Alice Waters - The Edible Schoolyard

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What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like?

I posted a link to a site that gave size perspective to collections of pennies. Here is a site, PageTutor.com, that gives us perspective on how big a trillion is in one hundred dollar bills.



Doubling the image, we have 2 trillion dollars. The deficit is at 1.75 trillion dollars. Can you see the little guy in the corner?

Teach a Man to Fish

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime."

—Author unknown

Education is about learning how to think. It is only when a person can truly think and analyze her own process that he or she will become an independent life-long learner with the ability to be skeptical when necessary. We call the ability to analyze one's own thoughts 'meta cognition' in education lingo.

It follows that the emphasis on any education should be about teaching students to think, in a variety of disciplines... the more the better.

If you look at our system, at least in California, you will see that we teach students how to perform on multiple-choice, standardized tests. Thus we will have a generation of students who can perform well on standardized tests. I am fairly certain though, that this type of training is not teaching the students to think.

More on that later.

The Discussion About Grades Returns

What is an academic grade? In 1950 a C meant 'average'. By today's standards, a C means 'failing'. In 1950 an A meant 'superb', 'excellent', 'exceptional'. Today an A means 'passing'.

Today's grade inflation is another incidence of the 'Lake Woebegone Effect', the syndrome where everyone's "children are above average". Thank you Garrison Keillor, for giving us the name.

Do we, as teachers, give everyone an A? Or do we give a student with average talent and performance a C and risk the wrath of the student and his/her parents? Does 'working hard' deserve an A even though the 'product' or 'outcome' is mediocre or even poor? Perhaps these are some questions that we need to ask ourselves.

If my banker 'tried' but made an error on my account, costing me money, I would complain to the supervisor and find a new bank if there continued to be errors. If the chef at my favorite restaurant tried 'really hard' but burned my steak all the same, I'd send it back. If the Verizon manager, try as she might, thought that there was no difference between two-thousandth of a dollar and two-thousandth of a cent, and then be idiotic enough to tell me that understanding this difference was 'a matter of opinion', I'd find another service provider.

I ponder and shudder: What are we doing, for the sake of our community, by telling our children they are always wonderful when they are not? Why would a student bother to try to be better when he or she is already great (but not)?

Currently, 60% of our students earning PHds are foreign born students, educated in other countries, many in Southeast Asia, where students are required to memorize their times tables and periodic tables. In 10 years that figure will be 75%.

For some more perspective on the issue of grade inflation see Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes and an editorial response ‘A’ Is for Achievement, ‘E’ Is for Effort .

Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong in Classroom

Earlier this month I posted an audio recording called, "Verizon Math Fail". The recording features a man debating a team of Verizon customer service representatives about whether $0.002 is equal to 0.002¢. On the tape he lost the battle because NONE of the people at Verizon understood the math.

I read, on his blog, that Verizon later held in-service training to correct the problem.

So, I was astonished when I saw this headline in the NY Times this morning: Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong in Classrooms. The article begins:

"SAN FRANCISCO — The cellphone industry has a suggestion for improving the math skills of American students: spend more time on cellphones in the classroom."

I have taught in schools for the past 17 years and seen the onset, and accompanying problems, of cell phones in the classroom. Students would much rather be fiddling with cell phones than thinking about math.

Using the internet, calculators, and cell phones to do math is a passive way of learning and doesn't develop brain structure as effectively as learning to make the calculations with a pencil and paper or slide rules.

I am sure that if the Verizon employees had used slide rules in math class, rather than calculators, they would have understood the difference between two-thousandth of a dollar and two-thousandth of a cent.

When a slide rule is the tool, the student must calculate where the decimal point is to be placed. Using the slide rule is, in itself, practice in placing decimals and understanding the size of numbers. The brain develops to understand the task. This doesn't happen when a student uses a calculator.

I wonder if the people who make these decisions think that they could have learned to ride a bicycle by playing a video game of riding a bicycle?

If Verizon (and the rest of the cell phone providers, i.e. 'The Industry') think that Smart Phones are a useful tool to learn math, I suggest they provide them to their employees and let them get started.