[math-fun] Public education more harmful than Al Qaeda (350 line flame)
Gene kindly forwards me copies of a newsletter by one Arthur Robinson, who rages against the American public school system, claiming that its failure to crank out scientifically literate graduates goes beyond mere incompetence and is, in fact, politically motivated sabotage of objective and quantitative thinking. I tended to ascribe this extreme view to Robinson's conservative politics and desire to promote his own extensive home-schooling curriculum. That was before I started helping some Los Altos kids with their homework. Remember Subject: 6th grade analogy problem ?
(Not a math problem) Pitcher is to balk as a) sleuth is to commit b) horse is to shy c) vandal is to refurbish d) elephant is to forget
Which is best? Why? Which do you think the *textbook* claims is best?
The answer book said a, without explanation! And the teacher refused to hear otherwise. The creepy part: most of the class wrote a! I believe the cause of this was one of the chronically bewildered students going to the teacher for individual help, getting shown the "answer", and then sharing it over a regular evening telephone network. As Robinson says, there is no truth. The right answer is whatever the authorities want. We are thus reduced to believing sincere- looking anchorpersons over nuclear or environmental scientists. Well now it's 7th grade, a new school, and new teachers. And the same bullsh*t, only worse! The kid is given a bunch of sentences plus written instructions to underline the subject, double underline the verb, and cross out any prepositional phrases. There is an example sentence with its subject, including articles and adjectives, underlined, yet a crossed out propositional phrase, clearly part of the subject, was not underlined. Sure enough, he got marked off for all the sentences where he both underlined and crossed out prepositional phrases, in clear compliance with the written instructions. It's even worse in "Math" and "Science". Tests and homework are filled with subjective, essay type questions that have no clear right or wrong answer. From the math book: -------- Find the mean, median, and mode. Which measure of central tendency best describes the data? Explain. 3. Minutes on the internet 4. Heights of students in inches 50 63 59 85 367 48 51 45 47 48 50 50 50 52 -------- First of all, mean, median, and mode are no more "measures of central tendency" than centroid, incenter, and circumcenter. Whose terminology is this? Why don't they just call them statistics? Maybe that would sound bad in view of some safety or anti-drug poster saying "Don't become a statistic."? (When the most you could hope for is to become a mere datum.) I'd think that a measure of central tendency would be something like reciprocal variance. Next, in somehow deciding on the most appropriate "measure", are we supposed to examine the numerical data, or merely what it claims to be, e.g., "Minutes on the internet"? Is that outlier 367 supposed to dissuade us from MEAN? No matter, since no item is repeated, the MODE is the whole dataset, and thus describes the data perfectly! "You analyze. We penalize." Heights of students: if we are measuring the playground by laying them end to end (or estimating the circumference of their dodgeball circle) then mean. If one kid is measuring his self esteem by how many kids are taller, then median. If we are ordering one-size-fits-all graduation gowns, then maybe mode. "You analyze. We penalize." At least those two questions were half-computational. Check out the next six! -------- Which measure of central tendency best describes each situation? Explain. 9. numbers of apples in 2-lb bags 10. favorite brands of jeans of of 14-year-olds 11. ages of students in a fifth-grade classroom 12. most common shoe color in a classroom 13. widths of computer screens at a bank 14. number of pets owned by your classmates ---------- What is the mean, median, or mode of jean brands?? Or shoe colors?? And how can we know for what purpose anyone tabulated widths of computer screens?? The page ends with four idiocies reprising the first two. ---------- Find the mean, median, and mode. Which measure of central tendency best describes the data? Explain. 15. weight of backpacks in pounds 14.5 13.5 15 15 16 13.5 16. resting heart rate in beats per minute 79 72 80 81 40 72 17. numbers of raisins in cookies 17. temperatures (deg F) on race days 20 1 18 19 14 18 53 53 55 45 47 51 57 58 ---------- Would we choose a different statistic for deg Centigrade? For sled dog races instead of dune buggies? I am literally unable to help this kid with 7th grade math. At least they say it's math. How could any of these lucky students distinguish "statistician" from "charlatan"? OK, time for science. Prentice Hall Science. (Pot up the reverb.) "MATTER -- Building Block of the Universe" (Pot down reverb.) -------- Review and Reinforcment Guide Key Concepts All matter has the general properties of mass, weight, volume, and density. Vocabulary Skills: Applying Definitions Decide whether each of the following sentences describes a general property of matter or a specific property of matter. The stone is smooth and round. A lemon is yellow and tastes sour. According to the scale, my puppy is 4 kilograms. We went to the store and bought a 5-newton bag of cat litter. [...] Ice is cold and hard [etc]... ------- How is temperature (cold ice), or even hardness, less general than density? Maybe their answer would change if the sentence read "This ice is -5 C and hard, (Mohs 1.5)". Conversely for "We went to the store and bought a 5-newton bag of fig cookies." (Just kidding.) Of their four "general" properies, three are more situational than, say, specific heat. And what about phase (solid, liquid,...)? Isn't phase a more "general" property than volume? Skipping ahead, we find Fig 1-14, an aerial view of a smallish ocean liner in a harbor. Caption: "Because of the air within it, a huge ocean liner can float on the surface of the ocean." So if I sucked out the air, it would float on the bottom of the ocean? If they are correct, this is easily the largest inflatable toy I have ever seen. Later they name gravity as one the four forces holding atoms together. "The *strong force* opposes the electromagnetic force of repulsion between protons. The *strong force* `glues' protons together to form the nucleus. Without the *strong force*, there would be no atoms. The *strong force* acts only when protons are very close together, however. Although the greatest of the forces, it has a limited range." So far, so good. (But what was the name of that force again?) "See fig 4.21" Oops. Two drawings, each with a pair of "protons" and two pairs of arrows representing the strong and electromagnetic forces. The first picture is clear enough--long "electromagnetic" arrows depicting repulsion away from the midpoint; short "strong force" arrows depicting weaker mutual attraction. But then the second picture has the "protons" closer, but the "electromagnetic" arrows SHORTER than in the first picture. Worse, the now elongated "strong force" arrows have been moved above and below the protons, without a clue as to which belongs to which. I asked several high school kids whether the "strong force" arrows depicted attraction or repulsion, and they leaned toward repulsion. Now the corker: "The weak force is the key to the power of the Sun." Eh? And three of this book's precious few pages are spent on affirmative action, two on acid rain, and one on experimental animal welfare!! Nice pictures, though. Before I could record any more howlers, his teacher withdrew this book and replaced it with another in the series: Motion, Forces, & Energy, Prentice Hall Science 1999 Same format: Nearly as many Esteemed Educationist contributors as pages. p45 You probably associate forces with active objects such as humans, animals, and machines. [Disjoint categories?] So it may be difficult for you to imagine that an object such as a wall or floor exerts a force. But indeed it does. This is because every material is somewhat elastic. You know that a stretched rubber band can be pulled back in such a way that it can propel a wad of paper across the room. Although other materials do not stretch as easilhy as rubber, they do stretch somewhat (even if you cannot see it) when a force is applied to them. And just as a stretched rubber band exerts a force to return to its origin condition, so do these materials. [They yanked this book back before I could get the page number where we are asked to compute the momentum of a meteorITE weighing such-and-such going such-and-such km/s.] Now we are Exploring the Universe, Prentice Hall Science with the annotation 11 12 13 14 15 03 02 01 00 99 which I think means 10th printing, 1998. p115 The moon rocks brought back to Earth by the astronauts show no traces of water. So scientists believe that there was never any water on the moon. [The kid was nearly laughed out of class for contradicting this, even though the Clementine probe found strong evidence for polar ice in 1996. Likewise Lunar Prospector in 1998.] [Later they mention the theory that the Pacific Ocean was formed when the moon was gouged out of the Earth by a colliding planet. This explains the total absence of water, because the collision would have vaporized it. (To where?) No mention that sunlit water molecules reach lunar escape velocity. No mention of escape velocity.] p118 The moon rotates once on its axis every 27.3 days. This is the same amount of time it takes to revolve once around the Earth. Thus the moon's period of rotation is the same as its period of revolution. This means that a day on the moon is just as long as a year on the moon! As a result, the same side of the moon always faces toward the earth. [A year on the moon? Later, they mention that new moons are 29.5 days apart, but never explain the discrepancy with 27.3.] p123 [A diagram purporting to explain solar eclipses has two mysterious lines, apparently delimiting the penumbra, tangent to the sun, moon, and Earth! Even in the zero probability event that the three would align perfectly, this is wrong by a factor of 3, and falsely implies that there is never a time when the whole sunlit hemisphere can see an at-least-partial eclipse. And there is no mention that the diagram is wildly out scale, with the moon at one Earth radius instead of 60, the sun apparently four Earth diameters instead of a hundred. The sharply tapered umbra could only touch the Earth at its closest point to the moon, so total eclipses must only occur at high noon, and only near the equator. Uh-huh. In fact, there is precious little mention of scale anywhere in the book. Innumeracy reigns. And curiosity wanes. Johnny: Miss Educator, what do those two crossed lines mean in the eclipse picture? M. E.: They mean that the people who wrote this book are scientifically illiterate. If only. The eclipse section opens with a dubitable anecdote wherein a solar eclipse frightens two anonymous armies into calling off a battle "2000 years ago". More easily documented would have been Columbus freeing his entire expedition from native captivity by successfully predicting an eclipse. But I guess that would demean Native Natives.] p124 Tides Because the moon is close to the Earth, there is a gravitational attraction between the Earth and the moon. [So the far away sun can't make tides?] As a result of the gravitational pull of the Earth on the moon, the side of the moon facing the Earth has a distinct bulge. But the moon also exerts a gravitational pull on the Earth. This pull results in the rise and fall of the oceans as the moon moves in its orbit around the Earth. If you have ever spent a day at the beach, you probably noticed that the level of the ocean at the shoreline did not stay the same during the day. Foar about six hours, the ocean level rises on the beach. Then, for another six hours, the ocean level falls. The rise and fall of the oceans are called tides. As the moon's gravity pulls on the Earth, it causes the oceans to bulge. The oceans bulge in two places: on the side of the Earth facing the moon, and on the side of the Earth facing away from the moon. [Why???] Each of these bulges causes a high tide. [As any visitor to the Atlantic shore knows, this is exactly wrong. The full moon flood tide coincides with sundown/moonrise.] At the same time that the high tides occur, low tides occur between the two bulges. The diagram in Figure 3-20 shows the positions of high tides and low tides on the Earth. [This diagram shows a spherical earth submerged in a prolate spheroid of ocean, with major axis through the moon. Aha, the moon's gravity pulls water more because it is lighter, and lighter things are more attracted by gravity than heavier things? And tides must be really severe near the equator... Ah, that's it--since the moon is desperately thirsty, it preferentially attracts water! No mention of the r^2 law of gravity, or gravity gradients, and thus the r^3 law for tides. No comparison of tidal bulges with the centrifugal equatorial bulge. That might entail numbers.] [...] Spring tides occur because the sun and moon are in direct line with the Earth. [Then why don't they call them eclipse tides?] The increased effect of the sun's gravity on the Earth causes the ocean bulges to be larger than usual. [But the sun is far away! Ah, but the moon increases its effect.] [Claims: a) Whoever wrote this Tides section hasn't any idea what causes tides. b) He realizes this, c) And is therefore a deliberate fraud. Ditto any so-called fact-checkers.] ----------------------- I neglected to copy exactly their explanation that the copper color of a total lunar eclipse happens when sunlight reflected from the moon is bent by the Earth's atmosphere. I.e., they made it sound like the light path was sun-moon-Earth, and gave as an answer to the color question a poor answer to the more important question of why the eclipsed moon is visible at all, which they never asked. They also don't mention the moon's nearly black color (7% albedo), or why it looks flat when other moons and planets look spherical, or that the glass beads on the surface make the full moon disproportionately bright. Or that the moon is receding from the Earth and slowing its rotation (via tidal friction). Conclusion: I can't think of a more efficient way to stifle youthful curiosity. Just look at the pretty pictures and try to stay awake until school's out and you can find a TV. Where is the outrage from scientifically literate parents? I guess they all home-school. --Bill Gosper
I was asked to tutor a kid on our street with his 6th grade math homework, and encountered exactly these kinds of baffling "data analysis" problems, many requiring some kind of appropriate misunderstanding of standard terminology, intuition, or both, to "solve." We ended up having long sessions discussing these problems, how they were stupid, and what a reasonable person, such as the student in question, might do instead. Then we would discuss how to respond to nonsensical questions in such a manner as to maximize the chances of being "correct." He enjoyed this frank discussion and ended up doing quite well in the class. On the other hand, they had some nice exercises with polyominos. I've noticed polyominos have filtered down even to the second grade level in the Palo Alto. "Good God, sixth grade math and they're playing with BLOCKS?" I heard someone say at one meeting. grade schools. Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "R. William Gosper" <rwg@spnet.com> To: <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 12:55 PM Subject: [math-fun] Public education more harmful than Al Qaeda (350 line flame)
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Well, that's why they teach you to read first, so you can learn stuff on your own. We all went through the system, and we all learned invaluable life lessons about self-reliance in education. I invented doodling methods, developed calligraphy skills, and learned to hold my breath for over two minutes at a time waiting for class to end. Write the courses yourself and put them on the web. Make them interactive, use animated illustrations. Start a revolution. Parents would be delighted. It would set new world-wide educational standards, reduce costs, etc. Hilarie
Key Concepts All matter has the general properties of mass, weight, volume, and density.
Vocabulary Skills: Applying Definitions
---
According to the scale, my puppy is 4 kilograms. We went to the store and bought a 5-newton bag of cat litter.
equating 5 N force to half a kg of mass? attracted to cat litter? weird planet, this is! W. ----- Original Message ----- From: "R. William Gosper" <rwg@spnet.com> To: <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 9:55 PM Subject: [math-fun] Public education more harmful than Al Qaeda (350 line flame)
Gene kindly forwards me copies of a newsletter by one Arthur Robinson, who rages against the American public school system, claiming that its failure to crank out scientifically literate graduates goes beyond mere incompetence and is, in fact, politically motivated sabotage of objective and quantitative thinking.
I tended to ascribe this extreme view to Robinson's conservative politics and desire to promote his own extensive home-schooling curriculum.
That was before I started helping some Los Altos kids with their homework.
Remember Subject: 6th grade analogy problem ?
(Not a math problem) Pitcher is to balk as a) sleuth is to commit b) horse is to shy c) vandal is to refurbish d) elephant is to forget
Which is best? Why? Which do you think the *textbook* claims is best?
The answer book said a, without explanation! And the teacher refused to hear otherwise. The creepy part: most of the class wrote a! I believe the cause of this was one of the chronically bewildered students going to the teacher for individual help, getting shown the "answer", and then sharing it over a regular evening telephone network.
As Robinson says, there is no truth. The right answer is whatever the authorities want. We are thus reduced to believing sincere- looking anchorpersons over nuclear or environmental scientists.
Well now it's 7th grade, a new school, and new teachers. And the same bullsh*t, only worse!
The kid is given a bunch of sentences plus written instructions to underline the subject, double underline the verb, and cross out any prepositional phrases. There is an example sentence with its subject, including articles and adjectives, underlined, yet a crossed out propositional phrase, clearly part of the subject, was not underlined. Sure enough, he got marked off for all the sentences where he both underlined and crossed out prepositional phrases, in clear compliance with the written instructions.
It's even worse in "Math" and "Science". Tests and homework are filled with subjective, essay type questions that have no clear right or wrong answer. From the math book:
-------- Find the mean, median, and mode. Which measure of central tendency best describes the data? Explain.
3. Minutes on the internet 4. Heights of students in inches 50 63 59 85 367 48 51 45 47 48 50 50 50 52 --------
First of all, mean, median, and mode are no more "measures of central tendency" than centroid, incenter, and circumcenter. Whose terminology is this? Why don't they just call them statistics? Maybe that would sound bad in view of some safety or anti-drug poster saying "Don't become a statistic."? (When the most you could hope for is to become a mere datum.)
I'd think that a measure of central tendency would be something like reciprocal variance.
Next, in somehow deciding on the most appropriate "measure", are we supposed to examine the numerical data, or merely what it claims to be, e.g., "Minutes on the internet"? Is that outlier 367 supposed to dissuade us from MEAN? No matter, since no item is repeated, the MODE is the whole dataset, and thus describes the data perfectly!
"You analyze. We penalize."
Heights of students: if we are measuring the playground by laying them end to end (or estimating the circumference of their dodgeball circle) then mean. If one kid is measuring his self esteem by how many kids are taller, then median. If we are ordering one-size-fits-all graduation gowns, then maybe mode.
"You analyze. We penalize."
At least those two questions were half-computational. Check out the next six!
-------- Which measure of central tendency best describes each situation? Explain.
9. numbers of apples in 2-lb bags
10. favorite brands of jeans of of 14-year-olds
11. ages of students in a fifth-grade classroom
12. most common shoe color in a classroom
13. widths of computer screens at a bank
14. number of pets owned by your classmates ----------
What is the mean, median, or mode of jean brands?? Or shoe colors?? And how can we know for what purpose anyone tabulated widths of computer screens??
The page ends with four idiocies reprising the first two. ---------- Find the mean, median, and mode. Which measure of central tendency best describes the data? Explain.
15. weight of backpacks in pounds 14.5 13.5 15 15 16 13.5
16. resting heart rate in beats per minute 79 72 80 81 40 72
17. numbers of raisins in cookies 17. temperatures (deg F) on race days 20 1 18 19 14 18 53 53 55 45 47 51 57 58 ----------
Would we choose a different statistic for deg Centigrade? For sled dog races instead of dune buggies?
I am literally unable to help this kid with 7th grade math. At least they say it's math.
How could any of these lucky students distinguish "statistician" from "charlatan"?
OK, time for science. Prentice Hall Science. (Pot up the reverb.) "MATTER -- Building Block of the Universe" (Pot down reverb.) -------- Review and Reinforcment Guide Key Concepts All matter has the general properties of mass, weight, volume, and density.
Vocabulary Skills: Applying Definitions
Decide whether each of the following sentences describes a general property of matter or a specific property of matter.
The stone is smooth and round. A lemon is yellow and tastes sour. According to the scale, my puppy is 4 kilograms. We went to the store and bought a 5-newton bag of cat litter. [...] Ice is cold and hard [etc]... ------- How is temperature (cold ice), or even hardness, less general than density? Maybe their answer would change if the sentence read "This ice is -5 C and hard, (Mohs 1.5)". Conversely for "We went to the store and bought a 5-newton bag of fig cookies." (Just kidding.)
Of their four "general" properies, three are more situational than, say, specific heat. And what about phase (solid, liquid,...)? Isn't phase a more "general" property than volume?
Skipping ahead, we find Fig 1-14, an aerial view of a smallish ocean liner in a harbor. Caption: "Because of the air within it, a huge ocean liner can float on the surface of the ocean."
So if I sucked out the air, it would float on the bottom of the ocean? If they are correct, this is easily the largest inflatable toy I have ever seen.
Later they name gravity as one the four forces holding atoms together.
"The *strong force* opposes the electromagnetic force of repulsion between protons. The *strong force* `glues' protons together to form the nucleus. Without the *strong force*, there would be no atoms. The *strong force* acts only when protons are very close together, however. Although the greatest of the forces, it has a limited range."
So far, so good. (But what was the name of that force again?)
"See fig 4.21"
Oops. Two drawings, each with a pair of "protons" and two pairs of arrows representing the strong and electromagnetic forces. The first picture is clear enough--long "electromagnetic" arrows depicting repulsion away from the midpoint; short "strong force" arrows depicting weaker mutual attraction.
But then the second picture has the "protons" closer, but the "electromagnetic" arrows SHORTER than in the first picture. Worse, the now elongated "strong force" arrows have been moved above and below the protons, without a clue as to which belongs to which. I asked several high school kids whether the "strong force" arrows depicted attraction or repulsion, and they leaned toward repulsion.
Now the corker: "The weak force is the key to the power of the Sun."
Eh?
And three of this book's precious few pages are spent on affirmative action, two on acid rain, and one on experimental animal welfare!!
Nice pictures, though.
Before I could record any more howlers, his teacher withdrew this book and replaced it with another in the series:
Motion, Forces, & Energy, Prentice Hall Science 1999
Same format: Nearly as many Esteemed Educationist contributors as pages.
p45 You probably associate forces with active objects such as humans, animals, and machines. [Disjoint categories?] So it may be difficult for you to imagine that an object such as a wall or floor exerts a force. But indeed it does. This is because every material is somewhat elastic. You know that a stretched rubber band can be pulled back in such a way that it can propel a wad of paper across the room. Although other materials do not stretch as easilhy as rubber, they do stretch somewhat (even if you cannot see it) when a force is applied to them. And just as a stretched rubber band exerts a force to return to its origin condition, so do these materials.
[They yanked this book back before I could get the page number where we are asked to compute the momentum of a meteorITE weighing such-and-such going such-and-such km/s.]
Now we are Exploring the Universe, Prentice Hall Science with the annotation 11 12 13 14 15 03 02 01 00 99 which I think means 10th printing, 1998.
p115 The moon rocks brought back to Earth by the astronauts show no traces of water. So scientists believe that there was never any water on the moon.
[The kid was nearly laughed out of class for contradicting this, even though the Clementine probe found strong evidence for polar ice in 1996. Likewise Lunar Prospector in 1998.]
[Later they mention the theory that the Pacific Ocean was formed when the moon was gouged out of the Earth by a colliding planet. This explains the total absence of water, because the collision would have vaporized it. (To where?) No mention that sunlit water molecules reach lunar escape velocity. No mention of escape velocity.]
p118 The moon rotates once on its axis every 27.3 days. This is the same amount of time it takes to revolve once around the Earth. Thus the moon's period of rotation is the same as its period of revolution. This means that a day on the moon is just as long as a year on the moon! As a result, the same side of the moon always faces toward the earth. [A year on the moon? Later, they mention that new moons are 29.5 days apart, but never explain the discrepancy with 27.3.]
p123 [A diagram purporting to explain solar eclipses has two mysterious lines, apparently delimiting the penumbra, tangent to the sun, moon, and Earth! Even in the zero probability event that the three would align perfectly, this is wrong by a factor of 3, and falsely implies that there is never a time when the whole sunlit hemisphere can see an at-least-partial eclipse. And there is no mention that the diagram is wildly out scale, with the moon at one Earth radius instead of 60, the sun apparently four Earth diameters instead of a hundred. The sharply tapered umbra could only touch the Earth at its closest point to the moon, so total eclipses must only occur at high noon, and only near the equator. Uh-huh.
In fact, there is precious little mention of scale anywhere in the book. Innumeracy reigns.
And curiosity wanes.
Johnny: Miss Educator, what do those two crossed lines mean in the eclipse picture?
M. E.: They mean that the people who wrote this book are scientifically illiterate.
If only. The eclipse section opens with a dubitable anecdote wherein a solar eclipse frightens two anonymous armies into calling off a battle "2000 years ago". More easily documented would have been Columbus freeing his entire expedition from native captivity by successfully predicting an eclipse. But I guess that would demean Native Natives.]
p124 Tides
Because the moon is close to the Earth, there is a gravitational attraction between the Earth and the moon. [So the far away sun can't make tides?] As a result of the gravitational pull of the Earth on the moon, the side of the moon facing the Earth has a distinct bulge. But the moon also exerts a gravitational pull on the Earth. This pull results in the rise and fall of the oceans as the moon moves in its orbit around the Earth. If you have ever spent a day at the beach, you probably noticed that the level of the ocean at the shoreline did not stay the same during the day. Foar about six hours, the ocean level rises on the beach. Then, for another six hours, the ocean level falls. The rise and fall of the oceans are called tides. As the moon's gravity pulls on the Earth, it causes the oceans to bulge. The oceans bulge in two places: on the side of the Earth facing the moon, and on the side of the Earth facing away from the moon. [Why???] Each of these bulges causes a high tide. [As any visitor to the Atlantic shore knows, this is exactly wrong. The full moon flood tide coincides with sundown/moonrise.] At the same time that the high tides occur, low tides occur between the two bulges. The diagram in Figure 3-20 shows the positions of high tides and low tides on the Earth. [This diagram shows a spherical earth submerged in a prolate spheroid of ocean, with major axis through the moon. Aha, the moon's gravity pulls water more because it is lighter, and lighter things are more attracted by gravity than heavier things? And tides must be really severe near the equator... Ah, that's it--since the moon is desperately thirsty, it preferentially attracts water! No mention of the r^2 law of gravity, or gravity gradients, and thus the r^3 law for tides. No comparison of tidal bulges with the centrifugal equatorial bulge. That might entail numbers.] [...] Spring tides occur because the sun and moon are in direct line with the Earth. [Then why don't they call them eclipse tides?] The increased effect of the sun's gravity on the Earth causes the ocean bulges to be larger than usual. [But the sun is far away! Ah, but the moon increases its effect.] [Claims: a) Whoever wrote this Tides section hasn't any idea what causes tides. b) He realizes this, c) And is therefore a deliberate fraud.
Ditto any so-called fact-checkers.] ----------------------- I neglected to copy exactly their explanation that the copper color of a total lunar eclipse happens when sunlight reflected from the moon is bent by the Earth's atmosphere. I.e., they made it sound like the light path was sun-moon-Earth, and gave as an answer to the color question a poor answer to the more important question of why the eclipsed moon is visible at all, which they never asked.
They also don't mention the moon's nearly black color (7% albedo), or why it looks flat when other moons and planets look spherical, or that the glass beads on the surface make the full moon disproportionately bright. Or that the moon is receding from the Earth and slowing its rotation (via tidal friction).
Conclusion: I can't think of a more efficient way to stifle youthful curiosity. Just look at the pretty pictures and try to stay awake until school's out and you can find a TV.
Where is the outrage from scientifically literate parents? I guess they all home-school. --Bill Gosper
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Isn't it remarkable what an education can do for a person? ... I recall once I invented a simple computer for doing arithmetic; cutting some notches in the pencil slot on my desk, much too young to realize I was defacing public property but had I given it any thought I would have esteemed it a worthwhile permanent improvement. To add 2 + 3? insert pencil at left, move 2 clicks, then three. Count the clicks running backwards; 5! But when Teacher heard the racket, she came back to see what was going on, and the rest is history. No Nobel Prize! Two tides a day is interesting; it is the quadrupole moment, not the dipole moment. The dipole moment keeps the Earth in orbit around the moon. Funny thing: water on the near side of the Earth falls toward the moon, but the Earth falls away from the water on the back side, and you get two bulges. But there is some friction and a phase lag so you don't get high water just under the moon. And no, it isn't due to the finiteness of the velocity of light (or gravitation either). How are you going to explain dipole and quadrupole moments to a fifth grader? Probably thinks there are tripole moments and they come next after the dipoles. It's off to the beach to see if the wind has anything to do with it. Sigh ... - hvm ------------------------------------------------- Obtén tu correo en www.correo.unam.mx UNAMonos Comunicándonos
----- Original Message ----- From: R. William Gosper To: math-fun@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 3:55 PM Subject: [math-fun] Public education more harmful than Al Qaeda (350 line flame)
Gene kindly forwards me copies of a newsletter by one Arthur Robinson, who rages against the American public school system, claiming that its failure to crank out scientifically literate graduates goes beyond mere incompetence and is, in fact, politically motivated sabotage of objective and quantitative thinking.
I tended to ascribe this extreme view to Robinson's conservative politics and desire to promote his own extensive home-schooling curriculum.
That was before I started helping some Los Altos kids with their homework.
[much elided]
Where is the outrage from scientifically literate parents? I guess they all home-school. --Bill Gosper
<soapbox> I'm one of those homeschoolers. It may not be the optimal education, but I much prefer it to a public school system which leaves children ill-fitted to make correct change in the grocery line, much less question their government or media. It is my observation that the quality of public education has declined significantly in recent years. I can't pin the blame on any individual or policy, I believe there are several factors. One problem is that today, teaching is one of the least rewarding ways in which a person can invest his intellectual resources, hence the profession tends to draw less than stellar talent. Also, the prevailing laws prevent the proper imposition of discipline on the student body, at best making it difficult for teachers to maintain necessary order, sometimes leaving teachers at the mercy of the students. Add into this mix the garbage that passes for curriculum in many public schools, and you have a recipe for academic disaster. I have to believe that in the policy and curriculum areas, there are some political influences which prevent remedies that would be obvious to many. On top of this, public schools expose children to unnecessary social problems. Lack of discipline leads naturally to a youth culture in which bullying, drugs, premarital sex, violence, and you name it flourish. Traditionally, when drug lords target a community for infiltration, the first place they target is the public school. I could go into gruesome detail, but why. You all know about Columbine and other similar incidents; these are tragic, but symptomatic of even more tragic systemic social problems with public education. Historically, public education grew up after the Civil War, championed by such reformers as Clara Barton. At that time, a good education was not generally available, and the goals of public education, to avail every child of an adequate education, was laudable. In those days, public educations was truly public, being funded largely by the local community. Over the years, however, the Federal government has become an increasingly overbearing presence in public education, and communities have been trading away local control of their children's education for Uncle Sam's almighty buck. If the trend continues, I ultimately see public schools becoming essentially government institutions, with conduct and education of the students being geared to the benefit of the government, not of the student. I expect that sooner or later, some influential liberal will argue that compulsory public education is the answer to today's educational decline. There has been a lot of time and money spent on trying to fix public schools, and we don't ever seem to be able to do it. To my way of thinking, if public education is the problem, more of it can't be the answer. It is interesting to note that compulsory public education is the hallmark of totalitarian governments, vis Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, etc ad infinitum. Government-funded education does not have savory historical bedfellows. </soapbox> OK, back to math or fun or whatever.
participants (6)
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David Wilson -
mcintosh＠servidor.unam.mx -
R. William Gosper -
Thane Plambeck -
The Purple Streak, Hilarie Orman -
wouter meeussen