Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

A U.S. court upheld the expulsion of a counselling student who could not reconcile her religious belief that being gay was immoral with her ethical requirement to counsel anyone who needed her help. There's at least one similar case elsewhere in the country, and if it gets decided differently, the matter could very conceivably go to the Supreme Court.

Kudos to cereta for this one.

First, there's Good books? It's a humanist seeking to find books to enrich his child's life and give him skepticism in the face of his mother's deep beliefs.

Then there's this, where the author argues that children need a basis in faith before they are able to accept uncertainty.

I have a rebuttal forming for the second, but I don't have time for it now so I'll come back later. I suspect my rebuttal will involve concept from this video, first seen on Piet's journal and since spreading rapidly on my friends list:

The question always comes up in debates about teaching mathematics: how come the Japanese do so well at math, when they stress rote memorization, if memorization is the wrong way to go about teaching math? (It's usually said in a tone of smug satisfaction, as though there's no possible comeback other than to admit that a constructivist approach to mathematics must clearly be wrong because the Japanese aren't doing it.)

The answer: a little from column A, and a little from column B.

The Japanese do indeed expect kids to memorize a lot of facts, but that doesn't mean they teach by modeling procedures and then assigning students practice questions to follow those procedures. No, they present a problem which the students do not yet have the skills to solve, then the kids work in small groups to figure out the problem. At the end of the lesson, the teacher summarizes what was learned, and students are assigned a small number of questions to practise on at home.

In other words, they use EXACTLY the method we're being told to use - with the exception that they do not allow calculator use.

The single biggest difference between North America and Japan is the number of school days - Japanese students have far more. The next biggest difference is in average expectations. When American moms are asked what mark is acceptable in math, they generally say a B or a C. Japanese moms expect an A.

So - high expectations, a constructivist and problem-solving approach to mathematics, high support in the form of parental help and extra tutoring - that's nine-tenths of the items we're expected to include in our mathematics programs.

Oh, and I should point out that the rumours about this kind of math instruction ignoring basic computation skills are false. We do drill math facts; we just make sure to drill them AFTER students have achieved comprehension, rather than before or instead of.

For future reference: http://www.gphillymath.org/ExempPaper/TeacherPresent/Mastrull/SMastrull.pdf

Through no fault of their own, it looks like Babylegs is struggling to stay in business - basically, the credit that they use to float big orders like Target has dried up in the economy. So, if you have or know someone who could use some of these, now's the time to stock up - and hopefully save a business while you're at it.

I think it's nasty that the people with bad business practices are getting huge bonuses while small companies with decent management and a worthy product get forced out of business because the banks change how much credit they have access to.

This article posits that the religion of the Jews as laid out in Deuteronomy was actually the second, bastardized version of the faith, and that the older one survived in a few isolated pockets and contributed a great deal to the apocalyptic pre-Christian tradition.

That's according to an American study that has been polling the country about food intake for decades. In fact, women who responded seem to be eating about three hundred fewer calories per day than their recommended daily intake, assuming moderate activity levels.

Here's the link. It's quite interesting.

So, if North Americans are fatter than ever before, what's going on? Less exercise? More fat people marrying other fat people and intensifying the genetics - much the same argument as the rise in autism rates? Or is the entire obesity "epidemic" a smokescreen, and we're no fatter than we've ever been (collectively)?

It's from a librarian who was asked to reconsider a book called, "Uncle Bobby's Wedding," because a certain library patron found the subject matter unsuitable to the small children for whom the book was designed.

Here is the librarian's reply to the request for censorship. Beautiful.