I'm an anti-imperialist so I do appreciate America's efforts to paint the international stage with it's brains. Not sure if what comes next will be better but I'm optimistic.
Any recommendations for how to approach K-12 math teaching? Got some (very) little ones and doing our best but both parents are definitely more humanities-brained
I think it helps to think in terms of keeping up with the demands of school without crushing their curiosity and interest. In my generation, at least where I grew up, school was less competitive and college admissions more laid back. We were at the tail end of when the people who worked on the line at Ford’s earned more than many college graduates. We had no idea what would happen next.
Today parents are freaked out because math scores are a sorting hat for college admissions and lucrative careers. Yet they don’t use math in their own careers, and many of them hate it.
My neighbor, who is a retired high school math teacher, told me that the kids who shine in advanced math are not the ones whose parents treated math as a series of competitive milestones. I started out “slow” in math, and my K-12 math grades were highly variable (to put it kindly), but eventually graduated cum laude as a math major while also becoming a fairly competent jazz musician.
My parents were both scientists, but loved the humanities. I think you can show your own interest and curiosity when talking to your kids about math, or helping them with their lessons. Rather than suggesting that you’re not “math people”, admit that it’s being taught in a new way and that you’re going to re-learn it along with them because it’s fun.
I would restructure school math if it were up to me, though I’m cautious about wholesale introduction of computers for the many reasons discussed in this thread. One idea for your kids is to explore some non-school math topics as they show an interest, such as pure logic, proofs, and computation.
The Doomsday Clock really strains credulity; I'd love to see a case for how we're closer to (as defined in this article) total nuclear annihilation or even a limited exchange than we were at any point in the cold war. The case is not convincingly made by any of the subjects in the article.
Nuclear proliferation is still something to be taken with deadly seriousness but the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences needs to cut the hyperbole and present their case more convincingly.
Absolutely true. I could certainly see an argument that we're closer now than 10 or 20 years ago. But closer than 1980? 1970? It's ludicrous to think so. It makes itself a measure that is obviously untrustworthy.
By what standard? You basically had side A and B. Now you have a dozen countries that can kick off a nuclear exchange.
There’s alot more factors now. The order we have today is really fragile. Especially as Ukraine has bared that the Russians are tiger with rotten teeth.
I think there is no real doubt that the fact is true. What you perhaps refer to is the rate of change, and I'd agree with you that the US is doing far worse in that regard.
Lived in SE Asia fora few years and my understanding is that tan skin = outdoor labor = lower caste.
My spouse is asian and I'm N Euro - I would kill to have skin that just tans no matter how much sun you get. I think I've seen her get burns twice in over a decade and we do a lot of beach time.
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