Unencumbered time and enchantment … why can’t we have more of that in our schools? Oh right, it’s because we’re too busy cramming vital content into our poor students’ heads … and then crushing their spirits as we drag them through high-stakes tests. The worst of it is that after 13 years of this, we … Read more
There has been a war in the mathematics education world for the past few decades about whether students should master basic skills, or whether they should use calculators or software for basic skills to save time and energy for higher-level thinking. More and more people nowadays are seeing this for what it is: a false … Read more
Some years ago I went on some sort of rant to the members of my household about “spitting image” and how it’s incorrect usage. The phrase is commonly used regarding a child that looks very much like one of its parents or another of its ancestors. I argued that “spitten image” is correct, because it’s … Read more
Here is a link to a fascinating post on this subject from earlier this year at Skulls in the Stars. The effect has apparently been observed for millennia (the post contains a reference by Aristotle!), but the conditions under which it occurs and the scientific explanation for the Mpemba effect are still unclear. Interested experimenters … Read more
Marion Brady wrote a wonderful piece for a Washington Post blog a couple of days ago, which I found out about thanks to Susan Ohanian’s very informative site. A very successful member of American society, with two master’s degrees, who is also a member of a school board, decided to take his state’s standardized tests … Read more
One of the persistent complaints about mathematics and science textbooks, especially high-school textbooks, is that the questions tend to involve formula manipulation in a way that is not very meaningful. Such questions tend to be artificial. A case in point is the following question, taken from a chapter on special relativity in a high-school physics … Read more