In Part I of this discourse, I mentioned how a good number of natural-born Americans are basically unaware of the nationality-based differences among “Hispanics.” In addition, so many well-meaning Americans have little or no idea of what events have been taking place in Cuba and the rest of Latin America in the past 50 years.
January 1st, 1959. On this date, at 2 A.M., Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista boarded a plane that took him, his family, and close associates from Havana to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
So, Thanksgiving break is over. Thursday was one of those outstanding family days, when our grown children, grandchildren, in-laws, and out-laws got together. We talked too much, ate too much, watched football too much (actually, there ain’t no such thing as too much of any of those.)
Those of us who are Americans of Cuban descent or birth are often passionate about the situation in Cuba. Because it is personal, natural-born U.S. citizens should not expect us to tolerate a typically positive and lofty view on a revolution that has made it intolerable to live in the country they still love.
I have purposely waited until the end of Hispanic Heritage Month, 2011, to get down to writing this piece. Since I’m Cuban by birth, I have some observations about Hispanics in general and about Cuban exiles in particular.
The following are not my words, but they could well be. They belong to Gary Rupert, long-time acquaintance of mine and band director per excellence at a nearby public high school. Here’s what Mr. Rupert wrote on his blog, “Today’s Task.”
As a native of a Spanish-speaking country, I’m often asked by natural-born Americans whether Spanish-speaking people living in the USA today are getting too comfortable with having translation readily accessible to them.
Fortunately for me, I have outstanding students in my math classes. During class time, most of them work very hard and will do just about anything I ask of them. Over the years, however, I haven’t been too successful in teaching them the importance of preparing, practicing, and thoroughly studying outside the classroom.
In upper elementary and middle school mathematics, despite any of the fluff that may have been added to the curriculum in past years, the hard-core topics of instruction revolve (or should revolve) around fractions, decimal, and percents.
A typical dining room chair has four legs placed in a position to offer optimum balance and support. Sitting on this chair requires little effort from the user.
Hours and days and months we spend in math class, working on numbers, equations, operations, transformations, number systems and a bunch of other skills. Yet, it’s not about the math.
I sing. Music is in my mind and heart almost every moment of my day. I’ve sung practically all my life, interrupted here and there by concentrating on this or that recreational venture or professional interest.
The problem begins in elementary school. What I have found in 40-plus years of teaching upper elementary and middle school math is that students’ difficulties in high school and college math stem from their failure to understand the most basic mathematical concepts.
Finally, the long-expected letter arrived. The chairman of the Maryland Senate Executive Nominations Committee wrote that I will be reappointed to a second five-year term on the Board of Trustees at Frederick Community College. Gov. Martin O’Malley will be ratifying the appointment soon.
Myths tend to perpetuate themselves. One such legend is the one about how every child in the United States has a right to a good public education. Perhaps that one is particularly stubborn because it once was true, or at least mostly true. Not so much anymore, it seems.
If you’ve ever taken your car to a garage to be serviced, you know there are good mechanics and there are…well, bad ones. The good ones demonstrate great knowledge and skill along with great concern for the job at hand.
This push toward so-called “21st Century Skills” – as if educators, of all people, knew in 1910 what skills would be required of students for the next 90 years – would be relatively harmless, outside the immense expenditure of time and money, if certain advocates didn't minimize actual content knowledge.
Amid the debates about bargaining rights for public employees’ and teachers’ unions, this question remains: What is the best way to improve teacher quality?
Now is a good time to give our local community colleges another look. No longer are they the equivalent of “13th grade,” or the sole life raft of marginal students.
A couple of years ago I wrote two columns on the merits (or lack thereof), of Harley Davidson motorcycles and some of the people who ride them, (or view them, or keep them in their garages as oversized paperweights).
Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots – a bone-bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of the body and whisk it away. Caught in a cold winter rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone falling from the skies of Hell to ping my fogging face shield.
Having inhabited the teaching trenches for 41 years and thousands of students, I’ve grown tired of educationists telling teachers not to use the “drill and kill” method for fear of boring our students.
Mathematics tends to make parents nervous, more so than most other school subjects. If you struggled with it as a child, it’s understandable that you might be uneasy when your child asks for help on math assignments.
Recently I met the parent of a student of mine, who introduced himself and proceeded to engage me in pleasant conversation about the scope and sequence of my mathematics classes. His child’s class is now learning to write and solve some complicated equations; so he wondered what topic was next in the program.
As I walked into Middletown Elementary to cast my vote last week, I took a long breath and reflected on a national election many years ago – Kennedy v. Nixon – December 8, 1960.
One question I have asked many times in my professional teaching career: “What do you want to do when you get out of high school?”
The world is changing at the speed of thought, yet the United States consistently ranks at or near the bottom among developed nations in every quantifiable category that measures achievement and preparedness in school-age students.
As the school year begins to settle into its second month, many parents are already worrying about their (and their children’s) least favorite subject – mathematics. This is true across the board in the K-12 sequence, whether elementary, middle, or high school.
I learned math under a solid, old-fashioned, time-honored, traditional program taught by the dear good Jesuit priests and brothers in charge of my elementary education in my native Cuba. It didn’t matter whether the math curriculum was from a textbook, or from Moses and the Ten Commandments; my teachers taught it and taught it well.
In early 2009, I was coaching the MATHCOUNTS competition team at The Barnesville School, then my place of employment. MATHCOUNTS is a nationwide system of mathematics competitions, open to middle schools students in the USA.
Many of us in Frederick County have had our fill of the failures of TERC Investigations and other such “constructivist” programs that de-emphasize the teaching of traditional algorithms. I finished my last TheTentacle.com article by asking the following question:
Typically it is the “lattice” method of multiplication that pushes parents over the edge. This method taught to elementary school students under the Everyday Mathematics program, one of several national programs collectively labeled “constructivist” or “Chicago” math, is so jarring to those raised in a traditional math program that it ends up being the last straw.
In this last installment on the story of “Operation Peter Pan,” I’ll be summarizing and putting this little-known event in the context of the times. It was almost fifty years ago, in late 1960 and early 1961, that the Irish-American Jesuit priest, Father Bryan Walsh, realized the need for housing and caring for the hundreds of unaccompanied children who were arriving at Miami International Airport on a daily basis.
In my last installment, I mentioned how James Baker, the head of an American school in Havana, had allied himself with Father Brian Walsh for the purpose of providing for the thousands of unaccompanied Cuban children arriving in Miami.
In my last installment, I mentioned how this November I’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of my arrival in the U.S.A. from my native Cuba. My mother and I flew out of Michael Moore’s paradise on Election Day, 1960; my father joined us on the day of John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration, January 20, 1961.
As the 50th anniversary of my arrival on these American shores approaches, I feel compelled to relate some of the stories of my half-century as an exile of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Many of these personal, family, and political experiences have been surfacing in my mind recently, as I’m going deeper into a nostalgic mood.
Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon was once asked whether Cubans should be entitled the right to travel freely. This prominent member of the island’s political elite responded in the finest style of standup comedy, saying that if this right existed, the sky would become so filled with airplanes that some would collide with others, causing a great disaster.
One of my history professors at the University of Dayton, back in the late 60’s, repeatedly stated that “race is a pigment of our imagination.”
A reactionary enterprise – politics. It is outrage — outrage about the existing order of things, or outrage about whatever threatens the existing order of things — that provokes politically interested people to pay attention. Witness the Tea Party movement.
I often amaze my motorcycle-riding friends with my memory for facts, and my ability to put recent events in chronological order, and assign a certain event an approximate date.
Imagine that you could send your child to a school that reflected your aspirations for your child's education. Imagine not worrying whether your child was adequately challenged in the classroom, and feeling confident that he or she was truly prepared for college and beyond. Now imagine not going into debt to pay for this, since you are already paying taxes to fund this.
To educate children and adolescents, good schools know that they must also spend time educating parents. When parents are not on the same page with educators, children move through the conflicts of misaligned home and school life, receiving opposite messages rather than similarly focused ones from both sides. Accordingly, here are some observations that parents and educators can contemplate together.
Enough with this “bipartisan” nonsense. Enough about “divisiveness.” Let’s go back to 2004, an election year.
Adam Avery, host of “Senior Talk Radio,” a weekly show that airs on WFMD at noon on Saturdays, is one of those people who is constantly questioning, prodding, inquiring, as to the “why” of things. A few days ago, he observed that Fox News commentator Juan Williams, a moderate black person, must be under intense pressure by his peers to tow the left-wing Democratic Party line.
"I saw communism with my own eyes," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Republican National Convention in 2004. "I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector. I was a little boy, I wasn't an action hero back then, and I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I'd never see him again. My family and so many others lived in fear...."
Oh, what fun it is to ride the waves of local and state news these days. There’s never a dull moment. Something will happen.
The headline refers to all the moralizing and humbug by U.S. political and business hucksters when they visit Cuba. Take the delegation from the Congressional Black Caucus, which visited Castroland last April.
In my last column, I confessed of being one of those radical Cuban exiles who strongly oppose the resumption of trade with the repressive regime that has enslaved my native land for well over half a century. Those well-meaning people who continue to chant the left-wing mantra that “the embargo has not worked” are the same ones who continue to be laughed at by the Castro brothers and their minions, in Roadrunner “Beep-beep” fashion.
I generally don’t advertise that I’m a Cuban exile, one who arrived on these shores 49 years ago, seeking freedom. When a friend or acquaintance finds out my refugee status, the question that usually comes up is, “What do you think of the embargo and travel ban to Cuba? Don‘t you think it‘s time for the USA to lift it and resume diplomatic and economic relations?”
Two weeks ago I listed the causes of math-test anxiety and the ways a student should deal with such a condition. In this column I’ll list some strategies that may lead a student to improve his math-test-taking skills.
Test anxiety is a common problem for many students, regardless of level – middle, high, or college. At the college level, this is an especially difficult problem for those who are in “developmental” courses. Unfortunately, it is also common to experience test anxiety only in math, and not in other courses.
In my last article on developing sound math study habits, I referred to “procrastination” as ‘the thief of time.” I concluded that the issue of procrastination by students is not a simple one. Procrastination is a defense mechanism that protects students’ self-esteem.
In my last installment, I mentioned the “19-millimeter socket wrench” a mathematics student needs to bring success into his mathematical learning habits. Keep in mind that these observations and recommendations apply to mathematics students at all levels – middle and high school as well as college. Math is math, regardless of what course or level; good academic habits are universal.
“What do you do for a living?” asks someone in casual conversation.
“I’m a middle school math teacher,” I reply.
In recent years, many jurisdictions throughout our country have experienced their share of educational crises – such as “whole language“ and “fuzzy math“ in general – and “TERC” in particular. Even now, the state is still in the grips of an “algebra crisis.”
Yesterday you were counting pennies, leaves, and gold stars with your first grader. Now he or she is ready, you hope, to tackle sixth grade math. It's a shock to lots of parents – and children, too.
The job of the typical middle and high school mathematics teacher is a challenging one, as evidenced by the kinds of questions and statements made by students, parents, and school administrators; these are the people who comprise our “constituency,” if I may.
Everyone needs to eat. On the road you, the touring motorcyclist, have two choices. You could buy food in a grocery store and prepare it yourself, or you can pay someone else to prepare the food. You cannot just go to the refrigerator and grab something, or drive to your favorite restaurant. While touring by motorcycle, you'll have to get food wherever you can.
As I promised in my last installment on motorcycle touring, I intend to deal with the topics of security, food, and shelter while on the road.
Summertime is motorcycle touring time. This year I’m headed for West Virginia, (heaven, not “almost…”), in late July, to meet with a bunch of friends from far and wide. Two weeks later I’m headed for northwestern Ohio for a high school reunion.
In my many years of traveling by motorcycle, I’ve encountered many people who ask me questions like, “Did you ride that thing all the way out here from Maryland?” The standard reply from this smart aleck is: “It’s better than pushing it all the way from Maryland…”
Next Monday, June 15, American roadways will see up to triple the normal number of riders, as beginner-to-expert motorcycle enthusiasts become motorcycle commuters. These commuters will be doing us all a favor by not only commuting via an efficient personal form of transportation, but by doing so on a vehicle with a much smaller footprint than our cars and trucks.
Well, okay, not all the non-motorcycle people hate us – it just seems that way some of the time, and has for the 40 years of my experience. So, why is that?
This is the conclusion of my series on buying a used motorcycle. In my 39 years in the sport of motorcycling, I’ve bought only two new motorcycles, and that was back in the early 70’s. Buying a used motorcycle is one of the most challenging, yet satisfying activities a person can engage in.
Alas, my third installment on buying a used motorcycle, one of my favorite activities. Buying a used motorcycle, as I’ve mentioned before, is much more fun than selling one.
In my last installment on www.thetentacle.com, I started giving readers, potential motorcyclists all, some advice on buying good, used, cheap motorcycles. I stressed the importance of doing one’s “homework,” which means thinking things over as one finds out about the various types, models, and brands of motorcycles available.
I rode my Venture on four of the five workdays this past week. It felt great! Goodness, what a great runner that 21-year-old motorcycle, (which I’ve named “Moby Dick” after the great white whale), has turned out to be. Smooth, fast, comfortable, powerful, reliable, and beautiful – what a bike!
There was a time when one, in the world of machines, could hardly hear two dirtier words than “Planned Obsolescence.” The very idea that a complex mechanical object should have a deliberately abbreviated life expectancy was nothing less than a kind of mortal sin against proper engineering.
Just as I enjoy riding my Yamaha Venture touring motorcycle on invisible roads in our four-state area, I also like driving a car for pleasure on these same pathways. Three years ago, for example, I persuaded my wife, (who insists on more comfort than even my two-wheel Venture barcalounger can provide), to take the scenic route home from Asheville, NC.
Millions and billions have been poured into thousands of school systems around the country in the last 20 years; even so, much of it has essentially failed to make a difference in the quality of mathematics education. Programs had become so bogged down by politics and bureaucracy that they have failed to create any significant change.
Across the country, the way mathematics is taught in the classroom and in textbooks has been changing notably in the past 20 years. Classrooms are often organized in small groups where students ask each other questions and the teacher is discouraged from providing information. Students may even take tests in groups, if they have tests at all.
In my last article for www.thetentacle.com, I described the goals and strategies used by so-called “reform” educators in their pursuit of mediocrity in American mathematical education.
Since the 1980's, there have been substantial efforts nation wide to weaken mathematics education in America, and, unfortunately, these efforts have largely been successful.
“Ten Reasons Why I Envy Teachers” is the title of an article by a New England psychologist, Dr. Michael G. Thompson. In my last installment, I referred to this piece as the basis to my assertion that teachers are, indeed, people who should be envied.
Work-to-rule, teachers’ contract, planning time, Board of Education, FCTA, negotiated agreement – these topics, and more, have surfaced recently in Frederick concerning local education issues.
Ah, Mnemosyne, daughter of Gaia and Uranus, and mother, by Zeus, of all the Muses! Poets and kings reputedly receive their gifts and powers of authoritative speech from their personal relationship with Mnemosyne. How precious is the gift of memory – yet how maligned it has become over the past 30 years, especially by trendy math educationists.
Readers of TheTentacle.com may remember one of my earlier columns, written late last Fall, in which I listed the 10 dumb questions people ask of motorcycle riders. Since it’s the last day of September, several days past the equinox, one of the 10 dumb questions deserves reiteration, to wit:
A young man, (let’s say “George”), a former middle school student of mine, was doing fine in high school until the spring of his senior year at a Frederick County public high school, many years ago. He was near the top of his senior class, and his list of activities – curricular, extra-curricular, and service-oriented – was impressive. It appeared to all at the time that he would go to a great college and do important work.
Not long ago I described to TheTentacle.com readers my adventures and thoughts on traveling to Maine to purchase and ride home a “new” 1988 Yamaha Venture.
My wife and I are leaving for Dublin tomorrow. No, not Dublin, Virginia, nor Dublin, Ohio. Not even Dublin, California.
I just rode home from Lewiston, Maine, on my new Yamaha Venture. Rode Amtrak to Portland and met the seller at the station. A half hour later we were at the seller’s place, where the Venture was waiting for me.
You’ve seen them on the road – all those guys on motorcycles, parading down the boulevard, on Saturdays or Sundays. Where are they going? I’m sure many of you have wondered the same thing.
In my last installment, I brought up the idea of “invisible roads,” and the fun involved in discovering and riding (or driving) them.
The annual “Ride to the Wall” just took place yesterday, and judging from the amount of publicity about this annual event, you have probably heard about it.
In my last column I devoted some time to present you with a minority opinion about the “made-in-the-USA” motorcycle, the Harley Davidson. I concluded with the statement that Harley Davidson is not really an American motorcycle, inasmuch as the spirit of American creativity, ingenuity, and innovation are nowhere to be found in motorcycles made by “The Motor Company.”
I’m an ardent admirer of the United States of America, my adopted country, which welcomed me to these shores a half century ago. This great country has provided me with opportunities I wouldn’t have faced, had I remained in Communist Cuba.
As your son or daughter and their friends were moving from elementary school to middle school, you may have noticed that a number of them did not want to be identified as “smart kids” – even though they had always done rather well during their elementary years. Some of them were afraid that they would be picked on by other students if it were known that they were bright. Others just wanted to fit in.
What is happening to American institutions requires both art and science. From its churches to its educational system, from the government and political party system to the military, an invasive form of totalitarian groupthink has been artfully and successfully applied to those institutions.
“Make sure you take Algebra II!” So goes the typical admonishment by teachers, counselors, parents, directed at middle-school students in the act of planning their future high school program.
Why do I ride motorcycles? Many who have been riders for a while often ask themselves that question, and every time what seems to be the same old answer reappears in their minds.
“Ten Reasons Why I Envy Teachers” is the title of an article by a New England psychologist, Dr. Michael G. Thompson. In my last installment, I referred to this piece as the basis to my assertion that teachers are, indeed, people who should be envied.
|
