhat misleading, implying as they do that evolution is progressive [...]

some irate parents forced the band to abandon its shirts,

[Assistant Superintendant] Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.

“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.

Band parent Sherry Melby, who is a teacher in the district, stands behind Pollitt’s decision. Melby said she associated the image on the T-shirt with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

I really try not to hate such people….

Science Do you want to see a single molecule?

On a sad note: the Wyoming toad is in danger due to a fungus.

50′th Birthday Run

I turned 50 today. So to celebrate my new age group I went to the Woodruff HS. track and attempted a 5K (after 2 miles of warm up).

It was very cool but somewhat windy. How it went: 7:36, 7:41 (15:17) but I was really starting to hurt; in fact I couldn’t finish the 9′th lap and had to walk. I manage to recover and get going again but by then I had lost too much time; mile 3 came at 24:07 (8:50 3′rd mile) and I finished in 25:04.

I cooled down a bit.

What was more unusual was that there was a large flock of geese around the track; I imagined them to be a cheering section.

I looked at my old journals and it turns out that I was almost always 30-60 seconds on a solo time trial than I was in a race, even 10-11 years ago. That was the case here. I suppose that is why I like races; I use others to pull me along, and I suppose that I do the same for them.