Submitted by Alec Greenfield, Nov 26, 2007 14:21

I first would like to compliment The Sun for placing math education on the front page.

The problems of math education in the K-12 school systems are many and diverse and not unique to us but a world wide issue. For example, China is looking to the US for ideas on how to better teach mathematics. (The Middle Path in Math Instruction: Solutions for Improving Math Education. Shuhua An.)

I am a dyslexic technically trained professional with 20 years experience in the private sector. I lost my job to overseas competition so after some thought and consultation with friends and family went back to school with the expectation of teaching high school math. What I found was a massive bureaucracy that spoke great platitudes about serving the best interest of the children, however. The truth is they are the most insular, arrogant and inefficient run organizations I have ever had the displeasure of being involved in. The bottom line is that the have always done things one way and there is no way in hell they are every going to change and the most shocking is that some of this can be traced back to the Schools of Education themselves. For example, in the graduate course in methods to teach Reading, that all students must take, no mention in the text book or the syllabus was dyslexia ever mentioned! The New York State K-12 math curriculum is an almost perfect 180 degrees turn from what modern cognitive and brain science have discovered not that any of this is would ever be used in the Schools of Education curriculum. As the old saying goes: The fish stinks from the head down.

Alec Greenfield
Upstate, New York

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