Why Education Methods Class Have a Bad Reputation

A quotation taken directly my mathematics methods book, which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty:
"Before we can discuss what problem solving is, we must first come to grips with what is meant by a problem."
Yes, this book, in discussing how to teach problem solving, spends about a quarter of page (and a couple hundred words) to define what a problem is in mathematics. This bothers me for two reasons. First, given that it is a college-level textbook, is it really necessary to define a problem? Second, if defining problem is necessary, is it worth spending a quarter of a page to define what could have been handled in two sentences?
And teachers wonder why they aren't treated with the same level of respect as engineers and doctors...

Expelled

I ran across the site for an interesting documentary that is coming out this April: Expelled. This documentary, hosted by Ben Stein, examines how the scientific community is treating those of its members who question Darwinian evolution. I'll you to explore the website on your own if you're curious about some of the details. One story, though, particularly disturbed me, since my alma mater is involved.
The full story can be found here. To summarize: Iowa State University has denied tenure to a professor of Physics and Astronomy (Guillermo Gonzalez) for co-authoring a book called The Privileged Planet. He never taught this material in class, and all of his work was first-rate. Yet, he was denied tenure for "unsatisfactory progress." Based on the evidence that I have seen, it appears that Iowa State is attempting to silence scientific inquiry out some of sort of fear of mixing science with religion.
(Note to ISU President Geoffory: Any hope you might have had of me supporting Iowa State University has been shot to pieces. I will not support an institution that works to quash scientific debate by denying high quality scientists tenure. I would have expected something like that from the University of Iowa, but certainly I thought ISU would be more fair-minded.)
So, when this documentary comes out, go visit it, and take your friends, evolutionist and non-evolutionist. The whole point of the documentary--and the goal of Intelligent Decision scientists, I might add--is to re-examine and debate ideas that we once thought were correct and now may well be wrong. Isn't that what we're supposed to do in science? I guess that's only true as long as we stay away from anything that suggests we humans are not the ultimate beings in the universe...

Random Sketch

I had a very strange dream the other night, a story fragment, as most of them are. I had a little time, so I thought I'd try to turn it into a short scene. This is still very much a rough draft and probably far too wordy, still. Read on and enjoy, if you wish.

Anyone roaming the castle hallways on that dark night would have seen nothing, not even the shadows of the three ogres who stole through the darkness. They tried to move stealthily, and, being ogres, they were not entirely successful. They ran into each other, stepped on each others’ toes, and whispered nasty ogres curses at each other. Yet most of the castle slept, so the minor thuds of ogre footfalls and the harsh whisper of ogre voices failed to arouse any alarm.
As they bumbled down the hallway, they neared a chamber out of which came the noise of a party. The ogres hesitated, fearful of the door opening and light from the chamber exposing them. The remembered the warning written on the potion’s bottle: invisible only as long as not being struck by light.
Grugg moved first. He cautiously stepped forward. No sooner had he done so than one of the late-night revelers opened the door, spilling light into the hallway. For a brief moment, Anwern and Prugink could see Grugg’s head, seemingly floating in mid-air. Grugg quickly backed out of the light, desperately hoping he had not been seen.
Out of the doorway staggered the party-goer. The door closed behind him, and he rambled down the hall in a direction away from the ogres. He did not notice Grugg’s head floating in air for the brief moment that it was visible. If he had looked after the door had closed, he would have seen nothing.
After an interminable wait, Grugg turned behind him and whispered, “All right. He’s gone. Come on, you slugs.” He took a few steps forward before he noticed that no one followed. Retracing his steps, he drew near a doorless, dark chamber. From inside came the sound of metal bending, followed by the pop of a wooden lid being forced open. The cacophony of gold coins being spilled on the floor echoed out into the hallway.
Before Grugg could say anything, the light of carried torches began to appear on the walls at the far end of the hallway. The guards knew that someone unwelcome was inside the castle.

Sad, Yet Ironic

While I don't wish to make light of something as tragic as this, there is just something ironic about it. Read the story here.

Political Ponderings

I have wondered for weeks why Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican, endorsed the more moderate John McCain for President. It seems that McCain's political views would be at odds with Brownback's own. A recent analysis I read from Bob Beatty (found here at the Topeka Capital-Journal Online) perhaps partially explains Brownback's endorsement. In the piece, Beatty points out that nationally, McCain is the only Republican candidate who has favorable numbers against Obama and Clinton, the two Democrat front-runners. Now, I am not a huge fan of McCain's politics, and I am not huge on the idea of him being President. But I am even less in favor of one of the Democrats in office. I really don't want higher taxes, a bigger government, and disastrous social values. That is, after all, part of why the current Republican regime has frustrated me so much: they've spent like Democrats.
So, given that he appears to be the most likely candidate to win a general election, McCain is getting a second look from me. I'll need to do a little more digging before I am convinced that I can comfortably support him. I know, though, that I would rather support him than Obama, and I would rather live in Myanmar than vote for Clinton. It will be interesting to see if McCain can win the Republican nomination. Now, if only the process would start a couple of months later so I don't have to deal with all of this for NINE MORE MONTHS! >:-(

A Modest Grammatical Proposal

In the past 30 years or so, some people have taken objection to the use of the "generic he" in the English language. The result is that "Everyone needs to get out his book" has become turned into the ungrammatical "Everyone get out their book." The first construction, while grammatically correct, offends some people. Many opt for the second construction, but it is grammatically incorrect, since everyone is singular and their is a plural pronoun. So far, no attempted remedy has met with the satisfaction of everyone in society, so I would like to following modest proposal for fixing this potentially offensive quirk in the English language.
Instead of using simply "he" or simply "she" (or worse, yet, some "/" combination such as he/she or s/he), I propose that we create a new pronoun for use whenever both genders should be included in the pronoun. This pronoun, in its basic form, will be called "Shim" (a combination of she and him). This pronoun would have the following forms:
Subject: Shim (Example: As Mr. Jones talked to each teacher, he found that shim was intelligent, loving, and sanitary.)
Object: Shim (Example: As a teacher, shim found it was hard to have students talking to shim.)
Possessive: Shis (Example: Shim went to the store to go get shis favorite food.)
Reflexive: Shimself (Example: Shim went to the store to get shimself some of shis favorite food.)
Alternative possessive: Shine (Example: Whose food is this? It could be shine!)
With this new construct, hopefully we will finally solve the incessant war between the angry feminists who feel oppressed by standard English grammar and the traditionalists. It may take a while for it to catch one, but I think it has quite a bit of potential. I invite each of my readers to submit shis comments.

Day 2 of Week 2 of the Sprint through Early January

So, I'm a day behind my usual blogging schedule, which should give you some idea of how busy everything is for me right now. I really don't have much to say because I have a bunch of projects that all hit at once. Once this week is over, then, Lord willing, things will quiet down, and I'll get to enjoy life without being tired. :-) For now, it's time to go to sleep. I'm exhausted.

Rant: Constructivism -- Bah! Humbug!

Three long busy days after a busy week have left me in the mood for a rant.
As a part of my Masters degree, I am taking a course in mathematics instruction methods (to make up a deficiency). I just read the first chapter today, and already I'm seeing constructivism show up in the readings (and it's not the first time it's showed up in readings for educational classes).
<rant>What is it with math teachers and constructivism? In every way constructivism (which is just relativistic humanism applied to psychology) contradicts the foundational principles on which mathematics is based! Using constructivism in math is what yielded so much of the poor quality mathematics reforms of the 1990s, such as "Let students figure it out on their own" (even though they lack the background knowledge and desire to do so) and "There are no wrong answers" (which last time I checked, wasn't true, either). No wonder we are so far behind in mathematics education when we're too busy adhering to a philosophy that is so contrary to reality!</rant>

Perelandra

I was going to write about my theory of relationships, but I decided to wait on that. I need to find my previous thoughts on the matter and use them as a template. Instead, I want to comment on one of my favorite CS Lewis books: Perelandra.
In Perelandra, a man from Earth by the name of Elwin Ransom is sent to Venus (called Perelandra by its inhabitants) for what are initially unknown reasons. He soon finds himself in a battle with another Terran, a battle which will decide whether Perelandra will avoid the Fall that its cousin planet, Earth, experienced.
One of the interesting aspects of the book is how Lewis (through Perelandra) pictures what an ideal Earth would have been like. In Perelandra, the humans are to the animals what God is to us: He loves and cares for us and wants to see us become as much like Him as we can. The goal of the King and Queen (the first sentient Perelandrans) likewise is to make the animals of Perelandra as much like humans as possible.
If Lewis is correct in his thinking, then it would explain why we humans tend to anthropomorphize animals so easily. It also explains our propensity for pets. There could be some residual memory of our original Edenic calling to take care of the animals and make them more like us.
It's certainly an interesting thought, one that had never occurred to me before reading Perelandra.

Thoughts on Bowls

Bowl season is (mercifully) winding down. The few games I've seen have been anything but interesting: Missouri blowing out Arkansas; Oklahoma getting hammered by West Virginia. Tonight's Orange Bowl could be very interesting. And it presents a dilemma for me: whom to root for. On the one hand, I am anything but a KU fan, having grown up as a K-State fan most of my life. One the other hand, KU is representing the Big XII Conference (which could use a quality win after Oklahoma's embarrassing loss last night) and the state of Kansas as well. It's hard not to cheer for them when they're the last remaining conference team to play and when a KU win would mean the Conference would at least come away with a winning record. So, I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe I'll be a mostly neutral observer.
On a side note, I was looking at a list of bowls for this year. I didn't realize that there was a bowl game in Toronto (the International Bowl). I wonder what the NCAA rules are about playing college games outside the country...