Gee, is American Thinker Conservative?

Read this American Thinker article on paying students to work and go to school.

Here's my response, lost amoung all of the ditto-heads who are condemning these kids as shameful losers:

This sounds fishy to me. The writer can't write clean, grammatically correct sentences - this is a teacher? I'd have to see corroboration before I believe it.

It reads like he is mentioning only the extreme cases that feed his own pretentious ego. "Look at all those losers. I, the great and mighty know-it-all white boy, would never do something so stupid."

Dude. The first time ANY kid gets $600, they're going to blow it on stupid things, and any group of kids will have some with alcohol and drug problems. If the deal is made - do this and we'll pay you - then the "teacher" should get off his high moral ground and let them make mistakes and learn from them. If he can't do that, he shouldn't be in that position.

Also, they were scheduled to clean for five hours and school for three. How about we find out whether they worked well for that time and earned the right to "waste" their money? You know, by buying a computer and wasting all their time reading American Thinker and making snarky comments.

Methodology

I am a collector of methods. I like finding new ways to do the simple operations and neat new ways to look at mathematics. I do not feel these methods should be shown to students.

Teach one method. I am in favor of the algorithms that I grew up with. Old fuddy-duddy? Maybe. Tough. The old ways work. The old ways are usually simpler and easier to use.

Think subtraction. 759-384. Do it your way. Now try to follow this.

Why are we bothering to re-invent this wheel?  Isn't one way sufficient for the students?  I feel we should wait until they have completely understood one method before we confuse them with "Other" possibilities.  If a student comes up with this on his own, great. 

Sheesh.  No wonder kids get confused if this is what they're taught.
h/t to parentalcation

Musings on the Charter Conversation

In this entry, practical theory asks,

How different would the current educational conversation be if the KIPP folks said, "Yes... in some of our schools, 25-40% of the families choose to leave KIPP, but KIPP isn't for everyone, and for the students who stay, we do right by them?" What if these schools admitted that it would be much harder to have the success they have if they didn't have the traditional schools to send kids back to when it didn't work out? What if these schools admitted they didn't have all the answers, and instead had to admit that, yes, they do amazing things for many students, but they haven't figured out how to get to a significant percentage of their population, despite Herculean efforts?

Go Read.