Ziggurat Math

The complete work of Charles Darwin

2006-10-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

The complete work of Charles Darwin: "This site contains every Darwin publication as well as many of his handwritten manuscripts. All told there are more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. "

Whether you agree with his conclusions or not being able to look at the source documents is an amazing thing. This is something only accredited historians usually get to look at. This allows anyone to look at some of the most influential documents out there.

Failing to teach them how to handle real life - Sunday Times - Times Online

2006-01-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

Failing to teach them how to handle real life - Sunday Times - Times Online: "After studying 25,000 children across both state and private schools Philip Adey, a professor of education at Kings College London confidently declares: The intelligence of 11-year-olds has fallen by three years worth in the past two decades."

This is disturbing. But the question you have to ask is:"Is the drop because of the educational system or is it something in the water/food?"

Personally I tend to think that the educational system is failing and is falling apart and it is getting more apparent all the time. Even parents that say "I'm a product of public schools, and I'm doing okay." are beginning to be leery of what is going on in schools today.

Study: Most College Students Lack Skills - Yahoo! News

2006-01-25T11:56:00.000-08:00

Study: Most College Students Lack Skills - Yahoo! News: "More than half of students at four-year colleges and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found."

It is obvious to anyone else that the public education system is falling apart. Do you really think that the government will be able to pay Social Security with workers who can barely drive a car.

Most people think, "But I got through public school okay?" How do you define "okay?" Eyebrow deep in debt, paying minimums and siting in a cube all day? Is that really okay or is it not okay?

Economic View: What's the Return on Education?

2006-01-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

Economic View: What's the Return on Education?: "This academic year, the better part of $1 trillion will be spent on education in the United States. That's an awful lot of spending, approaching 10 percent of the overall economy. But what exactly is the return on all of that money?While the costs are fairly simple to calculate, the benefits of education are harder to sum up."

The previous post showed us that literacy is on the downward slope.

How well you're socialization is won't help you with feeding a family.

Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline

2006-01-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline: "'It's appalling -- it's really astounding,' said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. 'Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That's not saying much for the remainder.'"

Are those in charge of education Fools or Fiends?

If fools then maybe we are seeing an extreme form of the Peter Principle. If fiends then they are actively trying to destroy world civilization.

Either way you have to teach your children the basics and then they can survive and prosper.

Leave No Gifted Child Behind

2005-12-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

Leave No Gifted Child Behind: "Many gifted students, of course, continue to shine on standardized tests regardless of the level of instruction they receive. But whether these gifted students -- who are capable of work far above their grade level -- are being appropriately educated to develop their full potential is not shown by looking at test scores measuring only their grade-level mastery. Nor do test scores indicate whether these students are being sufficiently challenged to maintain their academic interest, an issue of particular concern in high school. Shockingly, studies establish that up to 20 percent of high school dropouts are gifted."

They say the students that do best are those that have involved parents.

What is really happening is these involved parents are doing the actual teaching and the school are just providing something to talk about at home.

If you're involved and doing most of the work anyway why keep them in school?

Stanford - Learn

2005-12-30T10:06:00.000-08:00

SCPD - Learn

I got a postcard in the mail from Stanford showing they have free courses online. Free is good.

Is TV okay?

2005-12-29T09:12:00.001-08:00

APS Observer - Watch and Learn: "A few years earlier, the Department of Education had granted Children's Television Workshop $8 million to create educational television programs that would prepare young kids for school. The workshop was given a two-year lead time to develop a show curriculum and test the show's effectiveness before it was broadcast. The opportunity for trial, error, and retrial was an industry rarity. Traditionally, producers had created shows based on sellable ideas that could be ready to air quickly. Consultation with educators, if it happened at all, occurred after much of the groundwork had already been done. The workshop, however, had gathered a mixture of scientists and television people. Working in close collaboration on all aspects of production %u2014 from story ideas to scripts to the color of Big Bird's plumage %u2014 the team figured out how to get kids to Sesame Street, and how to keep them there."

Is watching television okay for kids? That is a very good question. The American Psychological Society looks at the question and some of the history.

We let our daughter watch a fair amount of TV, actually videos really, and we won't let her have a TV in her room. I did and we know many parents that do, but I would rather have her read more books then anything else.

Is TV okay?

2005-12-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

TheBostonChannel.com - Money - A Competitive Nation, By Design

2005-12-26T14:32:00.000-08:00

TheBostonChannel.com - Money - A Competitive Nation, By Design: "Funds should also support the softer skills, the right-brain attributes deemed so important in this conceptual age, the skills that math- and science-focused India and China do not yet possess in any great capacity. After all, it is the ability to see the potential in the fruits of that research that currently sets the U.S. apart as a nation and has contributed to its lead as a producer of innovative goods and services."

Design skills could be very important in the future.

Why I homeschool

2005-12-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

Multiple Mentality %uFFFD Carnival of the Capitalists for December 26, 2005: "%u201CPublic educators, like (ex-)Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive.%u201D -Carolyn Lockhead"

Looking over Carnival of the Capitalist I came across this very interesting quote. Actually I think it is completely wrong, I think they are doing all those things very well, however their goal is not to educate our children but to grow the bureaucracy.

With school budgets seeming to increase far beyond the level of inflation every year it certainly seems to be very successful at it.

Are you preparing your children for a jobless society?

2005-12-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

In the 1950's it was expected to have not only a single career but a single job for an entire lifetime.

Now we change jobs every couple of years and change careers 3-4 times.

Employers and employees have been complaining about lack of loyalty for ages, and it doesn't look like it will change anytime soon. The rate of change is accelerating. Jobs come and go. Entire departments, even whole industries can become obsolete overnight and disappear into the ether.

How are you creating your child's future? Will they be flexible enough to deal with what might be thrown at them?

While I was listening to a teleconference, where they were talking about balance, I realized that balance is not something that is important, we need to be balanced over time but we need not be balanced today. Something that drives us crazy is that our daughter will sometimes only eat salt and pepper, rather then worrying about it, we need to change our timeline, rather then every meal being perfectly balanced, we offer her good food that she'll eat over a day or two and it mostly works.

We can look at ourselves as made up of 4 parts:
Spirit, our essence, our personality, the child of our Heavenly Father within us.
Body, the container that holds our spirit.
Mind, our experience and knowledge.
Heart, our passion and emotions.

We cannot be at balance with all of these parts at the same time in every situation. The heart is terrible at balancing the checkbook and the mind is pathetic at romance. Each part is important but they are good at different things.

We need to be teaching our children how to use each part to best effect for the appropriate situations. You would not use a steering wheel to replace a tire even though they are both wheels.

You nourish the body with food and exercise and in doing things. Our spirits are nourished by communion with God. The mind needs knowledge and our hearts need love. But we cannot let any of these rule our lives alone.

We rest on the Sabbath to let our bodies be renewed and immerse our spirits in The Spirit. We allow our minds to rest while we play.

Let each part of us have a time for it to lead but within proper bounds.

How to Sing Properly - WikiHow

2005-12-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

How to Sing Properly - WikiHow: "Singing well is a skill, improved upon with proper breathing coordination. It is an extension of speech. This means the language being sung will have an effect on the position used for easy production of the tone. Style will also affect vocal position---more space is needed in classical singing style than is needed in 'popular' styles."

My wife and I sing in our church choir and I have noticed that singing is quite a workout sometimes. Breathing properly is a very healthy thing to do and will make your abs quite strong. We've not been doing choir for a while since our daughter was born and we are glad that they've started up again and we can get in there again.

What is the point of homeschooling your children?

2005-12-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Why do you bother to homeschooling your children?
Why is it important to you?
What does homeschooling success look like?

Remember grandma recommending you study hard and become a doctor or lawyer, so you would be successful.
What does successful mean in this or any other case?

You need to choose what you want your child to be when they grow up, unfortunately we choose wrong most of the time. How many majors or even careers did you go through before right now?

Our daughter is only three but I am already making decisions about what she will learn in the long run. Some lessons we believe she needs to have. I want her to have a deep understanding of technology, and also people. But those are easy things to deal with, give her a computer and a playgroup but then there are lessons in things that haven't happened yet.

There are lessons that I think she will need that I am not even sure how to teach because it isn't here yet. We live in an Information Age, and it is vastly different from all other Ages. If I give you or sell you an information product I don't lose anything by having done that. I still have the information and now so do you. It requires a mindset of abundance that no economist has done anything with, they all study scarcity.

I know that she will need to learn many things by experience, which only comes just after you need it.

I want her to know how nature works by going out into it and seeing and feeling and smelling it. Going to farms and seeing how they work, and factories too. Visiting other cultures if only by having ethnic parties, though I hope and plan for more. Going behind the scenes as much as possible to see how things really work it important to me. I remember the visit we made to a newspaper and the giant presses and all the work that goes into laying out a newspaper and it happens everyday.

I want to maximize her freedom, so I have to restrict her in some ways. The 10 Commandments aren't chains to hold us down but wings to let us fly. There is no need to learn things wrong before doing them right, only is we don't know better.

Something I do want her to do is make more mistakes and to do them young, like starting a business. I want her to have started 3-4 businesses before she goes to college. That is a experience I wish I had long ago. That would give her a better understanding of how business works.

What experiences are you planning to give your children?

BREITBART.COM - 11 Million Adults Illiterate, Study Shows

2005-12-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

BREITBART.COM - 11 Million Adults Illiterate, Study Shows: "An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the skills to perform everyday tasks, a federal study shows. From 1992 to 2003, the nation's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs. They also showed no improvement in comprehending documents such as bus schedules and prescription labels."

That low?

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy

2005-12-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Current Chaos Manor mail: "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy
is that in any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the
bureaucracy itself always get in control, so that those dedicated to the
goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less
influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
"

How often do we see any organization created to solve a problem turn into the problem it was trying to solve? All the time.

I no longer wonder why the college aged people in Sunday School have such a hard time reading the Scriptures out loud. It is obvious that teaching anything to the student is secondary to having them in school. It seems like the teachers who do make a difference are very rare or why else would they get book and movie deals. So why are school deteriorating rather then improving? Because the people in charge are generally people who want the system to enlarge rather then be effective. Goals make a difference.

Manipulating time to increase our children's wisdom

2005-12-16T07:36:00.000-08:00

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants." -Isaac Newton

The most powerful tool we can give our children is to teach them to read, and then give them the best books we can find.

Why is this so powerful, because we are compressing years, decades, even centuries of learning into a few hours. We let them stand on the shoulders of the giants who have already created solutions so we can create even greater solutions.

The saddest proof that our educational system is failing us is that 80% of college graduates never read another book from cover to cover for the rest of their lives!

The New York Times bestseller only sells about 5,000 books. Even the wildly popular, banned from some schools, hyper-bestseller like Harry Potter with 10 million books in the first printing of the last book, accounts for only 3% of the US population.

Finding the best books for our children is a challenge, starting with books that have withstood the test of time is a good place to start. If your child expresses an interest in a particular field you can ask around about who is the top person in that field, you can also go to the library and look in the bibliographies in the back of the books they have, most likely they reference at least a few in common. Mining the internet can produce nuggets as well.

Reading, and reading a lot, allows us to gain experience without all the missteps, wrong turns and mistakes that go along with life, because we learn from someone who has done that already and is showing us the right way. This way as we learn new things we can more quickly discern the good from the bad and get rid of the bad.

There is a saying, "A wise man learns from the experience of others."

What great books have you found?

Photography for the unprofessional

2005-12-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

Wired Cola: "So there's my basic theory of digital photography: the first camera an amateur digital photographer buys should be one small enough to carry everywhere, whatever that means for you. I think other considerations come after that."

Art is a strong part of what I want my children to learn. Not just the history of great art but the creation of it. I came to appreciate musicians more once I started to learn how to sing and play the trumpet. One of the easiest art forms to start learn on is photography.

The marginal cost of taking a digital photo is for all practical purposes $0.00. That makes his second point a major one:

Instant feedback = instant learning.

I learned more about how to take better pictures in the first hour with my digital camera then all the time I spent with a film camera. It would be days if not weeks before we saw the end results of our shutter snaps. His first point is actually a corollary of this the more you learn the more you want to learn.

His third point is also important and has been said many ways by many people. The version I like best is,

"The best camera to have is the one you have with you."

A smaller camera that you can have with your all the time is better then a big clunky one you'll leave at home all the time. I like the Canon SDxxx series, small with a good lens. I would go for the one with the largest megapixels count since that will allow you to crop more, and more clearly then a smaller megapixel count sensor.

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't. - New York Times

2005-12-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't. - New York Times: "The researchers turned to humans. They showed the transparent box to 16 children from a Scottish nursery school. After putting a sticker in the box, they showed the children how to retrieve it. They included the unnecessary bolt pulling and box tapping.

The scientists placed the sticker back in the box and left the room, telling the children that they could do whatever they thought necessary to retrieve it.

The children could see just as easily as the chimps that it was pointless to slide open the bolt or tap on top of the box. Yet 80 percent did so anyway. "It seemed so spectacular to me," Mr. Lyons said. "It suggested something remarkable was going on."
...
We don't appreciate just how automatically we rely on imitation, because usually it serves us so well. 'It is so adaptive that it almost never sticks out this way,' he added. 'You have to create very artificial circumstances to see it.'"

I have a few problems with this study. No that it is a bad study or that it is terribly flawed. It's just that there are other factors going on too that I don't think they've accounted for.

First they are using children in preschools. That is very much an "get along to go along" environment. Put another way the children learn very rapidly to imitate what the teacher is doing to get rewards and avoid punishment. So I tend to think that weakens the general argument of the study. It would be much better to use children cared for at home.

Second, they used food for the chimps and stickers for the children. It might be better to use food and hungry subjects to equalize this a bit. Stickers while a lot of fun for children might not have the same intrinsic reward potential that food/candy would have.

Third I seem to remember a study with toddlers that was similar, where some toddlers were shown how to turn on/off a light with their head rather then hands, which they imitated in the case when the teacher had her hands full but not if she didn't. So it seems as though something is going on in the way of imitation and reasoning.

Fourth, there was a study done of creativity of 3-4 years olds and they were found to be 95% highly creative in their thinking, but when tested again at 6-7 only 5% remained highly creative in their thinking. It was not stated but the one almost universal factor would be their introduction into kindergarten and first grade.

In conclusion I feel that schools are having a more subtle and powerful effect then we appreciate. There is a definite pressure to conform, to fit in, to not rock the boat. This also seems to be tapped into by the media, with almost all messages being of the type, "buy this and be a part of our cool group."

By high school, when children are asserting their independence, even the non-conformist groups are fairly uniform in style, in my high school we had people dressing in black and wearing ankhs; precursors to the modern goths, but still recognizable as a group. Were they all that different from the jocks or cheerleaders? Not really, the clothes were different but the attitudes were not.

What do you want?

2005-12-13T18:16:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest fears I hear from parents about homeschooling is teaching math to their children.

What do you want in the way of help teaching math to your children?

ohmfree.com - electronics resources for everyone

2005-12-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

ohmfree.com - electronics resources for everyone

If you have an interest in electronics this is a useful little site.

How to set goals

2005-12-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

Goals are interesting things, they limit you by excluding things that would take you further away from them and they free you be allowing you to excluding those things that would take you further from your goals.

There are short-term goals that can be accomplished in days, hours. even minutes, and long-term goals that will take years.

Problems arise when we think we are making long-term goals when they are really only medium-term goals. Like the story of the bride who had focused her life on her wedding day. On that day she told her mother with a dreamy smile, "I am at the end of all my problems." Her wise mother kindly replied, "Yes, but which end?"

Or the man who studied hard in school, got a good job with a big company with great benefits, and age forty asks himself, "Is this all there is, isn't there something more?" and goes out and buys a red, convertible sports car, but is still dissatisfied with his life.

A good long-term goal should be open-ended, something that most likely is not solvable in this life. These might be things like:
Feeding the poor.
Building sustainable housing.
Teaching developing farmers how to make technology to make their farms more productive.
Establishing human colonies on other planets.

This is like the story of the boy on the beach. There had been an exceptionally high tide the night before and as he and his father were walking on the beach they came across many thousands of starfish washed up high on the beach. The sun was getting higher and the temperature was rising and the starfish would be cooked alive if they did not return to the the cool waters of the ocean. The boy started picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean as fast as he could. The more experienced father, looking down upon his son said, "Son, why are you doing that? There is not hope to save them all." The son replied, "Maybe not, but I can make a difference for this one." Together they threw many starfish back into the ocean.

This is in start contrast to medium-term goals:
Having enough money in my retirement account to last until I'm 85.
Getting a degree.
Getting a good job.
Getting married.
Paying off the house.
Medium-term goals have a very definitive end-state. It may take 30 years to pay off a 30-year mortgage but after 30 years you can burn the mortgage papers. Getting a Ph.D. degree it can take 8-10 years but you'll have a diploma to hang on the wall.

Problems occur when you confuse medium-term goals with long-term goals. All of the sudden you have reached that goal and you stagnate because you've never thought about what comes next.
A young man dreams of becoming an engineer and working on the Space Shuttle. He studies hard and gets good grades and his first job is at a big company with good benefits that makes stuff for the Space Shuttle. He redesigns an old product with new components, since the olds ones aren't made anymore. He has reached his major life goal, life is good. Then the layoffs come and he flounders looking for work because his inspiration, the driving force of his life is gone, he had achieved that goal and he isn't sure where to go next.

You need to have at least one and preferably two "impossible" goals. I recommend two since it is entirely possible to achieve one and you should have a backup already in place, because a lot of impossible things have been achieved: powered flight, supersonic flight, travel to the Moon, splitting the atom, climbing Mt. Everest and many more "impossible" things have become possible; even commonplace.

In conclusion, get out a piece of paper or open a word processing document and write down all the goals you've ever thought about. Just write don't worry about spelling or grammar, do that later. Write for 15 minutes. Then organize into short, medium and long-term. Pick one and work at it every day.

The Skeptical Optimist: Our Grandchildren's Debt Burden in 2050: 540 scenarios

2005-12-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

The Skeptical Optimist: Our Grandchildren's Debt Burden in 2050: 540 scenarios: "In this model, National Security spending will remain pegged at 4�% GDP, for two reasons: (1) I%u2019m assuming we learned our lesson after allowing it to drop to 2.9% during the regrettable late 1990s period of surplus-worship; and

(2) My granddaughter%u2019s security is nonnegotiable."

Something to look at and think about. How are you preparing your children for some of these futures?

Best Online Classic Children's Books: By Title

2005-12-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Best Online Classic Children's Books: By Title

This is an excellent resource for you and your children.

Read on!

The American Thinker

2005-12-12T12:24:00.000-08:00

The American Thinker: "Quotas aside, the lessons of blue-state California should be clear to anyone with more than a passing interest in school choice and segregation. Stated bluntly, white liberals will object strenuously to school choice and racial segregation as long as their children are in the majority and among the top performers in school. However, when their children are fewer in number and relegated to the lower tiers of academic performance, they will happily embrace school choice and voluntarily segregate the public schools by moving to whiter school districts or sending their children to private schools.
If these demographic trends continue, the most likely fate of suburban schools in California and other blue-states with large concentrations of Asians such as New York, New Jersey and Maryland, is the emergence of a new "separate but equal" system of education mirroring the defacto segregation of schools in America's largest cities.
"
But, but, I thought the liberals wanted more diversity and academic achievement. Actions speak louder then words, but I wonder what they are trying to do to their children.

Obviously maximizing their potential is not the parents highest priority, though this article doesn't go into what they do want. Extracurricular activities are certainly good, but sports and drama will not provide prosperity to most who go down that path. A local company here has a few Olympians on the staff, they are not doing anything remotely related to sports at an electronics company.

Sports and drama and the like are not bad things, the physical and emotional talents of our children should be encouraged. But I wonder, like other scientists, why they don't give school letter jackets to the chess team. Might it be to give the students consolance when they are old and realized they had reached their peak before they could vote. Might that be a cause of the mid-life crisis?

Public schools are not good at maximizing their subjects potential. They are bureaucracies and bureaucracies are good at labeling things and perpetuating themselves. Solving the problem they were created to solve becomes something that needs to be sustained for the sake of the bureaucracy rather then resolved for the sake of the public.

While learning math and science is a good thing in my eyes, I know that a bureaucracy will mess it up some way so that the children will still not reach their full potential.

How do we help our children reach their full potential? Find what they do best and help them hone it to the finest edge, help them become virtuosos in their talent. Find what they love to do and help them find a way to do it profitably.

We need to expand our thinking beyond the normal because there is more then one way to skin a cat.

There is a story of a girl who started playing the piano when she was very young, she loved the piano and played it all the time. She went to music school and was very good at playing the piano, but when she went to New York she auditioned for all the orchestras and while she was very good they always found someone just a little better then her. Finally she went home, got married and stopped playing, now she doesn't even have a piano in her home at all.

This is a sad story. Not only has she buried her talent, but now no one else can benefit from it either. She had a highly focused goal of playing for a major New York orchestra, which is good but she turned her back on it when things didn't go the way she planned. There are other ways to play the piano profitably (teaching or playing for special occasions) but profit doesn't have to be a part of it playing even for just the enjoyment of it if fine. Turning her back on the piano is the saddest part of all.

Schools are not setup for providing for the excellence of our children. We must help them in spite of the system and we can.

Not Homeschooling? What's Your Excuse? - Guest

2005-12-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

Not Homeschooling? What's Your Excuse? - Guest: "We have to understand that government schools in the U.S. were created to dull children%u2019s potential. Yes, read that part again%u2014government schools were never about truly educating your child; they were and are about creating happy workers and taxpayers, people unafraid to challenge the status quo and unable to read and think for themselves."

If you want your children to reach they're full potential you are going to have to teach them yourself. Heck, you'll have to learn how to do that yourself. The vast majority of people have been taught to be content "going with the flow," but they never look to see where the stream is going. Large organizations tend to look out for their own best interests not for yours.

You have the freedom to make choices that is the foundational difference between us and the animals. The earth was created by God to allow us to use our ability to make choices to see if we would follow His commandments and gain the resultant joy.

Public schools teach us to listen to teacher and let them take care of you. That is not the best choice of us or our children, but have we ever even questioned that? Few people do. Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living and he was killed because he questioned everything.

We rarely die for questions these days but do we really live if we don't ask them?

Wired News: Pop Goes the Science Song

2005-12-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

Wired News: Pop Goes the Science Song: "But, when he feels like livening up his biology classes, University of Washington lecturer Greg Crowther bursts into song to the melody of 'Sugar Sugar,' the bubble-gum '60s tune. 'Glucose, ah sugar sugar,' he sings. 'You are my favorite fuel from the bloodborne substrate pool / Glucose -- monosaccharide sugar -- you're sweeter than a woman's kiss / 'cause I need you for glycolysis.'"

These are some good learning songs. We really don't have enough of them. It is 100 times easier to learn something if you have a melody to help prompt your memory. We all use the ABC song to remember where things are in alphabetical order. And the there are the songs from Schoolhouse Rock that are so sticky as well.

These are well worth adding to your curriculum to help your children.

Sputnik Was Nothing - Issues 2006 - MSNBC.com

2005-12-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

Sputnik Was Nothing - Issues 2006 - MSNBC.com: "And we are not replenishing those losses from within. In international mathematics exams, 15-year-old American students performed well below the mean of participating countries. This is little surprise, since teaching out of one's field of expertise is common in the United States, especially in math and science. Nearly 70 percent of American middle-school students are assigned to teachers who have had neither a major nor certification in mathematics."

A common objection to homeschooling is that teachers are professionals, too bad it is in something else.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | John Davitt: Get an iLife ...

2005-11-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | John Davitt: Get an iLife ... : "Last summer the school dedicated one week to an integrated media project. At the end of the term it held an 'iLife creativity week' involving all pupils from years 7 to 10. After an initial training day on how to use the various applications, the pupils were split into small groups to produce either an advert for a new product or an original music track and video."

It is good to see a school allowing students to be creators of content and not just consumers of content.

There is a lot of power in Apple's iLife, from editing movies and creating music and editing photographs. An inexpensive Mac mini is a great educational tool.

The best thing it even comes with Grapher a calculator that graphs functions for you. That makes a lot of intermediate math like algebra much easier to understand, since it is all about generalized arithmetic and all possible solutions.

Let's be 1/3rd literate

2005-11-17T08:40:00.000-08:00

Beep. It's from Hamlet. 2B? NT2B?=??? - Yahoo! News: "'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will
genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and
quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease
levels of literacy,' the company, Dot Mobile, said in a press
release."

Great they are translating Hamlet and others into l33t sp43k and so the destruction of our children continues.

Writing hasn't been all that great in school for a long time. Look at everyone who has problems with spelling if they don't have a spell checker.

Reading hasn't been doing to well, if you don't learn it at home you certainly won't learn it in school. Now with IM speak going mainstream we can see that reading is divebombing as well.

Even speaking is turning into a lost art, and I am not talking about speaking in public but just speaking out loud is turning in jargonese. but it is now being encouraged in schools.

You don't need to take you children out of school to homeschool, just teach then the right way to speak and spell and write and calculate at home after school and they will soon be able to learn whatever they want from books and that gives then a big leg up compared to everyone else.

Never practice a mistake

2005-11-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

Mail 387 November 6 - 13, 2005

"The newest fad in education is to force children to independently reinvent every concept of mathematics from counting to calculus. This approach might work for the next Richard Feynman, but it is a disaster for every child who is not a mathematical prodigy."

Math is not like physical law. You can't just discover it from observation, it is an artificial construct that we use for convenience, that makes it as much a language like English or Chinese. Sure there are a few prodigies like Gauss and Feynman and a few others that could do it but they are like Mozart who started to play the piano at 3, very very rare.

That is why we have to teach the basics to children or anyone wanting to know how to use math. We don't speak in math so we have to teach it another way.

You won't expect a child to learn a language you never spoke to them.

Further along:
"My first grade teacher spelled the name of a red fruit as "appul". I corrected her. She told me I had to learn how to spell the wrong way before I was taught how to spell the right way. I ignored her. I saved myself two years of confusion, because by the time I was in third grade ITA had been abandoned. My classmates took years to recover."

This is a great way to completely destroy the learning potential of a child. Not long ago I posted about how MIT research found that habits are created when neural pathways are laid down, which comes from action and repetition.

If you want to set up someone to fail just teach them the most complex and hardest way to do something, they will make mistakes and soon be unable to do that task.

If you want to learn something quickly and well, start by doing it very slowly and correctly each time, soon speed will come because you are doing it right each time and you are not wasting time unlearning something.

Good genes beat good homes as guide to pupils%u2019 school success - Sunday Times - Times Online

2005-11-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

Good genes beat good homes as guide to pupils%u2019 school success - Sunday Times - Times Online: "But the new study, to be published in the Royal Economic Society%u2019s Economic Journal, will argue that while income and home environment account for about 25% of educational attainment, inherited intelligence is responsible for the rest.
...
“Children of higher income parents probably do well in school because they inherit superior genes, not because they can afford to buy their children a better education,” said Vijverberg."

These PhDiots are so very wrong in their conclusions. Their data is probably not too far from the mark but their conclusions are so far off the mark it isn't even funny. And their recommendations will wreck even more students.

There are a couple of articles also out today that do a pretty good job of destroying their conclusions.

Is income a big factor in achievement? No, it isn't. The Army is finding that urban schools, which tend to get a larger fraction of money compared to rural schools, produce potential recruits that are far less well educated then rural schools.

The big issue I have is the genetic issue they bring up. They are so wrong it is astounding. But they do end up using the right words.
Inherited intelligence is the right word but its not passed down via DNA, like some kind of Gou'old racial memory but by concerned parents teaching their children at home.

That link goes to a NYTimes story about the battle parents are having with the math department in Penfield NY. The parents are engineers and scientists that are noticing that their children can't do basic math at all. Things like change from a $20 for a fast food meal.

So they do the only thing that makes sense: they are teaching their own children themselves.

Homeschooling doesn't have to mean that your children stay at home all day. An hour or two at night spent on what's important are all your have to have to make your child successful in life. A solid foundation in english and math will let your children learn anything they want from books and the internet.

Do you know what's happening in your school

2005-11-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

|| RedState.org: "While parents were informed that the survey would cover "baseline . . . exposure to early trauma (for example, violence)," it specifically did not mention sex. In fact, the survey asked seven year olds to "rate the following activities" among which were these:
[snip]
Seven year olds were asked these questions. The parents of the children learned of the survey questions when their children started telling them about the survey. Horrified, the parents complained to the school, arguing that had they know the true nature of the survey, they would have never offered their consent. The school district rebuffed the parents, and the parents sued.
The trial court rejected the parents arguments and today, in stunning language, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the "

It doesn't matter what the survey was about any more. it is all about control. The schools want to control our children and it is time to say no.

California just announced that they are going to educate all students to be above average. Since the current average is two years behind where they are supposed to be, I guess they have a long way to go.

Of course, they can't all be above average because half of them always have to be below average, by definition. I think someone didn't learn something in school like they were supposed to.

Too much preschool harmful, studies say | The San Diego Union-Tribune

2005-11-02T14:54:00.000-08:00

Too much preschool harmful, studies say | The San Diego Union-Tribune: "The other study found that social harm resulting from too much preschool or day care translates into 'poorer work habits and poorer social skills through third grade.' The findings were not affected by the quality of teacher-student interaction during preschool."

Parents are truly a good influence on their children. The amazing thing from this study is how long the effects last--until third grade. That is a good long time.

My Speech on Success in Business and Career to a High School FBLA Chapter

2005-11-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

My Speech on Success in Business and Career to a High School FBLA Chapter: "The reason why I gave the speech is that the son of a
friend of mine needed to fill a lunchtime speaker's slot.
The father, who runs a successful small business, came
along to hear my speech. Afterward, he said, 'I wish I had
head that speech when I was in high school.' I replied:
'You wouldn't have paid any attention to it. You would
have been too young.'"

Do you want your children to be financially successful? Consider that Social Security will be in big trouble come 2017, you might have to depend on what your children can do for you because the government can't do anything for you.

The Lays of Ancient Rome

2005-10-30T19:38:00.000-08:00

This is hefty reading but great for the background of our civilization.

Penn State Live

2005-10-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

Penn State Live: "It may be unfair to compare the general population of public school students with children educated at home, cautioned Marshall. As he noted, the National Education Association has asserted that 'a better test would be a comparison of homeschooled children with a subset of public-school children who have high levels of parental involvement and whose families place a high value on education.'"

It may be unfair but it seems like the public schools have turned into day care facilities not educational institutions.

RAND: Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist Attacks

2005-10-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

RAND: Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist Attacks

After the hurricanes, we should not forget the other disasters we can face.
This guide is good for those.

The Herald Standard - News - 10/27/2005 - University to provide assistance for math

2005-10-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

The Herald Standard - News - 10/27/2005 - University to provide assistance for math: "
CONNELLSVILLE - Connellsville Area School Board members are hoping a $5,500 agreement between the school district and a Pittsburgh university to provide assistance and development for its secondary mathematics program will improve test scores.

The board on Thursday agreed to hire the University of Pittsburgh Tri-State Area School Study Council after 11th-grade students failed to meet the math proficiency levels outlined in the benchmarks of the federal No Child Left Behind Act."

It is good to see that they're working together but will it solve the problem of about half of college students needing to take remedial math?

New blog feature

2005-10-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

If there is a problem with blogs is that anything you post will eventually leave the front page and get sent to the archives.

So I have added a new feature to this blog a Buy Now button for my How to Teach Your Children Numbers and Counting ebook.

It took only two weeks for our daughter to be able to count to 10. She is already working on 20.

So far the only downside has been that doing a 1, 2, 3 count to being in trouble doesn't work as she will start counting along and continue up to 20.

U.S. National Debt Clock

2005-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

U.S. National Debt Clock

This debt clock show us how much the Government (eg us) owe. Ask yourself how this is going to affect your children's future.

USATODAY.com - College gender gap widens: 57% are women

2005-10-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

USATODAY.com - College gender gap widens: 57% are women: "'We think there's value in having equal numbers,' says Jim Bock, admissions dean at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College. Last year, the school admitted more women than men, but it admitted a greater percentage of the male applicants than female. The student body's male/female breakdown is about 48/52."

Gender balance in a university is nice and all it makes picking a marriage partner easier but is that all that important. Do they really have to practice affirmative action to get more boys in?

The question they should be asking is WHY boys are not going to college. I wonder if they are just not seeing much value to it any more. They are growing up in a time when their fathers are changing jobs and careers more often then ever. While not getting a degree has some downsides, they might be wondering what the upsides are supposed to be. Especially after counting th cost of student loans.

The New York Times > Technology> Review> WHAT'S NEXT; Soaring Into the Air With a Boost From a Laser Beam

2005-10-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

The New York Times > Technology> Review>
WHAT'S NEXT; Soaring Into the Air With a Boost From a Laser Beam
: "SOMEWHERE, Nikola Tesla is smiling.
More than a century ago, Tesla -- as famous for his discovery of alternating current as for his claim of inventing a giant death ray -- dazzled onlookers by sending bolts of electricity crackling 30 feet through the air. To him this was proof that one day information and electricity would be sent across the skies instead of through copper cable."

Tesla was great, he had an intuitive understanding of science and technology that was amazing, he invented the AC motor/Generator while on a walk in a garden which he promptly drew into the dirt to capture it. It is better to carry a Hipster around now.

He also invented the fluorescent bulb. It is amazing what he did. He is worth some study if you are into the history of technology.

Time Machine - Discover Magazine - science news articles online technology magazine articles Time Machine

2005-10-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

Time Machine - Discover Magazine - science news articles online technology magazine articles Time Machine: "It is a clock, but it is designed to do something no clock has ever been conceived to do%u2014run with perfect accuracy for 10,000 years."

This is very cool. And all it takes is a it of math to figure out.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Oldest noodles unearthed in China

2005-10-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Oldest noodles unearthed in China: "The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood.
Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old.
"

I love food history this is a fun find.

Instapundit- U.S. position in science is eroding

2005-10-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Instapundit.com - : " I love science and engineering, and my friends from high school who went into those fields think I would have been good there. I don't know if they're right, but I'm pretty sure that I've had a better career in law. And much as I love law and lawyers, I suspect that a country that makes law a more rewarding career than science and engineering is likely to wind up with more and better lawyers than it has scientists and engineeers."

That is the problem isn't it, law is much more rewarding and less stressful then engineering or science. Have one of your bridges fall down and what happens, a lawyer feeding frenzy. Spill a coffee in your lap and the lawyer makes millions too.

Lawyers can't make a safer, more fuel efficient car only engineers and scientists can. Lawyers may ask even demand better cars but they couldn't make one if they needed to.

It reminds me of a joke:
"An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, 'Ah, you're an engineer -- you're in the wrong place.' So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.
One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, 'So, how's it going down there in hell?'
Satan replies, 'Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next.'
God replies, 'What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake--he should never have gotten down there; send him up here.'
Satan says, 'No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him.'
God says, 'Send him back up here or I'll sue.'
Satan laughs uproariously and answers, 'Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?'"

Engineers like teachers are way undervalued.

2.009 Product Engineering Processes: Archimedes

2005-10-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

2.009 Product Engineering Processes: Archimedes: "Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that
it could work, MIT's 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development
%u2018sketch or soft modeling%u2019
process to the problem."

Very much an engineer-type solution. Try it, it might work.

100 Benefits of Journaling

2005-10-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

Journaling is something I do, okay not totally consistently but I am working on that.

For me one of the best things to do is to write down what I have learned. It helps me keep track of what I have done and where I want to go.

Journaling helps more if you rewrite your goals every day. You can copy yesterdays goals, you can add new goals or delete old goals that just aren't important any more.

Journaling is a touchstone in your day.

Sudoku The Numbers game

2005-10-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sudoku

This is a fairly simple game, and a good way to learn logic and thinking. Fill a partially pre-filled grid with numbers from 1-9, there is no math like a Magic Square puzzle which adds up to 15 in row and columns.

Fun stuff.

The Homeschool Bug

2005-10-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

The Daily News Online: "Melanee Evans notices that 'people always ask about socialization' when they hear about a homeschool. 'They never ask about academics. ..."

Isn't that the truth. It makes you wonder about how important people think academics is. With these kind of questions not very much.

Turning the Pages%u2122, the British Library

2005-10-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Turning the Pages%u2122, the British Library

Now this is a really fantastic resource. Scans of the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Jane Austen and Lewis Carroll among others.

Is a computer good for you child?

2005-10-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

That is a good question. From my point of view it is just a tool (the article goes into that), sometimes you have to get the children out from in front of the monitor and get them out into the world playing, practicing and doing stuff.

There is no damage in telling your children to "Go outside and play." it is also exercise or any number of activities to help them learn how others think and live.

When I was a child my parents took me on a trip around the world. We met people from all walks of life from executives in thousand dollar suits to peasants scratching in the dirt with sticks. It was amazing and eye opening to see the contrast, and a computer will help you see those things without leaving home, the impact may not be as great but it is still there.

You can't let the computer do the work for the child but it can help them learn the work. You are the parent be in charge don't let something else take over.

Orion > Orion Magazine > September | October 2005 > Lowell Monke > Charlotte's Webpage: "'There have been no advances over the past decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers,' said Stanford University professor of education Larry Cuban in 2001, summarizing the existing research on educational computing. 'The link between test-score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested.' Part of the problem, Cuban pointed out, is that many computers simply go unused in the classroom. But more recent research, including a University of Munich study of 174,000 students in thirty-one countries, indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all. "

Momma, Don't let your kids grow up to be Engineers.

2005-10-05T07:49:00.000-07:00

i-Technology Viewpoint: When to Leave Your First IT Job @ SYS-CON Media: "The first layoff is tough. After bending over backward, after being a loyal employee, this is the reward? To summarize how I felt: Disillusioned. Only one thing kept me going -- pure ego. You know when the schoolyard bully says something about your mom in front of everyone? But, ignoring the size difference and the fact that he's already shaving daily at age 14, you step forward and say 'Oh yeah?', with a Brock Sampson-like eye twitch the only warning of the impending ownage? That's the kind of ego that kept me determined to give software engineering a second shot. Over the course of the previous year, my friends quickly learned I liked to talk about work less and less. When I did open up about it, they were astounded by, well, let's say various factors of the work environment. Each and every time it was discussed with my peers in the field, time and time they gave me the same advice: Get out."

Engineering is a tough field. It is better to be a business owner.

Where is our education system going? Looking to Asia.

2005-10-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

The Korea Times : Deplorable Education System
: "The majority of the high school student population in Korea spends every moment of their time studying, all of them with hopes of getting into one of the top three universities in Korea: Seoul National University, Yonsei University and Korea University. However, in reality, only a limited number of students out of the total population of 600,000 are accepted to one of these three each year. News of several students committing suicide after exams has become a yearly phenomenon."

Is our education system heading this way? It might be. Tests are getting to be a stronger and stronger influence on our children. There are plenty of stories of parents stressing their children just to get into the "right" preschool.
With this kind of educational program you would think Korea would be top of the world, they seem to be generating lots of intelligent people. But I don't think they are getting smart people. People who can understand and take risks and do some great new thing. Sadly, after all that work, all they seem to have are carbon-based robots.

INSIDE JoongAng Daily

2005-10-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

INSIDE JoongAng Daily: "The days of hiring robots as English tutors in Korea may not be too far away. The Korea Advanced Intelligent Robot Association, an organization developing artificial intelligence technology under the Ministry of Information and Communication, announced yesterday it has begun operating, on a test basis, robots that can help young students pronounce English words. "

Robots are just computers and computers are the stupidest things in the world. They only do what you teach them. You can do a better job yourself.

WorldWatch - September 11, 2005 - Freakonomics Or You Have to Find the Facts Before You Can Face Them - The Ornery American

2005-10-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

WorldWatch - September 11, 2005 - Freakonomics Or You Have to Find the Facts Before You Can Face Them - The Ornery American: "In the effort to improve education rather than throwing more and more money
at a system that gets worse and worse, the Congress and the President passed
the 'No Child Left Behind' legislation that mandated testing. But they didn't
invent the idea -- state and local governments had been experimenting with
standardized tests for years.

The trouble is, with budgets, salaries, and jobs becoming dependent on test
results, the incentive for cheating on these tests has vastly increased.

And since in many places the tests are administered by the very teachers who
will be rewarded or punished based on the test results, the opportunity to
cheat is there as well.

How, though, do you catch them? Call an economist."

Go read the whole thing.

Ending the Left's Death Grip on Higher Education

2005-10-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

: "The Left%u2019s
domination of American higher education, from humble community
colleges to Ivy League universities, has been repeatedly and convincingly
demonstrated for nearly two decades. The irrefutable evidence
of this domination includes the overwhelming imbalance of Democrats
versus Republicans on college faculties and administrations; the
corresponding rise of major universities (e.g., Harvard and Berkeley)
as the leading donors for Democratic Party candidates; the pervasiveness
of %u201Ccritical%u201D pedagogical approaches that emphasize %u201Cinequality%u201D
and %u201Coppression%u201D based on race, sex, class, and sexuality; the
denial of objective, universal standards of meaning and logic
under the guise of %u201Cdeconstructionism%u201D; harassment of conservative
students and organizations; and rampant political correctness.
The result, as Allan Bloom, David Horowitz, and others have argued,
is the ongoing transformation of the college experience into the
main front of the radical political assault on American society
itself."

Whether an "enclave" or "parallel" system is created is not the big things, homeschoolers are doing this already. Unless you are in a hard science or engineering field the diploma seems little more then a card that says, "Yes, I can read & write and can survive sitting in endless meetings."

Independent Online Edition > Health Medical : app4

2005-10-03T14:20:00.000-07:00

Independent Online Edition > Health Medical : app4: "Toddlers who are looked after by their mothers do significantly better in developmental tests than those cared for by nurseries, childminders or relatives, according to a study to be published today.

The findings will show that those given nursery care fared worst. They exhibited higher levels of aggression and were inclined to become more compliant, withdrawn or sad.
Those looked after by grandparents and other relatives fared a little better.
Youngsters looked after by childminders and nannies came second in terms of their development to those who stayed at home with mother.
"

Good to see science finally catching up to what everyone already knew.

Hit be Comment Spam

2005-10-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

Looks like I got hit with comment spam.

I've turned on Word Verification to slow them down. If a bot can't post it then it is not worth their time to do it.

I hate spammers. They act like our time is free and it isn't.

Cleaning and Stain Removal

2005-10-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

Last night our daughter drew on the floor with some crayons. Oh, boy what a mess. She even got some on the cover of her bed.

We've been trying to get her to sleep in her "Big Girl Bed" but success has only been partial so far. This is a bit of a set back for us, maybe. My wife was completely shocked by this. I was surprised but hey it's just carpet, she's only three. Though we are still not sure how the crayons got into her room.

The internet is a great library of information. I found that Crayola.com has a great guide for removing all of their products. In a couple of hours we got it pretty much clean. Crayon is actually rather nasty because it is not water soluble, so you have to use WD-40 to clean up the crayon and some detergent to get up the WD-40. Though Oxyclean got it up very well.

I know that keeping the house clean is a major chore. We share duties and it takes lot of time and energy. Our daughter is just big enough to help pick up her toys and books and she does a good job with that most of the time.

I am an engineer and our rallying cry is "There has got to be a better way!" and in searching for cleaning tips found DoItYourself.com (link above) which has a massive list of cleaning tips and tricks. Go check it out.

yourDictionary.com %u2022 100 Most Often Misspelled Words

2005-10-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

yourDictionary.com %u2022 100 Most Often Misspelled Words: "its/it'sThe apostrophe marks a contraction of 'it is.' Something that belongs to it is 'its.'"

English is a very important part of educating your children.
One of the big problems is that the background of English comes from a dozen different other languages. And the result is that spelling can be a bit of a challenge from time to time.

This is a very helpful list of words you will want to use as a major part of your spelling list. These are the most often misspelled words in English. If your children have these words down then they will do better then most people.

Some first hand impressions of China

2005-10-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

First off, I think we are all in big trouble and bigger than we can imagine. The scale and speed of things is amazing. For example the PuDong area of Shanghai.... 15 years ago it was a rice patty... today there are 300 skyscrapers there including the worlds 4th tallest building and a radio tower that dwarfs that.... imagine looking at Manhattan.... and then realize it is all new. There are construction sites everywhere.... they do work with both hand and machine.... you'll see rope and tackle derricks right next to cranes..... they work construction 3 shifts a day... this way you can build a 50 story building in a year and half or so. As for cranes... those big tower cranes that on a large construction site you might see 4 or 5 in the US.... well it seems like in Beijing there are more of them than trees....... at the site of the new terminal at the airport there must have been at least 50 of them. An other thing that seems strange to our western eyes...... scaffolding made of bamboo all tied together with rope but maybe 20 stories high surrounding a modern glass building. We went through a new town.... maybe only 3 years old.... big wide streets and apartment buildings about 12 stories high for as far as you could see.... I think the guide said 500,000 people will live there soon!
...
These folks work.... I think that is all they do. I saw very few things to do with spare time..... only one golf course..... no ball field (unlike Japan where they are everywhere).... I don't think these folks play much. I didn't even see that many toys in the markets.

The future that your children, heck you, will have to compete in.

China right now seems a lot like Turn of the Century America and UK. If you work hard you can get ahead in life. These were the circumstances that produced people like: Carnegie, Van der Bild, and Rockefeller. It is going to be fun.

Rose Renekamp: Give math a chance

2005-09-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

What was your least favorite subject in school? Almost four in 10 adults responding to a recent AP-AOL News poll identified math as their least favorite subject. That's unfortunate. But what's worse is that we may be passing our aversion to math on down to our children. Fewer than half of 2005 high school graduates who took the ACT college admissions test are ready for first year college algebra classes.

That decline is evident with ACT test-takers. Over the past 10 years, among students who responded to a question about their plans for a college major, fewer students each year expressed interest in engineering and related technical fields.

And this students results are typical because of it.

Clutching the shredded tatters of my pride and dignity, I trudged to the office hours of my math instructor every week, seeking an explanation for the increasingly mysterious problems in the textbook. My instructor welcomed my presence as she would welcome the Angel of Death. Irritated? She was terrified. Explain…the problems? Articulate…the steps? Relate…the concepts? I would ask questions, and she would respond by completing yet another sample problem as fast as she possibly could, blushing nervously. I felt like I was on a Star Trek episode. "Captain, I think I understand…the creature communicates through multivariable calculus problems!"

We are growing fewer and fewer engineers and scientists and doctors here at home and it will be taking a big toll on us in the near future.

I know that there are weeder courses and such but with more and more students needing to take remedial classes in college more and more will just take an easier route.

Sure engineering is hard work, but we should not make it almost impossible to get started.

Our Colleges and Universities seem to have a problem...

2005-09-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

University presidents have lost their dignity.
Where the Boys Aren't
Where Have All the Young Men Gone?
Correcting the gender imbalance problem.

The problem is that for every 135 female students who graduate, only 100 male student graduate.

Is this a problem? Maybe, there are still an awful lot of guys in the science and engineering fields, but everywhere else; forget it. Some of the commentary on fixing the "problem" is rather enlightening.

Do I think this is a problem? I don't think so. I think too often that a degree is used as a test to see if you have the patience and organization to deal with a lot of stuff not all of which is good or useful. Instead of being able to give applicants tests to see if they can do the work, which is illegal in most states, Companies just have to require a degree of some kind that does the same thing but costs the applicant far more.

I see plenty of people getting good jobs without the need or cost of a degree, they just find the people that need their talents and talk to them. Otherwise called networking.

Can I afford to be a stay-at-home mom?

2005-09-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

At base, it’s a matter of being disciplined. Here are the basic areas of your life you can look at in order to free up some cash:

She provides a fairly basic list of things you can do. Most people have heard of these already, so I won't bother repeating them hear.

The thing of it is is that it all comes down to math. Can you make a budget and stick to it? All it takes is basic math skills and everyone should have them.

A basic budget only really needs addition and subtraction:
Add together all your sources of income.
Add together all your bills.
Subtract the two and if the answer is negative then you have a problem and need to go through you bills to see where you can spend less.

The biggest problem with creating a budget is that most people I have talked to would rather not know their current financial state. they prefer that its somewhat nebulous. Maybe a its just a case of ignorance is bliss. But you can't be saved in ignorance, you have got to know for yourself.

Public Education's Coming Collapse

2005-09-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

It has been said that one can build a crooked house on a strong foundation, and the house will stand. Conversely, one can build a well-crafted house on a substandard foundation, and the house will fall. Consider public schooling in America, for it is doubly flawed – a crooked structure atop a crumbling foundation – and its collapse is inevitable. The flaws are too many; reform is a pipedream; gravity is a force too powerful to be resisted.

This is a Special Ed teacher talking about the public schools.

Rather scary.

A marvelous explanation of math illiteracy

2005-09-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

So you can grasp the grinding illiteracy found among New York Times ed writers, let’s make sure you understand how these numbers work. For example, how well did Wake County black fifth-graders do on last spring’s reading test? According to the state’s official results, 88 percent of Wake’s black students tested “proficient” on the state test. But then, 83 of black fifth graders tested “proficient” on this same test statewide! In short, the large majority of fifth-graders—black, white and brown—tested “proficient” all over the state! But you never learn that in Finder’s piece. Instead, you get a warm, fuzzy feeling about Wake’s score gains—score gains which Finder attributes to a particular aspect of Wake’s educational program.

Math education in our school is so bad that this is not at all unusual. Remember yesterday's post where they were crowing over the fact that 88% of the school was failing.

Why Johnny can't calculate

2005-09-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Only 11% of L.A. Unified's eighth-graders scored "proficient" or "advanced" in algebra I on the 2005 state standards exam, compared to 34% statewide. The corresponding percentages within the LAUSD for 10th-grade geometry and 11th-grade algebra II are 5% and 4%, respectively, about one-third the pass rates statewide.

Only a third of the students in the whole state can do math.
That's so bad it isn't even failing. That's definitely Troll grade.

Why on earth is this so bad?

LAUSD teachers and math coaches are wrongly instructed not to use time-tested, standard methods of arithmetic. High school teachers are steered away from conventional and powerful techniques in algebra and directed to use unreliable "guess and check" methods and physical objects instead. Even elementary school teachers are discouraged from following their high-quality state-approved math books and from teaching the best methods of calculation, the standard algorithms of arithmetic.

Confirming our own observations, the head of one of the stronger LAUSD high school math departments lamented: "The mandatory 40-hour algebra training was worthless. We had to teach the trainers how to do algebra … the people in charge of making final decisions on math [in the LAUSD] don't know math!"

This is just sad but it isn't any great surprise, is it? Students haven't been good at math for a very long time, and now they at getting jobs. Why would they be good at math now?

And it isn't as though algebra is hard, all it is is the general form or arithmetic. It is just all those rules like communitive property and distributive property that allows you to move things around so you can find the answers to the things you don't know.

So many people complain that they never use algebra in real life. We use it all the time, we just don't realize that we are doing several steps in our head to make it easier. For example if we are doing a budget we all start out knowing the answer: how much money we can spend? Then we divvy it up by known costs, e.g. mortgage payments, and some semi-knowns like the telephone bill, and unknowns like new tires for the car.

We have to use algebra to figure those things out. But we don't even think about it as algebra because we do it all the time without thought.

Dad Arrested trying to find out what the school will teach in kindergarten

2005-09-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

While the trial of a Massachusetts parent arrested while attempting to secure a promise from school officials to notify parents before teaching about homosexuality in his son's kindergarten class has been postponed until next month, the school district is taking a hard line against such notification.

Not only are schools NOT going to tell you what they are teaching your children and will arrest you if you try to find out.

So much for fostering parental participation.

So many of the teachers that I have met complain about a lack of parental participation, but for so long it has been once a year optional Parent Teacher meetings, that is is obvious that teachers don't really care about the parents.

Schools are scared of parents homeschooling, but if you have ever helped you children with homework, you have homeschooled. So what are they really afraid of? The lose of government funds. But will we ever see that money come back from our taxes, of course not.

NOAA Ocean Explorer

2005-09-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

If your children have an interest in the ocean you can go exploring from home with videos and slide shows from all kinds of interesting and exciting places around the world.

They even have curriculum and 165 lesson plans that have done the work for you.

This is a great resource.

Education should be more focused on employment

2005-09-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

"I'm not saying that business wants to write the curriculum but, at a time when globalisation provides both a challenge and an opportunity, it does want to spell out what it needs.

"It needs the right attitudes and basic skills, meaningful qualifications, specialized science, technology, engineering and mathematical skills and creative thinking that will help it meet the ever changing demands of the global economy.

"Education and business should form a compact with schools and employers coming together to produce highly employable young people. This could be the real magic bullet to make our education system work.

It isn't as if this hasn't been done before. The old vocational school or School-To-Work programs are much the same as this. The real problem is that the nature of work has changed. We are no longer working in factories where you can become specialized in a particular and mostly mindless task and get paid enough to live a middle class lifestyle. Jobs like that are getting automated away.

Employers want people who they can just plug into their business and let them run from the start, there is no time for a learning curve as they need to see results today so they can show stockholder value, and not be laid off themselves.

The education for a typical job is usually not very demanding, but what you need to know often has little to do with the job description. Just look at the advice from Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day.

Calspace Distance Learning Courses

2005-09-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

The University of California, San Diego has a few very interesting courses online: Climate Change, Astronomy and Life in the Universe.

It is rather refreshing to have a rational discussion on Climate Change that doesn't blame the humans for everything. Especially in light of the Mars observations that show that the polar caps there are also getting smaller and there are no people on Mars. Looks like the Sun is the big effect there.

How to use metaphors to explain complex ideas.

2005-09-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

Interestingly, we see this phenomenon extremely often in the works of the popularizers of difficult complex scientific theories. A number of works by well-known authors such as Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins or Isaac Asimov are simply replete with metaphors in which complex topics from areas as diverse as quantum mechanics, genetics and chemical interactions are explained by comparisons to more mundane topics much more likely to have been experienced by the audience than the erudite musings or laboratory rituals of the acolytes of those arcane arts.

You need only to associate the complex thing with something that is familiar to your audience.

If your children are familiar with cats then describing a tiger is easy by calling it a big cat.

One of the big things you need to do is to expose you children to lots of different peoples, ideas, places, things, and activities. That way they can form more associations and connections in their brains and so develop further.

Young children understand math

2005-09-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

In one experiment, the children saw 13 blue dots on a computer screen; those were covered, and then they saw 17 blue dots and were forced to keep the running tally in their heads. Then they were shown 50 red dots and asked whether there were more blue dots or red dots.

Presented this way, the children answered correctly about two-thirds of the time that there were more red dots than blue dots.

This is significant, since if they were just guessing they would get it right only half of the time.

This is a part of my How To Teach Your Child to Count and Use Numbers book.

Evaluating Learning Styles

2005-09-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

There's no such thing as a "good" learning style or a "bad" learning style. Success comes with many different learning styles. There is no "right" approach to learning. We all have our own particular way of learning new information. The important thing is to be aware of the nature of your learning style. If you are aware of how your brain best learns, you have a better chance of studying in a way that will pay off when it's time to take that dreaded exam.

As a parent you need to understand the basics of the various learning styles that everyone had. You and your children don't actually learn using just one of these styles, they exist in combinations within you and may change from topic to topic and over time. Such one of them might be predominate but obviously you are not going to learn how to build an arch just be listening to a lecture, you will have to go out and build one at some point.

Winnie the Pooh, Scientist

2005-09-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

We are reading Winnie the Pooh, and when he is rhyming about fir cones, he trips and falls and the fir cone falls into the river.

"Bother," said Pooh, as it floated slowly under the bridge, and he went back to get another fir-cone which had a rhyme to it. But then he thought that he would just look at the river instead, because it was a peaceful sort of day, s he lay down and looked at it, and it slipped slowly away beneath him... and suddenly, there was his fir-cone slipping away too.

"That's funny," said Pooh. "I dropped it on the other side," said Pooh, "and it came out on this side! I wonder if it would do it again?" And he went back for some more fir-cones.

It did. It kept doing it."

More scientific breakthroughs have occurred because someone said, "That's funny," then anything else.

This is an excellent summary of the scientific method. You notice something happened, you wonder why it happened, you wonder if you can make it happen again, and you try making it happen again.

All children start out as little scientists they watch what Mommy and Daddy do and they figure out how to do it themselves. We seem to lose that amazing skill far too early, but you can keep it going.

One of the big skills your children need to learn is the power of observation. They need to be able to really see what is happening around them. Games like Concentration and I Spy... are really good at that. Video games can do this but often it is not brought into the real world and that is a pity.

It is that ability that marks the difference between man and beast. We can see something happening and react to it before it happens the next time.

Fruit has been falling off of trees for a very long time, and the Moon has light up the sky for even longer, but it took until the 18th Century went Isaac Newton finally noticed that while apples fall off trees, the Moon hangs in the sky. He basically said to himself, "That's funny, this apple that just hit me falls down, but yet the Moon hasn't fallen down. I wonder why?" Answering that question consumed a number of years of his life but our modern world has depended on his answering just that question.

Starting on Backyard filmmaking

2005-09-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

Producing a film or a record once took rooms of expensive equipment and armies of technicians. Getting the finished product to the public required billions of dollars in infrastructure--theaters, stores, radio and TV stations. Now you can make a movie or an album at home, cheaply. I know--I've done both. As for distribution? Just hit Enter.

Video is a great medium of art to learn.

I've done it, too. My wife and I made a little "How to Bake Bread at High Altitude" video. We did it in about 8 hours. That said it wasn't all that easy and it needed more time and skill then we really had.

But you children have quite a bit more time. Movie making can be a really good skill to have. A simple How-To video can make a big difference for lots of people.

There are several skills to learn actually and you would want to focus on them separately. How to videos are really great to start with, they only have to last half an hour and can be very easy to make.

The first thing to do is get familiar with the equipment. What you are filming is of secondary importance, s stick with something easy and short, like how to tie a shoelace. This is harder then it looks, but this is for practice. It isn't tying the shoe that is important it is things like framing the shot so you get the detail you want, getting the lighting right and capturing the right sounds. You are trying to figure out how to use the lights, camera and editing equipment to tell a story.

Telling the story is the important part. A story has three basic parts:
The Beginning: Introducing who and where the story is about.
The Middle: The problem to overcome.
The End: Solving the problem.
Okay that is extremely simple but that is all you need for now.

The first one will be terrible, that's okay, like everything: practice makes perfect. You will need to do this until you are reasonably happy with the result. Then you can do something more challenging.

The next level to to have a few actors, for example a short scene from Hamlet. The focus here is on the sound, capturing their voices (or learning to do voice-overs) and directing people to do something particular.

With time and persistent effort your children can gain the skills to do any video job. Start small, focus on just one aspect and learn how to do it right and then learn another skill.

Outsourcing Tutoring

2005-09-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Needless to say, critics have been vocal in their opposition to the offshoring, noting that the industry has few standards and employees are not closely monitored. Sensitive to such charges, online tutoring firms in the US have adopted several approaches; Tutor.com uses only instructors based in North America, while rival SmarThinking has employees in South Africa, the Philippines, India, and Chile, but ensures that only tutors in the United States provide English lessons.

However, online tutoring, according to its advocates, has the advantage of eliminating factors such as skin color and appearance. SmarThinking's chief executive and co-founder, Burck Smith, claims that the Internet makes online tutoring "more egalitarian than most classrooms." With distance learning, students in rural areas who may not have ready access to qualified teachers can now receive instruction online. Parents and students who use such services are also aware of the savings; the Marinaros say that Growing Stars costs a third of what they were paying an in-home tutor.

Nothing is safe from outsourcing. The Web is a powerful tool. It can be used for education. And this is another way to help your children.

Back to School, Thinking Globally

2005-09-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

The United States can still prosper in a world where its labor costs are higher than the competition's, but it cannot do that if the cheaper workers abroad are also better educated. Business leaders who have firsthand experience with this problem warn that this country could become a third-rate economic power unless it radically remakes its schools. But the education community is in deep denial. American educators typically respond with yawns - and a series of myths. The most common is that Europeans educate only the elite, while this nation educates everybody. That hasn't been true since the early 20th century. Comparisons show that the rest of the developed world does a better job educating students of all economic backgrounds.

A second myth - that America's white elite children compare favorably with those abroad - is also false. In the most recent international data, comparing students in the top 5 percent in terms of achievement, the United States ranks 23rd out of 29. The third and most common myth - that the nations who do better than us are "homogenous" societies - is also not true. Immigration has transformed much of Europe, as it has the United States.

Objectively speaking, our schools are not doing very well at all.

They also say that you get out what you put in, well when you are doing all the work at home just to make sure you children learn what they are supposed to be learning in school, why not do it yourself. Well, if school is really just babysitting and education is not an issue then schools seem to be doing a good job of that.

How seriously do you take education?

2005-09-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

Up to 80 per cent of schoolgirls in Liberia's capital are selling sex to pay for an education they see as their only escape from poverty, an international charity says.

This is a terrible thing that they feel that they have to do, my spirit cries for them.

These girls do understand one thing very well, if they have a good education, they can get out of there, if they survive.

It is quite literally the difference between scratching out an existence in utter poverty or getting out of there. While the contrast is not so strong yet, here in the US, you don't want to get locked in a dead-end job at the low-end flipping burgers or stocking at the supermarket. Once you have an apartment to live in, and utilities to make living in the apartment worthwhile and a car to get around in, your looking at about $1500/month not even counting startup costs of security deposits and the like which would cost at least another $1500.

There is a lot to be said for having an education. A good job, a good home, a good car, the ability to leave a town threatened by natural disaster, having extra supplies for emergencies. A choice, freedom.

The future of work will be constant, fast-moving change, already the average person changes careers 4 times in their lives, or about every 7 years. It will only get faster.

How serious are you about your children's education?

Collages for pre-calculus class

2005-09-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

My niece started her junior year at a highly rated California high school. For her honors pre-calculus class, she was assigned to do a collage about herself. My sister thinks 11th grade is time enough to stop doing time-wasting -- and mathless -- art projects. "It's a math class!" she said. "Why aren't they doing math?"

The teachers of today sure are working hard at getting these students ready for the modern world of tomorrow.

This is just nuts. While art is a fundamental language to learn, it is inappropriate to math class and is stealing the future of these students. I know there are good math teachers out there. One of my friends was teaching at the local high school, a former engineer was just "not renewed" for this year so he is looking for work again. Now I know what they replaced him with. 20 years ago most of the math teachers in my school also coached one of the sports teams I think that was a good idea, but now sports are almost all gone.

Wherever your precious children are schooled make sure they learn to English and Math. If you don't, it doesn't look like anyone else will.

Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned

2005-09-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

There are lessons to be learned from Katrina as well as from any disaster. More will come to light.

There were plenty of good and bad calls made in this disaster. If I was a mayor or governor I would add a couple of things to the list. If there is warning enough for a Mandatory Evacuation I would use all school buses, and other government passenger carrying vehicles to get as many out as possible, generally following established school bus routes for easy of planning. Also I would want to try to move as much heavy equipment (bulldozers particularly) and not just city owned, into safe areas that would be staging grounds to clearing the roads.

If a Mandatory Evacuation order is issued: Go.
Personal and Family Defenses are no longer optional.
Keep the tank 1/2 full or more always, I've been lax on that lately, in any case it should make the pump shock less.

Review local potential disasters yearly or so. Here in Northern Colorado we have a few major things:
Blizzards, we lived through the October Blizzard of 1997 everything was shutdown for a week. Evaluation: Very Likely Stay and play type disaster, usually have some warning (sometimes inadequate, like then) keep at least a 2 week supply of food on hand. Utilities usually okay except for electricity (usually).

Wild Fires, they were bad a couple of years ago when the drought was in full swing, we could see 4 in our county, In Utah a few years before we could see fires in every direction. Evaluation: Likely Scoop and run. Keep computers backed up, keep important and precious documents grab box updated.

Tornados: We are on the edge of tornado country. Evaluation: Likely, Stay and Play, pick up the pieces afterwards, put computer backups, important and precious documents and items in basement, keep updated.

Flash Floods, took out several homes a few years ago on the far side of town. Evaluation: Unlikely Scoop and Run. very small threat in our neighborhood.

CDC laboratory. Studies mad cow, chronic wasting disease and bubonic plague. Evaluation: Unlikely Scoop and Run but maybe ordered to stay and play. Should get more duct tape.

Budweiser Plant: Largest Ammonia Based Refrigeration system in country. Evaluation Unlikely Scoop and Run but maybe ordered to stay and play. Should get more duct tape.

Nuclear Waste Transporters on Interstate: Midlevel waste being moved from Idaho and others to New Mexico. Evaluation Unlikely Scoop and Run but maybe ordered to stay and play. Should get more duct tape.

I also think I need to create a Walk Away Bag. A simple light-weight 72 hour kit for the family that we use to walk out of the disaster area with. If we are surprised by a devastating disaster like a tornado or flood, we may have to walk out of the devastated area as all the roads are blocked covered with debris and walking is the only option. It only needs to last 3 days to allow you to walk out of the devastated area. This might not work too well if there is a supervolcano or giant meteorite but it will help and those are not too likely. My wife and I are not in the best of shape due to our injuries so lightness is more important to us you can add more if you want.

What should a Walk Away Bag have?
It should be a backpack with everything in plastic bags, the emphasis is on lightness. I am assuming a walk of up to 50 miles across a terrain of roads covered with debris.
Water is the highest priority, while I would want a gallon for each of us for 3 days that would be 72 pounds and not something we can do. So a couple of 2 liter bottles of water plus a water filter to purify water along the way. Plus a bandana to pre-filter the water.
Food is good to have but we'll survive without a lot of it, a box of energy bars will due just fine to keep us going.
Map and compass. A tornado can totally clean out a neighborhood, with nothing but the streets and foundations left, finding your way is more difficult so a good map will help and will show rivers, lakes and reservoirs where water can be obtained.
A small transistor radio with a speaker so everyone can hear the news and find out what happened and where to go.
A flashlight, preferably an LED one that lets the batteries last forever, but a MiniMaglite is fine too.
A pair of sturdy shoes and socks.
Tent, Poncho or tarp to make a shelter with.
First aid kit: Insect repellant, Vicks Vapor Rub (rub under nose to reduce rotting smells), small variety box bandaids, 1 box medium feminine hygiene pads (use as big bandages), 2 ace bandages to hold pads in place.
Toddler Add-on: 1 package diapers and wipes. Teddy bear or blanket.
Winter Add-on: Coat, heavy pants, sweater or sweatshirt.
Copies of Important Documents and computer backups (store in plastic as should everything in here should be)

If you have anything else to add in the way of lessons learned please add them to the comments.

Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts

2005-09-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest problems that I have seen from the news reports about relief efforts on the Gulf Coast has been that all the reporters were at the center of the devastation at New Orleans, which just happened to be the furthest point from help. It of course will take the longest to get there since it looks like they had to clear the trees off of the road first.

I remember the effects of Hurricane Gloria back in New York, many trees were dropped in some areas and that slowed relief operations to a crawl, as two guys with chainsaws and a towtruck cut through the trees and dragged them out of the way. That can take half an hour per tree. How many trees are along the side of the road between you and the nearest Interstate or supermarket or church?

Our local church is organizing an effort to make Hygiene Kits to replenish the supply depleted by Katrina. Just a few per family, but with over hundreds and thousands of families that makes a big difference.

Fantasy Football and Mathematics

2005-09-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

This is a great idea. If you have children in High School, and you are not quite sure about their math skills, and they are interested in Fantasy Football, this could be just the thing.

Remember, if someone is interested in a subject they will retain 10 times or more of the material then if they are bored with it.

Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much

2005-09-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

One of the objections I hear to homeschooling is that a parent cannot possibly provide as good a science education as that of a good high school. Sadly, most high school graduates end up not knowing much about math and science. They take Algebra because its required but never go on to calculus. They'd rather take the easy-A courses rather then more challenging classes like physics, chemistry and biology.

Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.
...
"Our best university graduates are world-class by any definition," he said. "But the second half of our high school population - it's an embarrassment. We have left behind a lot of people."

Another objection is that school teachers are trained to teach science.

"This country cannot finance good school systems on property taxes," he said. "We don't get the best people for teaching because we pay so little. For people in the sciences particularly, if you have some skill, the job market is so good that teaching is not competitive."

My wife majored in Elementary Education and I helped her a lot on her science lessons most of what she had been given was watered-down so much it came out wrong. Most teachers don't have scientifically literate spouses, so the average student is not going to get all that great an education.

If you are homeschooling, you care about you children. You care so much that you are going to learn science so that you can pass it along to your children. You care more deeply about your child then anything and that will make you a better teacher then anyone.

More on Emergency Perparation

2005-09-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

You can only prepare before something happens, once it is happening it is too late.

If you are considering a generator Slate has a great starter article.

New York City has more information on creating a Go Bag.

And finally the Red Cross has information on creating a Disaster Supplies Kit.

Getting ready for the next disaster

2005-09-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to post this after Hurricane Katrina. There has been a lot of loss of life and chaos after the destruction of New Orleans and surrounding areas. It may have been minimized if people had thought ahead, but sadly most people don't. It always happens to somebody else. The Ice Storm of 1998 in the Northeast were so bad it was two weeks before they could get most of the roads open enough for food deliveries. The Blizzard of 1997 in Colorado was so bad that cows died on their feet and many placed never got plowed until it thawed on its own. The Mississippi flooded huge areas in 2001 and that was as bad as Katrina is today. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake did massive damage to roads and bridges trapping many people at home. It happens everywhere.

The first thing is to set up a communications plan.

If you are like most people the family spends half the day apart, spread between work, school, shopping and home. How will you get in contact in case of disaster?

First thing make a list of all the phone numbers everyone has. Cell phone and land line of your family and friends. and where they usually are: home, work, school, church, hangouts.

Add phone numbers of insurance agents, utility companies, local police and fire and hospital other than 911, credit card companies, mortgage company, banks, real estate agent, personal ecclesiastical leader/priest/bishop/rabbi/imam, Red cross, fema, and local, state and federal government, poison control, dial a nurse.

A list of medicines taken by, and medical conditions of, everyone in the family. Fold the paper so that this is on top, medical personal tend to go through wallets for ID, medical data and emergency contact info.

Make several copies. Make sure at least one is in everyone's wallet/purse, if you have a cell phone make sure it has all those numbers programmed into it too.

It is important to set up an out of state contact person, in most cases local lines will be overwhelmed/reserved for police/fire/rescue personal but long distance is often fine. So while no one can call into the disaster area, people can often call out of it. Everyone calls into that long distance number to check in. At the very least set up a free blogspot webpage and use that to communicate.

An accurate diagnosis is half the cure
-any doctor.

You need to get a good idea of what disasters are likely in your area. Your local fire dept or FEMA office can help you out there if you are not sure.

The major disasters that are out there are:
Hurricane
Tornado
Blizzard
Flood
Wild Fire
Earthquake

Disasters come in two basis types:
Stay and play
Scoop and run

Stay and Play Disasters

Stay and play are ones that can often happen without warning, like earthquakes and tornados. They are "come as you are" disasters and you need to have a few things on hand.

While the government recommends having 3 days of food and water at hand plus a flashlight, radio and first aid kit. And more often then not it takes the government 3 days to get started dealing with the problem. I have seen plenty of cases where it took a lot longer to get things working again. Most often it seems to take about 2 weeks to get help everywhere it is needed.

* A two week supply of food, canned is best since if it gets wet it is no problem, just make sure to have several can openers on hand.
* Water is vital to life, you need at least 1 gallon per person per day. A typical family of four needs 56 gallons of water for 2 weeks. I fear the New Orleans will begin having outbreaks of various water borne diseases like cholera in the next few days. So a good safe sealed water supply is important.
* Fuel is good, if you have a gas grill an extra bottle of propane lasts a long time, so you can heat food if you want and boil water if you must.
* Flashlights. Electricity always seems to go out so at least one flashlight per family member and extra batteries are important. I would recommend LED flashlights since they let the batteries last a lot longer (100+ hours) then regular flashlights (10+ hours).
* Radio. You do need to get some information about what is happening and often telephone service is jammed due to everyone using it and officials generally make announcements fairly often and the news stations will cover it. A small transistor radio with a speaker so everyone can hear is good for information and entertainment.
* First Aid Kit, of course.

At work and school you would also want to cache a three day supply of food and water and a pair of sturdy shoes and socks, since most dress shoes are pretty bad for walking home in.

Scoop and Go Disasters

These often have warnings, like hurricanes and wild fires. These mean you can get ready to load up the car and have time to think about what you need to take with you.

If you have to evacuate you don't want to end up in a shelter. Find family or friends that live more them 100 miles away, few disasters affect an area bigger then 100 miles across. Things often will be normal there. Florida is a special case you need to get more then 100 miles once you're above the pan handle. The average car can usually travel about 400 miles on a full tank of gas. Gas up before it hits, and always try to keep a half tank of gas in the car at all times.

Having a predesignated place to evacuate too means that you could store a box of things like: spare eyeglasses, perscriptions from your doctor that you can fill later and copies of important documents stored in plastic bags to keep water out.

Scout out a 2-3 routes that do not use the interstate, most people don't make plans and so they use the first thing that comes to mind, the Interstate, which cannot handle a few million people on it all at the same time.

Make a checklist of things you need to take:
wallet
keys
eyeglasses
medicines
food (3 days of ready to eat food)
water (3 gallons per person)
important documents (mortgage, deeds, loans, insurance, etc)
precious family items (photos)
cash (there will be price gouging)
home inventory video (great for insurance reimbursement, just go through the house and open all the drawers/closets/cabinets describing what's inside, get serial numbers on electronics/computers too)
can opener/swiss army knife/multitool
flashlight and first aid kit
Feminine hygiene supplies
Baby care supplies (diapers, wipes, food)

This is a basic list of things you need. You are free to make modifications to fit your circumstances.

Be prepared, just do it now.

Do the math, or we'll keep falling for lies

2005-09-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

More than 25 years ago, just as Proposition 13 was taking effect, I remember hearing then-Supervisor Rod Diridon Sr. boast how Santa Clara County had regularly decreased its tax rate, the amount it charged per $100 of property value. Sir Rod, selfless tax-cutter. What he didn't explain was that soaring property values -- many more $100 chunks -- had resulted in larger tax bills, not smaller. Multiplication as mystery.
...
``I think one-half of the adults in the U.S. cannot either read a graph or draw a graph,'' says Willow Glen High School math teacher Chuck Acampora. ``They're turned off because they don't understand the fundamental operations of math.''

I think he is being a little conservative, I think it is much worse then that. I was in a Honors class my first year in college and during the biology section the teacher put up a table that compared the amount of material in various cells of the body. Something like:
Skin: 6.1325
Liver: 6.431
Stomach: 6.362
Egg: 3.890
And most of the class was baffled by the Egg, some had a hard time with the fact that it had half the material of the other cells and other by the fact that it wasn't exactly half, they were stressing over the fact that in nanograms the difference was so large. The most significant digit was a concept that he had to teach most of the class.

Without a good understanding of what numbers can and cannot tell you, you are easy fodder to people who are willing to use numbers to confuse you. You cannot make good decisions in a confused state.

A good way to stay poor is to not have a good idea of what happens to your money over time.

What does the future of work look like? Part 2

2005-08-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

Here is another view into the work of the future. It is fairly bleak.

We have no way to understand what is coming or how it will affect us. Keep this fact in mind: the workplace of today is not really that much different from the workplace of 100 years ago. Humans do almost all of the work today, just like they did in 1900. A restaurant today is nearly identical to a restaurant in 1900. An airport, hotel or amusement park today is nearly identical to any airport, hotel or amusement park seen decades ago. Humans do nearly everything today in the workplace, just like they always have. That's because humans, unlike robots, can see, hear and understand language.
...
When you look at this chart, it is easy to understand that there will be huge job losses by 2040 or 2050 as robots move into the workplace. For example:

Nearly every construction job will go to a robot. That's about 6 million jobs lost.
Nearly every manufacturing job will go to a robot. That's 16 million jobs lost.
Nearly every transportation job will go to a robot. That's 3 million jobs lost.
Many wholesale and retail jobs will go to robots. That's at least 15 million lost jobs.
Nearly every hotel and restaurant job will go to a robot. That's 10 million jobs lost.

If you add that all up, it's over 50 million jobs lost to robots. That is a conservative estimate. By 2050 or so, it is very likely that over half the jobs in the United States will be held by robots.

All the people who are holding jobs like those today will be unemployed.

I am an Electronics Engineer I have made several devices that do thing for a human so the human has more time to do something else. Any labor saving device: dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer and the rest are all robots by his definition.

There are already car manufacturing plants that are all robotic. I see houses on the road that were assembled in a factory and are being towed to their foundations. It would not be all that hard to turn those factories into all robot facilities as well.

Several supermarkets and other stores have added self-checkout lanes. So far I find them best for just a few items but it is only a matter of time before we do our shopping ourselves, from pushing the cart to selecting the food to checking out. Not all that long ago you went into a store with your list and everything was behind the counter and you had to ask the clerk to get everything for you, buying tobacco products will probably stay that way for a while longer, now you can do everything yourself. At some point someone is going to figure out how to do remote grocery shopping, where you just order everything on line and it gets delivered, correctly (there have been companies that have done that but I don't know of any that survived the dot bust) and then supermarkets may just go away except for locally produced farmers market type places.

Companies used to have secretaries now everyone writes their own memos and mail. We have become a self-serve nation.

Is that scary? Not really, or rather I am scared that the education that we are providing our children today in the public schools is totally unprepared for that kind of future.

Henry Ford was smart enough to pay his workers enough to afford his product, most CEOs today don't seem to be that smart. They are getting rid of as many workers as possible, and pay the remainder as little as possible.

What our children need to be able to do is to think creatively and to see opportunities where others don't. We cannot afford to let them get trapped in groupthink and "going along to get along" ruts.

Computers and robots will never have a soul that can be inspired in totally new and different ways. They will never be able to take a weak glue and make Post-It notes, or to take the stuff that coated the inside of a test chamber by accident and put it on a frying pan to make non-stick pans. Computers would just have tossed the weak glue as unsuitable in the search for a strong glue, and Teflon would have been tossed as a useless blob of junk.

It takes a broad base of learning to hook wildly disparate things together to make something new. I remember watching a PBS show on earthquakes and the engineers were having a hard time dealing with liquefaction or how soil reacts almost like a liquid during an earthquake and the worst problems existed in gravelly soils, well the next show was all about farming and grain handling and they talked about how it almost acts like a liquid under the right conditions. I thought, "They should get together since they are talking about the same problem," gravel and grain are very similar. But this was long before the internet and email and there was no way for me to contact each group.

Can you teach your children to think outside the box? sure, don't put them in a box in the first place, and teach them a little about everything and get them thinking about how it is all related.

Sourcetext - THE UNDERGROUND GRAMMARIAN

2005-08-25T08:08:00.000-07:00

Here is a great little resource of material including:
THE UNDERGROUND GRAMMARIAN
THE SHAKESPEARE LAW LIBRARY
THE SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP SOURCEBOOK
THE WORKS OF SIR GEORGE GREENWOOD

Something I need to explore in detail sometime.

dis-Integrated Math

2005-08-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

Ray Bolton of Prairie du Sac addressed the board as the group's spokesperson. He said they had serious concerns about the Integrated Math program currently in use because students who have gone through the program do not do well in ACT tests in math, nor do they do well in college placement tests.
...
He [Parent David Lendved] said students in the program for four years must take remedial, non credit college courses to get up to speed.

A student said they are placed in groups and are supposed to help each other. But not all students want to work.
...
Another parent said she began investigating by speaking to the math chairman at UW Whitewater and he was not familiar with Integrated Math. She said she wanted to have a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the program.
...
One parent said she helps in a third grade classroom every day and she cannot help with the math. She said she is concerned because the children do not know basic facts. She said she will be doing a supplemental program with her child.
...
A recent graduate of the district said three of her classmates not in the Integrated Math program went on to become math majors and one is in pre-med. She said she was in the program and had to take remedial math .

This is just truly sad.
Somehow they have created an advanced math curriculum that makes you dumber then if you don't take it.

Math only has a few basic concepts to learn it just isn't all that hard to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Even adding powers and roots and generalizing to algebra it just isn't all that hard to do.

What is happening to our schools?
Why are people proud to be be bad at math?

Skip counting by 3s

2005-08-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

Skip counting is nothing more then a precursor to multiplication as long as you make it a little bit fun your children will learn it.
3:
3, 6, 9,
12, 15, 18,
21, 24, 27,
30, 33, 36, 39,
42, 45, 48,
51, 54, 57,
60, 63, 66, 69,
72, 75, 78,
81, 84, 87,
90, 93, 96, 99

Skip counting 1

2005-08-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

Once your child has learned the basics of counting to 100, you can introduce a more advanced concept of skip counting, this is a prelude to concepts like even and odd and multiplication. Multiplication is nothing more then skip counting really. A really specialized form of skip counting are the prime numbers.

The first is very simple skipping by twos:
2, 4, 6, 8,
10, 12, 14, 16, 18,
20, 22, 24, 26, 28,
30, 32, 34, 36, 38,
40, 42, 44, 46, 48,
50, 52, 54, 56, 58,
60, 62, 64, 66, 68,
70, 72, 74, 76, 78,
80, 82, 84, 86, 88,
90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100

Been gone for a while.

2005-08-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy the last week or so and now I'm back.

Harry Potter was never alone

2005-07-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

''For me, this book is all about trust," says Hilla Rogel, 15, of Brookline. ''Who can you trust? Are my parents sometimes wrong? Can you depend on anyone besides yourself?"
''After I finished, I lay awake and went over and over it in my head until morning," says Eli Dreyfus, 14, of Newton. ''My life is parallel to Harry Potter's. It made me feel really vulnerable. What would I do [in similar situations]? Am I ultimately alone, too?"

We are never truly alone.

Something that is missed is that Harry has never really been alone, the story is from his point of view and he doesn't always see it, but one of his great strengths is that he is not alone. Harry has many friends that are helping him all the time even if he can't see it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is not about trust it is about friends vs henchmen. Voldemort has henchmen, a bunch of people that does what he says only out of fear or greed and if things look bad then they will leave him, again. On the other hand Harry has friends, sure they have rough patches but they stick together and trust each other to be there for them and they are.

Are parents wrong sometimes? Of course we are. We are mortal, we make mistakes, that is the whole point of being on this world, to try to do the right things and if we choose wrong, to learn from our mistakes and do it right next time.

Voldemort wants to be independent and rely only on himself, he is a fool. We are all dependent on each other, I doubt that Voldemort cooks the food he grew himself, or sewed his own clothes from thread he spun himself, or built his own house out of trees he feel himself. He doesn't see it as dependence but it is.

You cannot rely only on yourself. No one is that strong, that is Voldemorts greatest weakness, he is actually alone even while surrounded by his "faithful" Death Eaters. Like Saddam, who had a massive army which scattered to the wind when we invaded. Their fear of us was greater then their fear of him and he ended up alone, hiding in a small, dirty hole in the ground. Voldemort will also end up alone again, but Harry will have his friends with him, even if they are somewhere else, and that will make all the difference in the world.

We still have our families and they care for us more then anything in the world. Sure there are times when we get on each others nerves, and make bad choices because we feel it will hurt them, just like Ron and Hermione did, but love is stronger then pettiness and so we should never feel alone, even if our family is not around us right at this moment, we can go to them at anytime and we will find love.

The bonds of a family, particularly an eternal family, are far stronger then steel, diamond or ceramic.

We are never really alone.

A lot of math stories today

2005-07-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Congress has been looking into the fact that we are not producing a lot of female and minority students looking into Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) disciplines. Danica McKellar has some good things to say:

I believe the problems with under-representation of women in SET (Science, Engineering, and Technology) fields boils down to two fundamental issues, which actually effect the majority of students in all demographics, and which start in elementary and middle school.

Students are not prepared for SET careers, and Students are not even interested in SET careers.

These are big problems. If your children have little background in mathematics then they will not be able to understand what is being talked about, and if they don't understand then they are not going to be interested in that kind of career.

An example of how bad this is getting is shown by how many students get to college and have to take remedial math.

Figures show that 44 percent of the Aberdeen Central High School graduates in the class of 2003 who went to state-run universities in South Dakota had to take remedial math when they got to college.

"That's high, and it worries the heck out of me," said Aberdeen Central math teacher Evelyn McQuillen. "My mission at Central is to get that number down. I find it alarming."

McQuillen did say it's comparable to the nationwide average but higher than the statewide figure of around 29 percent.

The figures are for the 2002-2003 school year, the latest for which statistics are available.

It was even higher for the class of 2002 - almost 51 percent.

Finally, if you are thinking about the future your children will be living in, this is going to cause some rethinking.

In the next few years, your child will come home from school in tears. He'll say, once again, that he is unable to compete with the children who are brighter, better behaved and physically more capable than he is because their parents have bought them technological enhancements and you have not. What will you do?

I don't know how big of an issue this will be. Sure a brain enhancer may make a child more intelligent but the schools would have to change how things are taught to handle that. A lot of children are being drugged right now to make them better behaved. And since PE has pretty much been dropped to make more time for study added strength is not an advantage.

I am not going to worry about this until it actually becomes available. I have seen many technologies never leave the lab because some reason or another didn't allow for mass production.

Concentrate on bringing the best out in your children. Focus on their talents and interests and they will become successful.

Tom Lehrer Math Songs

2005-07-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

One of the most potent tools you can have to help your child's learning is to set the lesson or parts of it to music. It will make it up to 300 times easier to remember then just listening to something.

For example we got the Schoolhouse Rock! DVD and though my wife and I had not seen them in 15 years we could still sing along with almost all of them, it was actually kinda scary how much we remembered.

Or how about old camp songs you sung around the campfire as a kid that you can still sing with just a little prompting.

The first time I remember hearing a Tom Lehrer song was in Chemistry class were we heard a recording of him singing all the elements in the Periodic Table, but that really wasn't the first time, he did several songs for the old children's TV show The Electric Company.

The link above goes to a video at the Internet Archive of him singing his math songs. By singing along with him your children will remember the information 300 times better since it is using both sides of the brain and that is a great thing.

His complete works can be had at Amazon.

The Big list of Periodic Tables

2005-07-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

I ran across this site which has a very impressive collection of Periodic Tables of the Elements and their uses.
Chemistry is a big user of arithmetic, a chemical reaction is simple and straightforward math. And can be fun to demonstrate. A lot of what Mister Wizard did was based on this simple stuff.

To the Moon

2005-07-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Google now has a map of the Moon up showing all the locations of the Apollo missions. This is neat stuff.

Where does the time go?

2005-07-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

One of the things that is a real problem for us is how little time we seem to have to do things.
I do realize that a lot of time is wasted in activities that don't pan out as something useful but then there is all the time spent on chores.

I am so thankful for the labor saving inventions of the last couple of centuries. The dish washer is my second most favorite time saving invention: In college we didn't have a dishwasher and it often take up to 30 minutes to wash and dry the dishes after a meal. We cooked a little fancier then most of the other married students but we all spent a lot of time on that chore. Now just load an entire days worth of dishes in the dishwasher and its done in an hour and a half.

My most favorite is the clothes washer and dryer. After watching 1900 House where washing clothes was an activity that went from Friday night (start the clothes soaking), most of Saturday (get a big tub of water hot and agitate for a long time and then wring out and line dry), Sunday the clothes would dry and Monday morning would be ironing. Now we can wash and dry a load of clothes in about 2 hours, without the need to iron most of them.

One area we are spending a lot of time on is cooking. My wife and I love to cook it is a hobby to us, really. We are not all that wild about leftovers though. But instead we make freezer portions for some of our dishes. If we make our great Spicy Oven Fried Chicken we make a big batch of it and eat two of the portions and the rest go in the freezer for when we want more, we can also tear them apart for things like Pesto Chicken Salad and Chicken Caesar Salad. It isn't all that different from getting one of the frozen entrees from the supermarket.

SPICY OVEN-FRIED CHICKEN

Marinade
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons hot pepper sauce
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 large onion, sliced

12 chicken pieces (breasts, thighs and drumsticks) with skin and bones

Coating
1 cup dry unseasoned breadcrumbs
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons butter, melted (optional)

Whisk buttermilk, oil, hot pepper sauce, mustard, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in large bowl to blend well. Add onion, then chicken and turn to coat. Cover; chill at least 3 hours or up to 1 day, turning chicken occasionally.

Place racks on 2 large rimmed baking sheets. Whisk breadcrumbs, cheese, flour, thyme, paprika, cayenne and 1 teaspoon salt in large baking dish to blend. Remove chicken from marinade, allowing excess to drip off. Add chicken to breadcrumb mixture and turn to coat completely. Arrange chicken, skin side up, on racks on baking sheets. Let stand 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425°F. Drizzle butter over chicken. Bake until crisp, golden and cooked through, about 50 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 6 servings.

Variation: Spicy Grilled Chicken: Instead of coating the chicken cook it on the grill for a smoky flavor.