The paper is for a city of 100,000.
The writer is their education writer.
The subject is a dispute between a K-12 union and a superintendent, over
how many hours are actually spent teaching in the classroom. This has
become an issue since Massachusetts mandated 900 hours, for elementary,
and 990 hours, for middle and high school, of actual classroom instruction
per school year. The dispute is about how many minutes to allow for
classroom changes, home room, etc.
But the point of this posting is the following quote from the story,
describing how each side computes these things.
"Now, the math. (Remember, under new math how we get the answer is
more important than whether the answer is correct.)"
I pass this along because it indicates the attitude of at least some of
the public about what math educators are doing nowadays. I am thinking
of responding to the writer, since this person has the power of the press
at their disposal, but thought I'd look for some good ideas from this
group, first.
So, any helpful ideas are invited. Thanks.
Philip Mahler
Middlesex Community College
Bedford, MA
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